Partner: Pioneer Sailing Trust

Pioneer Sailing Trust has already built a boat yard fitted with special training equipment and recruited shipwrights who are trained to supervise and instruct young apprentices. The apprentices were recruited locally and through the Princes Trust “Get Into Maritime” programme.

There are two trainers, a skills development manager and a joinery teacher. On a daily basis, they supervise and teach the apprentices. Apprentices experience a variety of different projects in the yard including both work on refurbishments of historical boats and new builds. The apprentices are currently working on the “gig” project which will teach them the skills needed for a high quality new build based on a traditional design. From start to finish, they are involved: looking at the design, building the frame and painting their masterpiece! Once finished, the gig project will be an important part of interacting with the local community. Currently, we are working with the local Sports Centre, Sailing Club and University to promote coastal rowing in our local area.

There are also smaller projects on the go: building a ‘pram dinghy’ from ply wood, which will be a shorter, simpler project. As well as new builds, we have some significant rebuild projects in which we hope to transfer the traditional skills and techniques to the apprentices. One of these is to restore the last remaining ‘Stour Lighter’ which has significant historical and heritage interest.

We also provide work experience for pupils from local secondary schools and offer them experience and training. We hope their time with us will be a positive experience that they will choose to pursue in the future and we encourage them to come back as apprentices. The local secondary school also brings their wood working classes on tours of our building to see a working boat yard.

In the summer, we work with the Brightlingsea Harbour Commissioners, also a Transcoast partner, to run joint projects with local primary schools. Our building will be hosting another Princes Trust “Get into” training programme shortly, where with assistance of our trainers, students will learn skills to construct small boats in the workshop.

We are confident our building in Harker’s Yard will grow and develop over the course of the Transcoast project. So far, we feel a lot has already been learnt and have no doubt our apprentices will progress to finding employment in the marine leisure industry. The Transcoast project has provided us with an initial boost and will continue to allow us to move forward. The Transcoast support will enable us to sustain the programme after the project finishes and allow the Pioneer Sailing Trust to become a bigger and more important part of the community.