Buccaneer

 This is my dive boat  Buccaneer. She is a 24ft Tamar, built in 1980, with a 55 horse power Thornycroft engine. It is an old engine but it just keeps on going.  She was bought by a local guy here who brought her to Scilly from Buchan, Scotland, in about 2003.  With a huge steel frame below her flush deck that supported a big steel towing post, she was used to tow stricken yachts into harbour. She was  in need of a lot of work which the guy who brought her to Scilly was planning to do. I saw him looking at the engine while the boat was on the beach one day and said to him then that I thought it was a perfect boat for me. With a flush deck it gave her a low free board- so was perfect for diving off.  I remember saying that if he ever wanted to sell I her would be interested in buying it. I must have planted a seed because he came to me about 12 months later.  He thought he had taken on too much work. As luck would have it another diver (Ed Cumming) had moved to Scilly at the time and we bought the boat together on a 50/50 basis.  We put it in a big shed and for the following 6 months we stripped her right down to just hull and engine. I found salvage forms in the cabin- these were used by the salvage man in Scotland to make the yachtsmen in trouble sign their lives away in order for their vessels to be rescued.  We built her back up again-even lifting the roof by 8 inches, so I could get into the wheel house without hitting my head!  (Im 6ft 4" tall)  All the work was justified as when I finally got to use it I found out just what a great dive boat she was.  A few years later Ed moved back to the mainland and sold his share of the boat to me. This is the boat  I search for wrecks in and do all my diving from still.  You can just see the dive ladder sticking up on its port side. Done an awful lot of magging and sonar work in her too. Blood good sturdily built boat. The engines old but still solid in compression.  So I have had her ever since. She looks a bit tired again these days but still ticks along. I cannot count the amount of dives I have done from her. She is like an old friend. You can see in this image the name on the roof is placed in between two pairs of crossed hammers- a reference to my favourite football team. West Ham United. You can take the boy out of East London but you cant take East London out of the boy. I have often thought to rename the boat "The Cockney Buccaneer"