Boats

My interest in boats and yachting stemmed from friendship with Bob Hewitt.  Bob was the Youth Officer in the Castleford and was a keen sailor who looked after all the youth club boats at West Cowick.  He persuaded me to get qualified and help him instruct, which I duly did.  Bob always dreamed of building his own boat and sailing it to Australia so one day after a long chat asked me to help him.  I had a lot of practical  skills but knew nothing about boat building.

This was in 1975 and at the end of a steel strike and other strikes, so building a boat from scratch had its limitations.  I wanted to build it in steel, but this was both expensive and also difficult at that time to get the steel.  Bob had read about building a boat from Ferro Cement(concrete to the un initiated), so we researched it and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I had saved up some cash to start building my own house with but this got diverted into a boat build.  Bob assured me that it would only take two years at most, so I took him at his word and it sounded like an interesting project.  Perhaps I should have researched it a bit further, because this is what happened:

Starting the boat and the mini disaster when both boats got blown over in the severe gales of Jan 1976 click here Zaraeda construction

The boat whilst in Bunessan and and Tobermory.  Also sailing to Oban for the winter click here