Hi All,
The wife and I discovered Whitby as a holiday location in 2005, renting what an ex colleague of mine described as " an apartment in the new yuppy bit". Actually built on one of the old Whitby building slipways of yore. It is virtually next door to Parkols yard and we get a good view of the builds going on from the lounge window, and better still views of their floating dock. They have rearranged the yard a bit in the last year or so due, I believe , to a bit of subsidance to the river bank beside their yard.
When they were building a new trawler a couple of years ago, the stern actually just overhung their wall and we used to walk under it every evening going out to get our meal. Now they assemble new boats parallel to the road beside their yard rather than at 90 degrees to it.
The most fascinating aspect of the whole process is the launch of a new trawler which is actually done using an absolutely huge mobile crane. Before this happens, all around Whitby, the roadside laybys all have huge artic trailers parked up in them. These have been used to bring in the components of the crane to the yard. These are assembled using another very large mobile crane over about 5 days. We have been to one of the launchings as Parkol are most welcoming and just leave the gate to the yard open when it happens and the public just walk in. Have a look at the web site as there are some pictures of a launch , may be in the Our Lass 2 section?
Tucked around the corner of the yard in the marina , there has been an old American style harbour tug, quietly doing nothing for several years. Don't know if it is anything to do with Parkol, but when we were there 4 weeks ago, someone appeared to be taking some interest in it, coming and going but no obvious refurb taking place.Anyone know the history of this?
If you google "Parkol Marine video", there are 4 or 5 videos on youtube, each about 15mins long.
