Rolling on the river

'We got rocked to sleep last night," says David Stothard,peacefully. "We've got a double bed made up in the cabin and you can lie on it and look up at the stars. It's fantastic."

We're on the Stothard's 31ft cabin cruiser, moored alongside hundreds of other gleaming white boats in Naburn Marina. It's a muggy morning, perfectly quiet. The reeds, which grow thick on the banks of the marina and line the wooden pontoons leading to the boats, rustle gently in the breeze. Beyond the spit of land separating the marina from the River Ouse the gleaming tops of boats can be seen occasionally, moving serenely past.

The Basille II, the Stothard's boat, is David and his wife Shelley's way of relaxing at weekends and on holidays. A previous owner took the boat across to France, though the furthest the Stothard's have been is Ripon.

But that is not really the point of the boat.

David is a civil engineer from Leeds. "It's a very stressful job and we can come here to totally relax and unwind," he says. That means pottering about on the boat, reading, cruising gently up the river when they feel like it - and watching the birdlife. The marina was dug out of ings land almost 30 years ago and there is still a rich variety of water birds to be seen.

"We saw two kingfishers this morning flitting across the water," says David. "And quite often we can come down and watch the herons fishing. We came down one night and there was a heron sitting on the pontoon. He sat there for half an hour then darted his head down and came out with a fish..." he gestures with his hands "about this long."

One of their most memorable experiences was watching the Hale-Bopp comet in 1997. "We got up at 3am," says David. "It was really cold - it must have been March or April - but it was perfectly clear and we got a lovely view of it.

"It is wonderful here on a clear night. It is so dark. I'm a bit of an amateur astronomer and I always bring my binoculars."

We British, being a seafaring nation, have always loved messing about on boats, even when - as some of the larger cruisers at the marina are - they're little more than floating status symbols. The Stothard's boat is comparatively modest. Some of the 40ft cruisers moored at Naburn are worth £250,000 can do up to 30 knots and have probably never been further than York.

For Charles Pool, owner of the marina and of Yacht Services Ltd, the marina's parent company and boatyard, boats are more than just a rich man's plaything; they're a way of life.

A small, quiet man bursting with suppressed energy, Mr Pool has the weatherbeaten face of the true seaman. It may be a legacy of his ten years with the deep-sea trawler fleet that operated out of Hull after the war.

Now 77, Mr Pool joined the Royal Navy at 17 and served the last few years of the war as radio operator on submarines in the Mediterranean and Far East.

With the war over, he used his radio operator's ticket to clinch a job as operator on a trawler.

"I would think it is probably the toughest job in the world," he says quietly: and there is something about the way he says it which shows he means it.

His boat fished off the Norwegian coast, Greenland and Iceland with the rest of the Hull fleet - harsh, unforgiving waters at the best of times.

"We had some terrific casualties," he recalls. "We lost some boats icing up. We lost a couple together one time, I remember." He pauses a moment, as if to reflect. "Trawlers," he says. "Only the young lads went into it. Nobody ever came into it once they were more mature."

His job as a radio operator paid well, though. After ten years, he left, and joined the Naburn boatyard as a director. At that time, it was just that: a small boatyard, with about three acres of land attached.

During the war, it had been an army bridging school - and the Nissen huts and Army buildings are still there today, pressed into use as offices and workshops.

In 1967, by which time it had become clear the Ouse was an increasingly popular part of the inland waterways network, the Naburn Marina company was formed.

Ings - riverside wetlands - just to the north of the boatyard were bought, and in 1972 the first section of the marina was built when the ings were dug out. The spoil was used to build up the bank separating the marina from the river, and to create a level parking and 'dry-dock' area where boats can be stored during winter.

In 1975 the second stage of the marina was dug out, giving the large enclosed 'harbour' that is the marina today.

At any one time there are as many as 300 boats here, some in dry storage, others moored alongside the bobbing wooden pontoons that stretch across the surface of the water.

From here, says Mr Pool, a determined boat owner can go 35 miles upstream to Ripon, or downstream to the Calder, Trent and Humber systems that give access to the midlands, the coast and the Norfolk Broads.

Many of the larger boats are perfectly capable of crossing the English Channel, and even going as far as the Mediterranean - though rather than sailing round Gibraltar most people going that far would have their boats transported by road.

"But big boats can get down through the canal system to the Mediterranean," Mr Pool points out. "France has a beautiful canal system."

Mr Pool admits he's now too busy to own a boat.

His company employs 15 people - workmen repairing boats or preparing them for overwintering, salesmen buying and selling new and second-hand craft plus staff in the Chandler's shop where the boat-owner can buy virtually everything they need.

It may not be the biggest company in the world. The commuters crowding in to work along the busy A19 every day probably don't even know it's there. But the Naburn Marina and boatyard is helping to ensure the River Ouse remains - now, as throughout its history - a living waterway.

PICTURE: Charles Pool, managing director of Naburn Marina

Picture: Mike Tipping