10:09am Saturday 20th March 2010
By Matt Clark
KEITH Wrightson has spent ten years perfecting his spiel and now he has it off to a tee. The YorkBoat skipper admits the historical details are not always accurate, but he’s not one to let that get in the way of a good story.
Keith is one of ten waterborne tour guides on the Ouse. With Easter round the corner and spring in the air, he and his fellow boatmen are about to get busy. YorkBoats sail each day, but in a couple of weeks there will be one sailing every half hour.
In his time, Keith has seen it all, from announcing a couple’s engagement over the tannoy to getting a roasting from one woman after he told the story of a ducking stool in St George’s Field which was apparently used to punish nagging wives. She obviously took it personally.
Then he has a ‘Sunday passenger’ who climbs aboard without fail at the stroke of 1.30pm. He never misses a trip and Keith’s crew bet on which seat he will take and if it’s sunny, what time he will nod off.
“I think people enjoy the trips because it’s a relaxed way of seeing another side of York without having to walk. On a summer’s day it is really fantastic, sitting out in the sun with the family as you watch York go by. Sometimes if you’re lucky you will see crested grebes, mink and kingfishers – even in the centre of the city.”
Keith and the other crew members haven’t been idling away the winter. Maintenance manager Chris Agar is responsible for getting the boats shipshape in time for their Maritime and Coastguard Agency surveys – the nautical equivalent of an MOT – and the boats have to meet the same standards as any other vessel.
“They check to see there’s no corrosion or seepage of water and check that the seams aren’t cracked,” says Chris.
“We do all the work here. I’m the only one full time, but the boss helps when he can and some of the skippers come across to maintenance in the winter. It’s a very different sort of job. One day you can be refitting windows, the next changing a gearbox or unblocking a toilet.
“Here you’ve got to be a jack of all trades really, there’s no point just getting someone who knows engines and can’t do woodwork or electrics. We take a pride in the boats and each year we paint all the exteriors. It’s been tricky this year with the freezing weather, but now they are getting spruced up.”
The maritime life is in Chris’s blood, he even lives on a barge. “The river is tranquil even in the centre of York,” he says. “And the banks are constantly changing all through the seasons. I don’t think people make enough use of the Ouse.”
The larger boats run at a different height to the small ones and during floods that can be the difference between sailing and being stuck at the mooring.
“People often ask why they can’t sail so we tell them the boat wouldn’t get under the bridges,” says Chris. “And you’d be amazed how many people want to go out in the flood, probably because it’s something different.
“If we’re running a children’s trip we obviously don’t want to let them down, so if the mooring is flooded we put down something we made called the yellow brick road and that lets them get on board.”
It takes two months to train a skipper and at the height of the season YorkBoat has ten, many of them university students who return every summer.
Les Middleton is acting as crew today, but he will be back in the wheelhouse next month when YorkBoats are back at full steam. He casts off and jumps aboard as Keith steers River Prince under Lendal Bridge and heads off towards Clifton.
As Ratty said to Mole, “There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” And on a glorious day like this what could be finer. Overhead the traffic is queuing on the bridge and it’s a fair bet that the ring road traffic is snarling all the way to Bootham. But on the river, your only worry is whether there are enough frames left on the camera to photograph the stunning views that creep up on you time and again.
Luckily you won’t miss a picture opportunity because Keith gives plenty of warning. The Minster begins to appear off the starboard side but is tantalisingly obscured by trees. There is one perfect view and to see it you have to listen carefully to the skipper; blink and you’ll miss it.
Back at the workshop, the men are busy with running repairs. Up jumps Popeye the ship’s cat who nestles on the workbench, as he always does, and supervises the engineers.
And he likes a cruise too; last week they found him curled up in the wheelhouse. “We’ve always had cats here,” says Chris. “Popeye’s mate is Olive, but we don’t see much of her. I think they must be the best-fed cats in York because when our boats return from a dining cruise they get all the left over salmon and prawns.”
On cue Popeye licks his lips and purrs as if to say “now that’s why there’s nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats”.
• YorkBoat operates a number of routes during the summer including the self drive Red Boats. yorkboat.co.uk
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