Victorian Outriggers

This is a neat rigger design that I noticed on a skiff made by Salters of Oxford in 1887, now under the hammer at the Turks aution.
The fore and aft stays are hinged so the rigger can be swung inboard for ease of storage and transport. The middle stay is simply bolted in position when the rigger is extended.

Bidding is getting serious ahead of the end of the sale tomorrow. This skiff, lot 10, has reached £250, and all the other pretty boats are attracting competition. The star of the show, Dame Nelly Melba's pleasure boat Verity, stands at £27,000 and the iron-hulled steam launch Cygnet at £12,000.
Buyers are competing for boats with a ready market on the super-rich Thames, and to my surprise both Viking longboats and the repro-medieval Peterboat were snapped up right at the start. Apparently re-enactment groups were fighting each other for them.

The oddities are, by and large, sticking. My favourite, the Hallstatterseeboot, languishes at £10, and no, I won't be buying it either because I cannot think what I would do with it. But someone has offered to pay £110 for this Crocodile Canoe. Mad.

The Hallstattersee Platten (or Zillen) at the Turks Auction

When I met Michael Turk in Chatham on Saturday, he told me that he bought the Hallstattersee Platten (or Zillen) and the various Danube lake boats on a trip to Austria. It was cut in half to bring it back, and subsequently shortened as the original was too long to be practical on the Thames. It is still 25ft long, however.
It comes with two oars, which are interesting. The shaft is bent, with a T-piece at the top so the rower can feel which way the blade is pointing and turn it easily. The blade is attached at an angle so it enters the water vertically while keeping the shaft conveniently in front of the rower.
I think it would make an ideal canal cruising boat. The rower or rowers (up to four in this boat) face forward so they can see where they are going on narrow, windy cuts and the oars don't stick out the side impeding oncoming narrowboats. And the wide flat bottom is ideal for camping.