Presentation by Joost Meulenbroek at Alice Springs 2007 - Part 6

After the death of the gentleman, the boat had changed hands several times, until Barry had bought it about 2 years ago. Then Barry said that the boat had a bit of a history, because it had been built in 1939 for the writer Nevil Shute. Barry himself had read only one book by Nevil Shute, but in his opinion a boat with this kind of history must be preserved for the future. So he wants to restore her to her former glory and make her sail again. He had started work already, and one of the first things that he had done was rebuilt her engine-bed. Further he had rebuilt the gearbox as this was damaged by too much movement of the propellor-shaft, a problem that was also fixed. He had done all the work from the inside, as taking her out of the water is too expensive. Barry told us, that he was born in 1955 and that he had been with the fire-brigade in London until about 10 years ago, Then he was retired on medical grounds. He told us that he had been living on boats since then, as he has given up women after a couple of unhappy love-affairs.

So he hasn't got a lot of money, but we were more and more convinced that his feelings and plans for Runagate are sincere. Barry told us that he had had other people on board already, who were also interested in Runagate. He presented us with a folder with all kind of information, that he had collected about Runagate. In it were several printouts of the web-site of our foundation. He showed us a letter and photo's which he had received from a previous owner, who had sailed Runagate to Portugal. On the photo's she could be seen in Portugal. He told us that he was trying to get as much information about Runagate as possible, but that there were several gaps. We didn't tell him, that we would be able to fill several of those gaps. Further he told us that he paid £14.000 for Runagate. (about $29,500 US, or $36,300 Aus). He was told afterwards that this was maybe a bit too much, but he feels that a boat with this kind of history is worth that kind of money. After about an hour of talking to Barry, looking at his pictures and taking lots of photographs, we left him and invited him to join us in the pub. He said that he would follow shortly. Mike, John and I went to the pub, talking about what we had found out. All three of us were convinced that Barry has his heart in the right place, but we think, that if we would come back in 2 years time, we might find Runagate in much the same state as she is in today. We decided that it would be a good thing to stay in contact with Barry, to follow developments on Runagate. This way we hope that we will see if things are going the wrong way.

After about 10 minutes Barry arrived at the pub. We offered him a drink, and he ordered some kind of lemonade. He told us that he hadn't had a drink in 2 weeks. We continued our talks about Runagate and Barry told us that he didn't know what her draught was, as he had never seen her out of the water. We then decided that we should show him. I had the booklet that I made for the Cape Cod gathering in the car and I went out to get it. On return I gave it to Barry and he started browsing through it right away