Our Boats
With the support of East Lothian Council, we leased an area in the Back Sands car park. Planning permission was granted in 2019 and after many challenges (as we were learning as we went!), we got a building warrant in 2022. Factors including Brexit and Covid pushed up prices considerably and we had to do a lot of fundraising.
As well as our own efforts in raising around £40,000, we are hugely grateful to our supporters. The Musselburgh Common Good Fund really got us on our way with a substantial grant of £95,000, followed by £67,000 from SportScotland. East Lothian Council and Musselburgh Area Partnership also gave us financial support as well as more recently the Foyle Foundation and Greene King.
Eskmuthe has two skiffs, Honesty and Steedie Falconer. Honesty is named after the Honest Toun, and Steedie Falconer is named after one of the last fishwives in Fisherrow.
They are rowed by four rowers on fixed seats, with a coxswain who steers and coordinates the crew.
You can find out more about the origin of the design of the skiffs here, and watch this short film.
Honesty and Steedie were built by club members and others from the local community.
Honesty was built in 2013. Steedie Falconer was completed in March 2015.
You can read more about the process of building Steedie here.
Honesty and Steedie take a bit of a bashing over our very busy, high-mileage summers so during the winter maintenance and repairs are carried out. As the pictures opposite show, there's a lot of work to be done.
In winter we were making new oars and doing some work on modifying features of Steedie to improve our rowing performance for the Skiffie Worlds in July 2019.
We used to do this work at Prestongrange Museum (thanks to East Lothian Council).
Our Boatshed
Eskmuthe's Boatshed is sited west of Fisherrow Harbour behind the Back Sands.
The boatshed is the biggest project undertaken by the club and began back in 2017, as we needed a permanent place to repair our boats and build new oars and footrests. Coastal rowing really takes its toll on the boats and we have relied on the use of a building in increasingly poor repair (now condemned) to do this. Doing repairs at the harbour and in members' drives and garages is not a good option (!) so we set out to find a home to call our own. We needed it, not just for repairs, but also as a social space for members to meet, and storage for all the paraphernalia of coastal rowing!
Work started in early 2023 and the building is bigger and better than we had imagined - and will fulfil the needs of the club really well. The workshop will easily fit two boats in at the same time, so we can take them in during bad weather to keep them safe, as well as for repairs. (The boats suffered slight damage in 2021 when one of them flipped onto the other during Strom Arwen).
The boatshed will be a fantastic home which will strengthen our wonderful club and make everything we do so much easier.
We will hold an official opening as soon as the building has been officially handed over to us. Watch this space.
