Posted by Peter_Truelove on June 18, 2010 at 03:54:19 user jacpet.
In Reply to: Re: Windermere Steamboat Museum Tours! posted by claire on June 16, 2010 at 14:28:48:
I worked part time at the Steamboat Museum for the ten years prior to closure. I trained the steamboat skippers in boat handling and operating the steam machinery. During that time I was chairman of the TARS Amazon Trustees and subsequently a member of the Coch-y-Bonddhu Trustees (I still am). Over the years that I spent at the museum I had the task of launching, sailing and retrieving Cochy for her various press and media appearances. The third dinghy was a small lugsail sailing dinghy probably no longer than ten feet. She was displayed as the 'Hardman' Dinghy. She was beautifully built of double diagonal veneer planking with a canvas skin between the plank layers. She was credited with being built around 1917 but in about 2000 a very ancient gentleman visiting the museum recognized her and introduced himself as Mr Hardman, stating that he had built her in 1927 as a teenager!! He had no idea she still existed, and remembered being beaten by his father for wasting money buying the materials for her construction. She was probably donated to the museum.