Monday 17 June 2013

Good Wood at Beale Park

Conventional wisdom dictates that you should never buy and ex-demonstrator vehicle. The clutch will be shot, it will have been driven by hundreds of incompetent drivers over short distances and will be a nightmare.
But this ex-demo can only have taken up and be better than a new traditionally-built clinker boat, which can be expected to leak copiously when first put into the water. And the 13 grand price tag is very reasonable for a craftsman-built boat in perfect decorative condition, as far as I could see.
The boat is a copy of a Lakes skiff, built by Good Wood Boat Company in Cockermouth. The owner, reformed nuclear engineer Steve Beresford, was commissioned to make a copy of a hire boat owned by Keswick Launch on Derwentwater and provide proper plans so they could replace time-expired boats in their fleet as the need arose. The craftsmen who used to be able to do it by eye are long gone, it seems.
The outriggers are interesting - an unusual but attractive semi-circular shape with a pin for the traditional-style oar with a hole.
I didn't get a chance to row her, unfortunately, but one suspects that the oars are too short and the handles too far apart.
But that must be expected for a hire boat.

3 comments:

Alberto A. Villa said...

[Chris Said] "...I didn't get a chance to row her, unfortunately, but one suspects that the oars are too short and the handles too far apart. But that must be expected for a hire boat..."

[aav] Ups!, why? Would you be so kind as to explain?

Chris Partridge said...

Hire boats are rowed mostly by people who have never rowed in their lives before, so you will need to teach them how to use handles that cross.

Alberto A. Villa said...

Should have known! Thanks.