Monday 8 February 2010

Amoeba* boat

My parents had saved me a cutting from the Church Times, which they gave me when we visited them yesterday. It was an article on boating, with an interesting title (more on which later). Accompanying the piece is a large photo of part of the back cabin of GUCCCo Rigal.

The original Rigal, according to A. M. Models website, was a steel composite "Star Class" butty built in 1935 by Harland and Wolff at North Woolwich. According to the same website the boat was at some point, presumably when its working life came to an end, cut in two. Best here to quote from A. M. Models:

Fore end now 60ft motor with under cloth conversion. Original butty stern ( as bow) exists as approx 45' boat also called RIGAL converted to 45ft motor for sale 07  RIGAL GUCC I-Z

So now there are two boats called Rigal, both sporting the same Brentford registration number 585.





Photos of the two Rigals borrowed from here.

The caption accompanying the upper photo reads "Rigal - stern going backwards". This confounded me for a while, but it must be that the fore end of this boat, not visible in the picture, is the stern of the original Rigal.

In the lower picture Rigal is the one with the red back cabin.

*Just like an amoeba, then, the original boat has divided in two, both copies of the original. (Not according to Wikipedia! Apparently this is binary fission, which is not how amoebae reproduce. But "Prokaryotes boat" doesn't have the same ring.) (Now there's an idea for a boat name!)

2 comments:

Andy Tidy said...

It reminds me of the 'push me pull you' - was that from Winnie the Poo?
I wonder what the bows look like?

Halfie said...

Not Winnie the Pooh, Captain, but Doctor Dolittle. From Wikipedia: The pushmi-pullyu (pronounced "push-me-pull-you") is an gazelle-unicorn cross which has two heads (one of each) at opposite ends of its body. When it tries to move, both heads try to go in opposite directions. Dr. Dolittle meets it on his voyage to Africa to save monkeys.