YELLOW SUBMARINE GLAMPING

"You can buy 30 pencils for a Pound in Poundland. But don't." Having previously converted two American School Buses into stunning glamping accommodation, we had a blank canvas - an empty lifeboat - to create something new. It was time to plan stuff... We sharpened our pencils, threw them away, bought some proper pencils, and started designing our vision - A Yellow Submarine! We actually came up with this initial design by colouring in a picture on our phone one evening in the pub - where all creative space dreams start. Probably. Needs; A big bed. Two smaller beds. A mini-kitchen area. Seats. Lights. Water. Fun stuff. That's it. We chose blue for the interior, because blue was perfect. We set to work going with the perfect blue. Because blue is great. Marine-grade blue, because, why not? Yup - it's going to look great in blue. We planned the layout to maximise space, found dials and gauges and fixed them in, and had plans for other fun ideas, interior lighting, etc. Just as we nearly finished making the interior perfectly blue, we found some special metal paint online. Which wasn't blue. Because we loved the perfect blue so much and had nearly finished all the blue work, we chose the special metal paint. Now this was perfect! We could now see the vision of a metal interior of a proper submarine. Bye bye blue. Next - It's all metal...

In 2019 a large Tanker Ship was attacked by Somali Pirates off the East African coast. The kidnapping was unsuccessful and a Lifeboat was taken and used by the fleeing Pirates to escape. The Lifeboat was discovered three years later drifting between the UK and northern Spain - a distance of over 6000 miles via who knows where or by what route. We're guessing a rather bendy route. It ended up in our yard in Surrey, and we won't be taking any questions on this matter... What to do with a Lifeboat? Especially one full of oil, diesel, seawater and a level and type of grime only normally found in an MPs expense claim form. Firstly, having decided it wouldn't sail ever again, we drilled a hole in the bottom. Somewhere in Surrey, nettles grow, having once been watered with stale seawater from the Indian Ocean. Nobody has ever written that. What did we do with the Lifeboat? We ordered a skip, initially. We then ordered gloves, overalls and with a flask of tea set to work. The stripping out was horrible. We filled the skip with 20 fibreglass seats in pieces, safety equipment cupboards, smelly foam, lumps of metal and all the detrius, flotsam and jetsum of an old boat that had sailed unmanned from Africa to the UK. Cue the joy of having friends with an industrial steam jet-washer. We now had an empty lifeboat, with just a slight residual smell of marine engines and fibreglass coupled with the stale breath of a sea monster from the Indian Ocean. So what next? Tools; Flask of tea (we are British, after all), tape measure, notepad, pencil, and the imagination of an 8 year old boy... Next; Design & Build, and Design & Build again...