Kevin Luter and Kathryn Harrison

Kevin: I have been involved in working with powerboats for the last ten years, I am a qualified RYA Powerboat Instructor and Padi Advanced Open Water Diver. I am currently teaching for the Royal Navy in Portsmouth.

At present I am learning to sail, having not had a lot of experience in sailing boats, so I know what a steep learning curve the Young Adults are on!

I will not be sailing any of the legs. However, I will be working in the background running the logistical support from Alan's factory and providing the shore based link to the boat and crew throughout the whole journey. Helping the Young Adults monitor the trip and offer any help and advice as required to those who are at sea and home. In addition I am organising a flotilla of small boats to see Alan off from Portsmouth.

I first met Alan prior to his Round the World Trip on Spirit, and we became firm friends, for my part in that trip was to organise the home comming with over 100 boats on the water to meet and great the team off the needles and provide an escort back into Portsmouth. In addition to have the Portsmouth Field Gun Crew Pull Spirit through the streets of Portsmouth upon her safe return.

I was one of the crew on board Spirit when she went down whilst attempting to cross the Atlantic to New Foundland; an experience I do not wish to repeat!!!

I live in Portchester with Kathryn and my new family of Danielle (16) Harrison (14) & Rosina (13).

Kathryn: I became involved with the Lively Lady Project because we'd got to know Alan well since his homecoming on Spirit, which my partner Kevin was involved with.  I began to attend the meetings with Kevin and decided that I wanted to help, which is when the fundraising meetings began to take off.

I would like to share some of my memories from fundraising events:
Christmas Fayre; stalls of all kinds, teddy tombola with a 4ft grizzly bear up for grabs, tree with lights flashing, and Alan dressed as Santa! Now that was sight to see, with Donna as his little helper; great sports.
Sponsored swim; watching everyone competing against each other for the trophy for the most lengths swam but also cheering each other on at the same time, that was when you could see the teamwork which was so important for this project to succeed, but mostly I have never seen anyone sweat, whilst swimming, that showed the determination of the young adults.
Dog nights; these have been a great success, with our supporters, crew, family and friends all together having a good time and raising money.
Quiz nights; great quiz master, superb questions that got us all thinking, and I think I will blame it on the fact that they were in a pub, as to why my team the ‘threesome’ scored the least points.
Raffle prizes; always an ongoing theme, if we had an event we had a raffle, you get to see the young adults develop when you hear of the cheek they give to companies and restaurants for donations of prizes.

It hasn’t always gone smoothly. Halloween party where no-one turned up due to lack of advertising, events we have pulled out of due to lack of support, but these have given the team, incentive, and drive, and they learnt from them and moved forward. 

The first time I met Lively Lady was so special. I was working with emotionally vulnerable teenagers, some until attending our unit hadn’t been out of their houses for 18 months. I said to Alan if I can get them there will you tell them about Lively Lady? ‘yep’ was all I got. So I took my cue, and went for it. What you need to remember is at 15 they had never experienced any of this before; we took them on the Gosport ferry, the first time on a boat, met with Alan who took them on Lively Lady and went through the history - I can’t describe the look in their eyes, the questions, the enthusiasm that they showed.