News

Congratulations to Island RIBs apprentice Lewis Wilde who has been invited to become a Lloyds Register Foundation 100A1 Ambassador.

The Lloyd’s Register Foundation is the global charity of the Lloyds Register. The Foundation officially launched its ambassador programme on 26th April 2017 with the initial appointment of thirty-five ambassadors, most of whom are leading figures of industry and academia. The role of the ambassadors is to promote the work of the Lloyd’s register foundation, which aims to enhance the safety of life and property and advance public education in these areas.

As a 100A1 ambassador, Lewis may be invited to represent the foundation at events such as functions, exhibitions, talks and visits. His initial appointment is for three years.

The name of the programme reflects the history of the organisation.in 1870 100A1 was introduced as the highest classification in the Lloyd’s register Rules and Regulations which lay down the standards for construction and maintenance of ships. The 100A1 classification is still used today. 100 signifies the ship is suitable for seagoing service, A means the ship is constructed or accepted into LR class and maintained in good condition, and 1 means the anchoring and mooring equipment is good and efficient.

A very successful end to 2016 saw all of our winter build slots filled.  Over the ‘quiet’ months we have expanded our workshops at the Kingston Works site in East Cowes and grown our laminating team to keep pace with demand.  We have also welcomed  a second apprentice boat builder to our team.   All the winter hard work is paying off, with the first  sea trial of the new season taking place successfully this weekend.  Watch this space for news of more boat launches in the coming weeks!

 We are very pleased to be able to share this fantastic review of the Island 7.5m, published in issue 137 of Powerboat & RIB magazine and now available on the PBR website.  In the opinion of PBR technical editor, Greg Copp: “Island RIBs’ 7.5m RIB is and exciting boat to drive whose handling is as good as its looks.  Beneath its superb gelcoat finish is a structural rigidity that can take the punishment this sort of boat is likely to receive.  The attention to detail is reassuring, as is the consideration given to potential future retrospective maintenance.  Not many RIBs this size offer such a blend of practicality and performance at this price.”

The full review is available here

Safety, durability and clarity of vision are the most important considerations when it comes to a RIB windscreen. The industry standard material used for windscreen manufacture is Acrylic. Acrylic is cheap and easy to shape, but although strong it cracks easily and will shatter explosively under sufficient impact.

The alternative is polycarbonate: vastly stronger than acrylic and completely shatterproof. Racing car windscreens and bullet proof glass are manufactured from polycarbonate. In the 6mm thickness required for a RIB windscreen it becomes very difficult to heat shape into a compound curve which is needed to shed water properly from the screen. Polycarbonate windscreens are expensive largely due to the difficulties associated with shaping the material.

At Island RIBs, we are constantly striving to improve upon every aspect of the design and manufacture of our RIBs. We keep as much of our manufacturing process in house as possible in order to control the quality of our product. We were determined to use the superior polycarbonate but unable to find cost-effective means of purchasing high-quality ready-made polycarbonate windscreens. Rather than settle for acrylic we developed the tooling, built the oven and devised the process required to heat form flat sheets of 6mm polycarbonate in our workshops. Manufacturing our windscreens in house keeps costs to a minimum, meaning that our customers benefit from a superior polycarbonate windscreen without paying a premium for it.

Polycarbonate windscreens are now fitted as standard to all RIBs in our range.

We are advertising a small selection of second hand RIBs on our website. Please click here to have a look. If you would like us to advertise your RIB then please get in touch with the details.