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It was
an idyllic lifestyle and when there was insufficient repair
work Terry supplemented his winter income with oyster dredging.
Due to the noise of sawing, riveting and banging the neighbours
complained and the local authorities stopped Terry working
from home.
Henry
Trefussis, a local landowner and longstanding customer who
on hearing of Terry's misfortune, offered him new premises
at Tregatreath, a few hundred yards upstream. The offer was
accepted and the Heard family moved into a 400 year old cottage
with two sheds nearby.
The Yard
has expanded over the years and today is one of the largest
winter lay-up sites in the near locality, with a slipway,
a large, solid quay and all necessary facilitiies for traditional
large and small boats.
Terry
found that the work was very varied - repairing local boats,
building oyster dredgers, crabbers and bass boats for local
fishermen and the design and construction of both pleasure
and working boats. To his own design he built the Crystal
Spring and the Murre, both 22' in length and used for oyster
dredging.
In 1967
Terry commissioned the late Percy Dalton, to design a 28 Footer
suitable for oyster dredging. She was launched the following
year and called the Sain Meloris. For 2 years she worked the
oyster beds before being sold to John Jackson who sailed her
to the West Indies. Before leaving she was decked over and
Terry, aware that wooden boats were becoming too expensive
for most people to build and maintain, took a mould from her
iroko-planked hull.
Two GRP
boats were produced, the Meloris, (now renamed the Rita) and
the Three Sisters. Soon many more orders followed from local
dredgermen who could see the economic sense of owning cheaply
produced, maintenance free but fine looking boats.
The arrival
of the GRP boat coincided with the seventies peak in the oyster
dredging trade and Terry wanted a smaller craft that could
be sailed and worked singlehanded. He spoke to Percy Dalton
and learned that a part-complete plus built to Percy's 22'
design was up for sale. Terry bought the plug and taken to
Tregatreath. Terry decided that she was too plumb both fore
and aft so he lengthened her by a foot to allow for more rake
in the transom.
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