The Boat House Porthpean Beach

A Memory of Porthpean.

The tall building at the bottom left hand side of the slipway leading down to the beach was used by a Mr Axford who had two or three wooden rowing boats that he hired out by the hour.  He would sit on a bench outside the boathouse and having paid the appropriate monies one was issued with a pair of oars and allocated a boat.  My dad bought one of Charlie's boats in the early '50's which we kept on the quay at Charlestown and used it for recreation fishing. We initially powered it with a 4hp Seagull outboard.  Then,  on one of our fishing trips we come across a large quantity of wood planks that must have washed overboard from some freighter in a storm. In that great tradition of Cornish wreckers we salvaged as many of these 15 or 16 foot long boards as we could pile onto our boat, leaving just a narrow gap to stand in as we ever so slowly made our way back to the harbour. I remember that the sea was glassy calm which was just as well as with this haul we had only a few inches of freeboard between us and being swamped. This timber was used by our family to add an additional bedroom to our house on Porthpean Road and the remainder we paid a local boatbuilder to build up the sides of our boat and add a small quarterdeck in the bows and we fitted a small Watermoto in-board engine to replace the outboard.