Keeping your kids safe afloat... and making it fun!
by Mark Jardine 28 Jul 2016 13:43 BST
26 July 2016
We spoke to Marketing Manager Hannah Burywood and Design Manager Nigel Parkes about the new range of Crewsaver children's lifejackets, the Euro 100 and the Supersafe 150. Hannah has taken the innovative approach of writing a children's book about safety at sea using cartoon characters which are utilised in the lifejacket designs.
Mark: Hannah, you've written a book together with the Crewsaver team to highlight the issues of safety. Can you tell me a bit about that?
Hannah: Yes, it has three characters; we've got Oliver the sailing boat, Rory the speedboat and Harbour Master John. The aim of the storybook is to encourage children to wear their lifejacket. I won't tell you too much detail because I don't want to give away any spoilers, but Rory the speedboat gets into a little bit of trouble and Oliver the sailing boat learns from Rory's mistakes and wears his life jacket for ever more.
The real aim is to help parents encourage their children to wear their lifejackets and understand why they need to wear them in a fun interactive way. We were getting a lot of feedback from parents that they were simply struggling to get children into lifejackets, with them not wanting to wear them, which during your leisure activity can be incredibly frustrating.
Obviously we wanted to eliminate this as much possible whilst ensuring children stay safe so we tried to make it fun and interactive. Hopefully the story book goes someway to achieving this.
Mark: With the infant life jacket, you've now introduced these characters into the print on the life jackets themselves.
Hannah: Absolutely. If you're buying a baby or child-size lifejacket, the characters that feature in the storybook will also feature on the lifejacket the child is wearing and so hopefully if they've enjoyed the storybook they'll be encouraged to wear the lifejacket with the characters on.
Mark: I noticed with the lifejackets you've gone for 100 Newton and 150 Newton versions. What is the thinking behind that?
Hannah: Yes, with the 100 Newton option we have a great inshore lifejacket, a really nice lifejacket for playing around on the pontoons or inshore yacht and dinghy sailing. With the 150 Newton version, which also comes with a harness loop, that's really ideal for those going a bit more offshore, wanting that extra 50 Newtons worth of buoyancy to stay a bit safer when they do fall in and also the harness loop so you can attach them to the boat. Of course inshore sailors who want the extra safety features can go for this option too.
Mark: Talking of the safety features, what have you integrated into these lifejackets to increase children's safety?
Hannah: The 150 Newton version has extra foam which will help the wearer if they do fall in, as it will help them spin faster, especially if they're wearing quite a lot of clothes. It also holds children up nice and high on the water, keeping their mouth away from the surface. In addition, the Supersafe version has got a lifting becket, so if they do fall in it is quick and easy to grab them and pull them out of the water. They all come with dual crotch straps as standard - that's essential for them to be using. As well as a whistle, so that they can attract attention, and lots of reflective tape aiding visibility at night and, as mentioned, the Supersafe 150 comes with the harness loop as well.
Mark: So you're really going for an ergonomic product for children but also something that they're going to want to wear.
Hannah: Hopefully they'll want to wear it because of the story and the characters; they will now understand the importance of staying safe more so than they did before. They're also constructed from super soft foam so they should be really quite nice and comfortable. To summarise they should be comfortable to wear, fun and interactive, whilst keeping the child safe.
Nigel went into more details about the design
Mark: What has gone into these lifejackets to make them more comfortable for children?
Nigel: Primarily it's all about the performance. Testing with children is extremely difficult, as you can imagine - they're a bit like animals, they never do what you want them to do! What we use are body mannequins which were developed by the European Community with funding a few years ago. We use these to try and get the performance consistent every time. It has to do with the weight of the child's head and how much support is offered around the shoulders and around the back of the head. So you'll find that these jackets have quite an amount of buoyancy behind the head in order to lift the head up away from the child's body and keep the freeboard nice and high.
It still has quite a bit of support around the top of the shoulders as well. The idea behind this is that, if the weight of the head starts to loll, it usually twists the lifejacket out to balance and drops the freeboard. All these jackets feature a fairly large amount of foam and buoyancy around the back of the head and around the side of the shoulders, that really is there ultimately for performance, because children are a lot smaller than we are and therefore their mouth is naturally a lot closer to the surface of the water so we want to increase the freeboard as much as possible.
Mark: One of the key things with children's lifejackets is what lifejacket they should be wearing at what age, at what size, and how confident they are in the water. Could you tell me a bit about how parents should go about sizing the lifejacket for their child?
Nigel: It's something that's close to my heart, having gone through the same thing with my children. Unfortunately, you have to bite the bullet and get one that's the right size. Getting one to grow into is not a good idea at all because it just won't work. The reassurance is that it's going to work for your children in the particular environment that you are in, so sizing is absolutely critical. All products are clearly marked up with their sizing and they're fitted in a very similar way to clothing items, so just as you would in M&S, go and see what the size it says on the label, you do the same thing with the lifejackets. We actually offer our children's lifejackets in four sizes with adjustment to help to ensure correct, bespoke fit.
Mark: As children grow up, at what point would you switch from a foam lifejacket to an inflatable lifejacket?
Nigel: As we've said before, all products are marked with the size, but ultimately with a weight range as well. Confidence in the water is paramount because an inflatable lifejacket could be quite a shock when it inflates. Obviously, the more confident the child is in the water, the more likely you're probably going to do more serious sailing and you're likely to be wearing more clothing. An inflatable lifejacket will provide a lot more turning performance and work better with clothing that traps air. It all depends on the age of the child, the size of the child and how confident they are in the water - these should be your guidelines in the first case.
We like to think we've tailored all the different products to meet all the different characteristics, so if there are poor swimmers that are going offshore then we provide a 150 inherent Newton product, but we also provide a 150 Newton inflatable product for those that are more confident and not going to receive quite a shock in the water, but ultimately go down to a junior size. So our inflatables go down to 20 to 50 kilos and we have inherent ones for those non-swimmers to cover that range as well.
Mark: So you are providing crossover products, depending on the experience of that child?
Nigel: Absolutely, yes.
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