On Thursday, May 13^th, the EESW team went to SARA headquarters at Beachley, Chepstow.  The HMSG team consisting of Bauhinia, Fion, Amelie and Megan, worked again this year with Alcatel-Lucent, to find a method to launch small lifeboats into a canal or over a harbour wall and won an award for the most innovative design at the EESW Awards and Presentation Day at Celtic Manor in March.

The girls wrote:

“We went to SARA as a reward as we won the most innovative design in the Engineering Competition.  To begin with we were shown the tracking system from last year's project and how it has been developed and is now in use at the SARA control room.  After this they supplied us with cakes and chocolate as we watched the volunteers launching SARA 3 and SARA 1 to give the Mayor of Gloucester a trip along the river.  As they were doing this we got into our orange boiler suits and took some pictures of us 'pushing' the trailer that launches lifeboats in the traditional way from a slipway.  After all the photos had been taken we were told that they had time to allow us a 30 minute trip on the lifeboats.  We went along Slimewater Road and up to Pigshill Pill, where the crew showed us some tricks on the lifeboats.  Although it was very cold, windy and rainy, the trip was a lot of fun.  We hope that our new design will be put to good use and help SARA with deploying their lifeboats off harbour walls and into canals.  We plan to continue supporting SARA as it is a charity that does such vital work.”