In the back of my mind I remembered that the men had had to bring the newly
launched 'Tigress' around from another bay, after slipping her into
the water. She had arrived from the river and was tied up in the harbour to
be handed over to my parents, as my pictures revealed. The man I was speaking
to, as I returned in 2006, didn't at first know where my photos had been taken.
He said he was English and from Cumbria, only keeping his boat up there in
Aberdour harbour.
Studying the photographs for a minute or two, however, made him think that
the ones of 'Tigress' on the launch ramp looked like a bay called "Silversands".
I asked him where this was and he said it was just over the headland from
the harbour and that by following the track, that he pointed out to me, I
could be there in minutes.
But before setting off I tried to recreate the photographs of the harbour
that I had taken as a lad and then I hiked over the promontory in search of
the place where I had seen our family's boat first take to the water. When
I got there it was obvious from the start that I had the right place. Where
the boat yard's shed had once stood was now a modern office block; but the
old launching track into the Forth, down which the boat had slid at her launch,
was still there broken and damaged through the passing of time. I had found
a piece of my past!
See Tigress of Deben's launch in 1973 .
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Cuttlehill.
