Special blessing for Tristan's gig

From the Echo, first published Monday 4th Jun 2001.

THERE were emotional scenes at Weymouth Harbour as a crowd of more than 300 people watched the launch of a rowing gig built in memory of a local man.

Tristan Johnson died aged 20 in an accident last year at the Southampton Boat Show.

On Saturday his mother Tor, of Winterborne Abbas, performed the naming ceremony of the gig, funded by local businesses to the tune of £15,000.

Tristan's father Heddon and elder brother Hadrian then helped row the gig up the harbour.

The 32-foot long craft has been built by Alan Hangar at Kingfisher Marine and will form the first of a fleet of gigs to be raced at Weymouth.

A second gig is being built over the winter and the project has attracted so much support that plans for a third are already in the pipeline.

Friends of Tristan launched the project and have founded a rowing club in Weymouth harbour to organise the races.

The Reverend Richard Thompson, of Milborne St Andrew, blessed the boat and there was a reception afterwards at the Royal Dorset Yacht Club.

Mrs Johnson said: "It was fantastic. I was slightly stunned by the amount of people there. Everyone was there, from his first headmaster on.

"The boat looks fantastic. I cracked a bottle of champagne over the bow and it just slipped off into the water and bobbed away.

"It was a really good day."

Mr Johnson said: "There was a wonderful number of people around the slipway. It made it all a perfect occasion. It was an emotional time for us and they were all very supportive. The boat cuts through the water magnificently. You imagine it takes a huge amount of effort to get it moving, but the reverse is true."

He said regular gig racers from Teignmouth, in South Devon, who were in Weymouth for the ceremony, had been impressed with the boat's performance.

Races were held, with friends of Tristan and members of the public taking the oars, in Weymouth Bay after the ceremony.

The gig is a reproduction of the Cornish pilot gig Trefry, built in 1838 and still rowed today.

Archive Home