Post by ferryfast admin on Aug 26, 2011 10:39:45 GMT -5
The secret life of Tasmanian shipbuilder Bob Clifford unveiled
26 August, 2011 2:09PM AEST
By Damien Brown (Producer)
www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/08/26/3303014.htm?site=hobart
Tasmanians know Bob Clifford for building enormous catamarans that slice through the water at speeds of more than 100 kilometres an hour but that superfast life doesn't float Bob's boat. Instead the renowned Tasmanian shipbuilder happily swaps his superfast ferries for a world where he can putt quietly around the sleepy UK canal waterways.
He builds massive ships capable of skipping across the world's oceans with hundreds of people and tonnes of cargo at speeds of more than 100 kilometres per hour.
Instead the renowned Tasmanian ship builder happily swaps his superfast ferries for a secret life where he is anonymous.
Instead of the 60-plus knots his ships are capable of, he prefers to stick to a more sleepy four knots.
He does away with the luxurious digs of his catamarans for more humble surrounds more like a large caravan.
And forget spending your day sailing across the vast oceans, he likes the confines of England's sprawling and somewhat hidden canal system.
Unknown to many Tasmanians, Mr Clifford has spent the past 10 years of his life in England, most of that time living in a canal boat.
"I now travel four times a year to the UK usually on round the world tickets to visit customers in all parts of the world," Mr Clifford says.
"Because I wanted to cut down the amount of travel time and living in hotels...and I used to have very high hotel bills so we eventually bought a house over there.
"With the age of computers and mobile internet it has become increasingly easy to not work in an office and my office today is quite often a canal boat where I get up at five or six in the morning, I am in touch by a computer with the office to make sure they are at least pretending to work down here ... and so for the first couple of hours of the day I am on business but the remainder of the day is travelling the 2500 miles of canals around the UK alone.
"So far I have not even done 2000 miles so I have not even been around them once so there are still a lot of canals to see and for me to do."
The extensive canal system, hidden beside the now expansive freeways and highways, was once the only way large piece of cargo could be carried around England.
"In the days horse and carts and no roads, good could only be carried by horse back or very limited amount of cartage.
"The canals were able to carry 50,000 tonnes on a boat which just created the industrial revolution and really was part of it and one wouldn't have happened without the other.
"Of course the railways came along 50 years later and started a gradual decline of the canal system and now the road system has taken over."
But Mr Clifford said the life of the canals was not over and for the past 20 years it has become a tourism attraction - especially for salty sea dog's like himself that want to get away from it all.
Today there are more than 50,000 canal boats cruising the system.
For Mr Clifford it is also a step back in time to the core love of life on the water.
"Before I went into business I was a mad keen yachtsman, after school, school holidays and weekends all of the time sailing," he says.
"When I went to work, work interfered a little bit with my sailing but I had to do it. Then I was convinced I needed to stay on the water so I went fishing for 10 years and then I went into ferries business for about seven or eight years and all of the time I am building boats for sailing, fishing or ferries.
"So I have been around boats all of my life but mostly oceans, large rivers. I have been over most oceans, in fact all of them on deliveries ... so there is no much pleasure to me to be on the ocean, there is no attraction to want to retire and get in a boat and sail around the world that would be an absolute no-no.
"But the canal system in England is fascinating, it is completely different, it is certainly not fast, the maximum speed you can go in the deep water of the canal is six knots, the average speed on the canal is less than four knots and many times it is less than two knots because of the shallow waterways.
"So it is moving from one area to another at a very slow pace but that is at all no consequence to the enjoyment of it because everything is interesting.
"Everyday on the canals is different and even every hour is different, you are either going through an industrial area at one minute and sometimes not a very nice industrial areas where it is not much better than derelict but that is one extreme and the other extreme is beautiful countryside, and beautifully developed canals."
And Mr Clifford loves that he can swap his high profile life in Australia for one of total anonymity.
The interior of his canal boat is small but according to him, `very comfortable'.
It can sleep four people and putts along on a vintage 1929 engine.
It has two bathrooms, a small settee and a galley.
But the galley doesn't get much of a workout.
"There are so many hotels on the waterfront that you can effectively go from hotel to hotel if you want to," he says.
"There are excellent meals on these canal side hotels ... so you don't have to eat on the boat, you tie up have a meal and a couple of drinks back on the boat and go to the next one which could be one mile away or 10 miles away."
Despite his slow life, Mr Clifford says he is not ready to slow down when it comes to his Incat catamarans, predicting he has at least another decade left in him.
With rising fuel costs hitting our hip pocket and the impacts of global warming dominating the daily news a Tasmanian ship builder has decided to tackle these issues head on and hopes to revolutionise the world's passenger ferry industry at the same time. The new design has already been on the drawing board for more than a decade and looks likely to be Incat chairman's final legacy.
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Incat of Australia
www.incat.com.au/