Our Story.
Buying a 72ft 1943 WW2 boat was never planned, Simon loves restoring small boats as a hobby, so one Sunday night in January 2021, Simon is looking at boats for sale on eBay, and stumbled across Sarinda, a D-Day survivor, she was looking worse for wear. Simon shouted over to Gemma to have a look at what he found, expecting Gemma to tell him to stop being stupid.
Gemma looked at the advert and something struck a cord, how can a boat that survived D-Day be left so unloved.
The next day the boat was still on the our minds, so we arranged to go and visit the boat, and within an hour we were onboard. The scale of the boat and the work needed was evident, but we left with a fire in our hearts to save this piece of history.
On this first visit to the boat, we took along a GoPro and filmed the visit, and after returning home and discussing the boat in more detail we decided to step up and purchase Sarinda with the high hopes of saving her. After the purchase was made, a video was put onto YouTube, just as a way of showing our family what we were up to, as everyone was still in Covid 19 lockdowns and no family could travel to visit.
This is when things took a Turn, expecting a handful of views from family and friends, the viewing figures and subscribers on our YouTube channel grew in numbers that shocked us all.
Now 11 months into the project the Ship Happens YouTube channel has over 44,000 subscribers and over 3 million views.
Our family, including children, Mason (13) and Emilia (10) got stuck into work, dealing with very difficult working conditions, just getting to the boat is a chore, battling the weather and the mud on the Dee Estuary. Trying our best to carry out as much work as possible, while still working full time in our Camper Conversion business, Creation Campers, and raising 2 children, the size of the project hasn't gone overlooked and we know it will take years of hard work and dedication.
With rising attention from their videos, this opened us up to a lot of online abuse, which has been difficult to deal with at times, and has impacted on our mental health, but on the flip side it has also shown us how much good there is in the world, with offers of support and kindness from strangers. A lot of viewers of our Ship Happens channel have reached out to us and told of how our videos have had a positive impact on their mental health and inspired them to do more, which is something we never expected. And since this journey has begun we are now Patrons of a mental health charity called Just Me Mental Health.
We never intended to ever have a boat or restoration project of this size, and therefore they don't have the finances to carry out all of this project currently, so we are working and saving as much as possible, and we have even sold off a few assets to help with the restoration costs. Simon’s much loved Motorbike that he raced with Wirral 100 was sold, and that has now put an end to his racing career so he can concentrate all his efforts into saving the boat.
But we want to show people that anything can be achieved without massive amounts of money, and that anything is possible with the right attitude and motivation.
A great amount of work has already been carried out, including fitting a new off grid power system, including solar and wind power to giving us all the power we will require for the restoration works, we have made the boat water tight to protect her from any further fresh water damage and structural work to the hull is ongoing. Our progress can be followed on our weekly YouTube episodes.
There is not a long term plan for the boat, other than getting her fully restored and we would love to honor the boats Coastal Forces past by carrying out the D-Day crossing on the anniversary, with veterans and their families. The aim is to have her ready for the 85th Anniversary.