ATLANTIC COLLEGE “P” CLASS BOATS
The history of Atlantic College boat building and development of rigid inflatable boats has formed the backbone of the college seafront and has won worldwide recognition and respect for all the students and staff that have endeavoured to advance safety on the sea.
The original idea of a rigid hull with a soft flexible tube is now accepted as the norm in all types of commercial and pleasure boating applications.
The development is well charted and recorded from the original inflatables through the “x” boat experimentation and on to the “s” class, the seafront work boat up until the end of the ninety’s .
At this time two events cast a shadow over the seafront, firstly most of the established seafront staff retired taking with them their years of knowledge and experience with them.
Secondly the internal timber frames of the then quite old “s” class boats started to become waterlogged thus causing the boats to leak badly and start to split at the seams, the boats were no longer seaworthy.
The then Seafront Safety adviser Mr Paul Dowling, Decided the most cost effective and easiest way to address the situation would be to prepare the best of the “s” class boats {“s” three} to be a plug for a fiberglass mould.
The mould was completed over the summer of 1999.
The first fiberglass constructed “P” class was built by the students and staff over the next two years, this boat was also in the tradition of AC was slightly innovative no wooden longitudinal beams were used in its construction, the wooden beams were substituted with close cell foam glassed in a an I section as in surf board manufacture, only the transom was wood.
In the later “P” class boats no wood was used in construction, foam was incorporated in the transom of the final “P” class, “P“ Four.
