Please come down to Portobello beach from noon on Sunday 17th April to help us launch Rowporty’s new skiff !
The newly-built wooden racing skiff will be carried from the Joppa bandstand along the prom to Bath Street, then down onto the beach for a naming ceremony in front of the Portobello Sailing and Kayaking Club. Rowporty’s new skiff will be launched into the sea at high tide (12:30), where her sister skiff ‘Icebreaker’ will be waiting for her, along with guest skiffs from nearby communities.
There will also be a presentation by the Royal West of Scotland Club, who are returning a racing trophy from the days of the original Portobello Amateur Rowing club, so that we can use it as a prize in this year’s Portobello Regatta, which will take place on Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st July.
All these five-person wooden racing skiffs were built by coastal communities as part of the Scottish Coastal Rowing Project, designed to provide affordable, lightweight skiffs that would be relatively easy for amateurs to construct and row. Fifty design kits have already been ordered from all over Scotland, and more in the USA, Australia and Europe. Seventeen skiffs have been completed by groups around Scotland so far, with the launch of another three in April alone showing the popularity and success of the SCRP. Loch Broom launches its new skiff on Saturday 16th; Portobello launches on Sunday 17th, then South Queensferry launches also on the 17th, later in the afternoon.
For everyone who chose to spend the long winter months working in an icy boatshed, this is a very exciting stage to have reached. It will be a momentous achievement when it is finally taken out into the sunshine, freshly painted and ready for the sea!
There’s a great deal of rowing ahead. These longer daylight hours mean evening training sessions are possible as well as the daytime ones, which is just as well as the first rowing regatta of the Scottish season is only five weeks away. With all the new rowers currently taking turns to learn or train in ‘Icebreaker’, Rowporty’s first skiff, completed and launched last spring, we can really use this second skiff. There are no plans to start making a third skiff in Portobello, not yet anyway…
However, the boatshed will still be actively in use for conservation and maintenance, as Rowporty has just taken possession of one of the original coastal rowing boats, which is almost a hundred years old. Donated by The Broughty Ferry Rowing Club, who are sadly closing, though the premises will be taken over by the Royal Tay Yacht Club, the beautiful old jolly boat arrived in Portobello on Wednesday. It is currently sitting in the PSKC boat yard looking long, narrow, sleek and fast. She sits very low in the water, especially compared to the St Ayles design of Icebreaker and skiff 2, so will be ideal for experienced crews or use on calm days. It will be interesting to see how she handles choppy water with that bow.
Built in Dundee, the old rowing boat conforms to the ‘Jolly boat’ category’, so named for the rowing boats that large ships used to carry to allow their crew to come ashore for their jollies! This twenty-six foot long solid wood clinker-built boat hasn’t been in the water for over twenty years, so some fixing of leaks, sealing and varnishing will be required. On Monday a second survivor from the jolly boat days, ‘Aurora’, will make the journey from Broughty Ferry to the home of its new custodians here in Portobello. If those two old boats are still seaworthy, they’ll be out on the water with the others on launch day. These jolly boats provide a direct link to Portobello’s rowing past, and the Rowporty members who take them out will get a real taste of pre-war rowing in the Forth.
Meanwhile, in the boatshed, now considerably warmer than last month, the race is on to complete the many and varied final tasks on the new skiff before high tide on launch day…
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