Chentleman's Launch

[oldgaffer1]

For the past 20 years or so my 12 foot inboard clinker boat has been taking me to and from my mooring until being put into semi-retirement this year due to pillocks not using fenders when moored next door on the dinghy pontoon. She was found mouldering and abandoned up a creek on the river Dart. I rebuilt her from the waist up and have been in love with her from the first day I saw the sturdy old girl.
A long way from her birth-place, her Stuart-Turner dates from 1967 and she has a builders plate that says 'Walterson, Boatbuilder, Scalloway'. Does anyone on the forum have any information about the builder?

Thanks, Alister.

[Rowana]

Scalloway is a fair bit from the south coast, right enough.

I have no direct information on your boatbuilder, but you could try the Shetland Times newspaper here -
http://www.shetlandtoday.co.uk/shetlandtimes/index.asp

Or the Shetland heritage Association here-

http://www.shetland.gov.uk/communitydir ... roupID=243

HTH

Cheers
Jim

[oldgaffer1]

Thanks, Jim. I'll give those a whirl. The Old Girl has been with me so long that I'll never get rid of her. I'm going to give her one last major restoration and will take her up to Arran when I (hopefully) retire. Then my son can have her or perhaps one distant day they'll soak me, her and the Stuart-Turner in fresh two-stroke and push us off from the shore for a viking funeral!

[sahona]

Plenty of Viking tradition at Holy Isle / Kingscross, so you should blend in nicely, just remember to leave instructions to alert CG and the monks.

[oldgaffer1]

You must be a mind reader Bill! Here's me practising blending in between Holy Isle and Kingscross in the inflatable longboat:



and here is me demonstrating how not to get out of the inflatable longboat at Kings Cross point:



It was February 05 and the water was feking freezing. Luckily, SWMBO, was too convulsed with laughter to get the next shot of me floundering around like a beached whale....

Cheers, Alister (Olaf Totalprattsonn).

_________________

[Silkie]

So disappointing that we don't have the next in the sequence.

[oldgaffer1]

So disappointing that we don't have the next in the sequence.

Oh, I don't know, depends on your point of view really.....
(Anywho, several of the more delicate Forumites might be forced to swoon had the awful scene ever have been captured and published!)

[sahona]

If an old gaffer ever happens to dip his lug deeper into the frozen waters of Kingscross (up a bit, below the house) he may well come across a gold earring and watch kindly donated by SWMBO, who must have seen two boarding ladders and stepped between them one dark night long ago.

[jim.r]

Couple of pickled eggs, pork pie and pint of guiness is a proper chentleman's lunch