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Creekside A
t this time of year at about 9am each morning, 60 or 70 ducks turn up outside the
office here at Creekside waiting for their breakfast and sure enough, one of the team willingly obliges. Things are pretty relaxed at the boatyard which is situated away from the hustle and bustle of the River Dart at the top end of Old Mill Creek. “It’s pretty idyllic, some may call it quaint I suppose.” John has been working at the boatyard for the past six years but hasn’t always been in the trade, starting his career in the parachute regiment. During his time in the military he learnt to skipper boats and after 10 years he moved on to work for sail- ing charities helping to encourage disadvantaged young people onto the water. “I worked for Trinity Sail- ing and got to skipper their three famous sailing trawlers: Leader, Provident and Golden Vanity. I was in charge of their winter refits and
Boatyard & Shipwrights
At the end of a serene waterway just beyond the Naval College there is a traditional working boatyard where it feels time has stood still. A small team work at Creekside throughout the year - refurbishing wooden boats of all shapes and sizes (from a nine foot tender to a 70 foot traditional trawler). There are no jazzy gadgets or computer programmes here, just strong tools, solid wood and pots of paint scattered around the workbenches. The yard has recently been taken over by three of the workers and one of them, John Cuthbertson, spoke to our reporter Steph Woolvin…
worked alongside a Dartmouth shipwright who taught me the trade.”
John works alongside fellow
shipwrights and co-owners Chris Craven, also a former military man (who spent many years as a Royal Marine Commando), and Will Gillo who previously designed engineer- ing systems for historic buildings until he decided to follow his pas- sion for historic boats! The yard is equipped to store and service large boats with open and covered boat storage for vessels up to 45ft, and cranes able to lift 10 tons, but they have to wait until the spring tides before they are able to lift the boats in and out of the water as the rest of the time it is just too shallow. But the heart of the operation here is the restoration work which is clear- ly done with love and care. They specialise in wooden yachts and have worked on some big contracts in their time, including Golden
John
Vanity from the Trinity Sailing fleet, and there’s been the odd celebrity boat passing through the yard - but the team remain professional and say they would never reveal their clients! It’s certainly not a service for the cash-strapped as some repairs come in at a few hundred but most are in their thousands with some boat owners spending up to 130 thousand pounds on a restoration project! The highly skilled team especially
enjoy working on historic vessels, some of which are nearly 100 years old, but John says it isn’t always easy: “Some repairs are quite small, others involve taking the thing to bits and almost starting again, replacing the whole ribcage of the boat, laying new flooring, replacing
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