In this episode we dive into the Thames with John Graham, the man who took the plunge and started the Sunbury Skiff and Punting Club from scratch. With a passion for rowing that runs as deep as the river itself, John shares the ups and downs of establishing a community club in an area that was missing one. We chat about the challenges of finding racing skiffs. Plus, we get the scoop on the club’s epic 24-hour skiffathon fundraiser that keeps the spirit of rowing alive while also helping out a local charity. So grab your oars, or just your cuppa, and join us for a splash of river life.

Takeaways:

• Skiffing is a unique Victorian rowing tradition that's all about wooden boats and teamwork.
• John Graham founded the Sunbury Skiff and Punting Club, starting with zero boats.
• The club now boasts a fleet of ten boats and about forty active members.
• Their annual skiffathon is a 24-hour rowing challenge that raises funds for the community.
• The club's members often come from various backgrounds, looking for a fun alternative to the gym.
• Skiffing not only promotes fitness but also offers a great social experience.

• Cruse Bereavement Support website
• Sunbury Skiff and Punting Club website

Produced by Gareth Davies at The Sound Boutique

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I formed the club and then I set about getting the boat.

Thames racing skiffs are very hard to get hold of.

They're a specific specification and very, very expensive to make.

The original boats are made out of mahogany.

Rainforest mahogany.

You can't just get hold of it anymore.

That's John Graham, founder and chairman of Sunbury Skiff and Punting Club.

I met him back in April on a warm Friday afternoon.

A few hours into their 24 hour skiffathon.

Two boats rowing laps around Desborough Island.

Through the daytime, through the dark, through the small hours.

Quite a challenge.

Welcome to the Sheppartonian.

I'm Gareth and this is the podcast bringing you stories, voices and events from in and around Shepparton.

Before we get into it, a thank you to the partners and supporters who make production possible through the Sheppartonian Business Club.

Business partners, the Ferry Coffee Shop, purveyors of fine coffee, tea and snacks.

Me on media, small business support based here in Shepparton and the Sound Boutique.

Thoughtful audio for every story and our business members, Island Motors, Shepparton based, family run MOT servicing and repairs and love Biltong.

A better for you snack, whole protein with real flavour.

If you're part of a community group and want us to cover your event, get in touch.

It's free.

The Sheppartonian is all about highlighting the community groups in this area and.

And if you're a business who'd like to get in front of our audience, there are paid options [email protected] business club in this episode, then 24 hours on the water, all to fund a boat shed.

I sat down with John to find out more.

First things first though, what actually is skiffing?

Skiffing basically is the Victorian art of rowing.

I always liken it to what you have in Formula 1 now.

Racing cars were originally sausage on sticks.

And in the rowing world where they have carbon fibre boats, we still row the equivalent of a clinker built wooden boat.

The same thing as Jerome Jerome, three men in a boat.

The same thing as Victorians when they had ferries across London.

Basically you've got the taxis and that's what people used to row in.

So it's a fixed seat boat and it has foals rather than Rolex, which is a square working two pieces of wood with a bit of leather that goes through and it's quite complicated to master.

Once you can skiff, you can more or less do any type of rowing.

And it's part of a wider family of traditional Rowing boats.

There's a lot of other traditional boats that people row.

You might have heard of gigs, pilot gigs, cutters, etc.

And how do they differ?

So a Thames skiff is a certain length.

It's usually a double.

So two people rowing, one person cocks in.

Okay.

Gigs are usually made higher because they're for sea and they'll probably have rowers that have one or each that are offset down the boat.

And those boats were originally made for bringing the fish off the trawlers or bringing the crew from bigger boats to the shore.

So that's all the different types you have of boats.

You have whalers, which are self explanatory and you have all the way down to a coracle.

John didn't just join a club, he built one from nothing on a stretch of the Thames that didn't have one.

I've born and bred some beyond Thames and four generations my family been around the water, went to school in Shepparton where we are now.

And there's no rowing club around here, there's private rowing clubs.

There was no club for the public.

And I was brought up enjoying the river.

It's given me a tremendous amount in life, really has.

And I was down at a wonderful club in Thames Ditton.

I used to be involved in, still am involved very much with Sunbury Vergatta.

All the pubs, local shops, businesses used to come out for one day a year, do some rowing and some would like to stay on.

And I'd feed those people to the clubs in Wharton or in Thamesdet and Kingston because there was no club for them here in Sunbury.

The idea stayed with him until one day he just did it.

So it was forever niggling away at me.

And I achieved a great deal at Thames Ditton and I took the plunge one day, decided to leave Sunbury Regatta.

I just happened to have some good people who wanted to join a club and I thought, no more.

They shall join Sunbury Skiff and Punting Club.

So yeah, I formed the club.

There was just one problem, a club with no boats.

Thames racing skiffs are very hard to get hold of.

They're a specific specification and very, very expensive to make.

The original boats are made out of mahogany, rainforest mahogany.

You can't just get hold of it anymore.

They now make them out of beach.

So I set about putting an event on in Sunbury and all the clubs came and raced and some Sunbury people came and said, why are there no Sunbury crews?

I said, I don't have a boat.

So at the time I'd started the club and I was the chairman, I refused to call myself a captain of a club that didn't have any boats.

Then over a meal one evening, everything changed.

I went out for a Chinese that night and a lady I know, I used to teach her daughter to row.

Somebody Junior Igata said I was going to buy a bench for my late husband put on the side of King's Lawn.

I'd rather buy you a boat.

So I said, well, they're very hard to get hold of.

I know of one that's for sale.

It's been for sale for a couple of years because no one else has started a skiff club.

It's a privately owned boat.

They want 8,000 for it.

I've been offering 5,000 for it for the last three years.

And she said, come around Monday, give you the money.

So I rung up the boat broker and said, look, you know, I've been offering you 5,000 for this boat for the last three years.

They said, yes, John.

I said, well, I never had the money, but I can tell you, you know, I've started the club.

Five grand sitting on my coffee table.

Please tell the owner no one else is going to be crazy enough to start a skiff club.

Anyway, the deal was done and next week we got our first boat.

That first boat was going to be called Heart of Sunbury.

The donor had other ideas.

The lady donated it, said, do you mind if we change the name?

Change it to anything you want.

So that became Spirit of Sunbury.

We now have Heart of Sunbury, Soul of Sunbury, and we now have a fleet of 10 boats.

We now have a shed that they're all housed in and have about 40 active members.

We've moved from Sunbury to Shepparton and the club is doing very well for itself.

I asked John who actually comes through the door.

So I'd say a lot of our members are people who've got bored going down the gym.

A lot of them, the kids are grown up, they're looking for something to do.

Some people just see us out in the boats and contact us from the website or they see a regatta on, or they've been turned away from a rowing club because a rowing club is very full on.

So those that sort of in our encatchment area is people who always wanted to have a go at rowing and they're the kind of people we get.

Getting a home for those 10 boats.

Has been its own story.

It started with the second boat.

It was on a scrap heap for £100.

Someone donated a large amount of money to have that boat rebuilt.

A regatta played the rest.

It was really heartwarming because didn't have any money for these boats and all of a sudden I had two that people believed in my dream, you know, they wanted to see this side of the river have its own boat club.

So a lot of people bought into the story, which I'm very passionate about still.

But the location they started in wasn't sustainable.

We originally were renting some land off the landlord, between the swimming club and the sailing club.

We couldn't survive there.

We just had a pontoon.

The boats were getting battered by the elements, the wind, they'd been damaged quite a bit.

It was very dark and gloomy over there.

Desborough Sailing Club stepped in.

The sailing club took pity on us and invited us to come and join them.

And a bit of negotiating went on.

They gave us a bit of land, a bit of lease, and first of all, we had to get red tape of getting the planning permission.

Not only is this floodplain, it's greenbelt, it's also a place of natural beauty and if you look around, you can see why.

So we were quite restricted for the building we built, but we got the planning in.

Council were very keen for us to have a rowing club here as well.

So we set about fundraising.

Which brings us to today, the fundraiser that started it all and one they've now run for three years.

Today we are doing what started some of the fundraising, which is we are doing a 24 hour row.

We've got one of our skiffs outside where we've got two of them.

They're going round Desborough island and back to the clubhouse and then the other one goes and they're rolling 24 hours constantly, you know, through the dark, which is great time.

Three in the morning, beautiful time to be out there.

And that raised a load of money.

And we've done that for three years to the point that this year we've actually halving the money for a local charity.

That charity is Cruise Bereavement Care.

A name listeners might recognise from an earlier episode of this podcast link is in the show notes.

I asked what a night shift on the Thames actually looks like.

It's beautiful out there.

There's less water, traffic, you've got the moon, full moon out there.

It's unbelievable.

So by then, you guide yourself a little bit.

There's always a bit of shadowing from the trees.

The wildlife is still there.

Yeah, it is a bit eerie, but it's a beautiful time to be out on the water.

It really is.

You feel quite privileged.

You know, no one else is out there tonight at 3am there won't be any.

Well, anyone between midnight and 5am and we've done Summer Solstice, where we go out and watch the sun come up.

It's pretty cool.

No engines, no noise.

Just wooden boats moving quietly through the water.

You're moving through the water in these really traditional old wooden boats that are gleaming in varnish and, you know, they've got real characters, all the different boats and no noise.

Yeah, just.

It's a great time to perfect your technique because you can hear the clanking.

Beyond the skiffathon, the club has a proper racing calendar and one event that's become a tradition of its own.

So we, as a club, we do a Thames meander, which is we take all our boats up to Lechlade, we stay the night there and then in the morning, we slip them in at Lechlade Bridge.

You have to pass under Lechlade Bridge, that's the official start of the Thames.

And we take four days to meander down through 44 locks, stopping off at pubs along the way.

We used to sleep on cricket club floors, but we do hotels now.

It's not a competitive event.

We try and bring all our new members to come along and it's a great time for new people mixing with experienced people.

They learn, you know, 44 locks.

You're going to learn a lot about the weirs, the locks.

There's kingfishers all the way down and it's.

It's grueling, but it's very rewarding.

If any of this has caught your interest, the way in is simple.

They can just reach out to us via website contact information.

You're allowed free taster sessions, so you can come down three times and see if you, you know, can adapt, enjoy the boat.

I mean, it's not easy.

We say it takes about six times to learn to skiff properly.

But people, you know, who want to do it, you can see they get hooked.

There is a whole race circuit.

There's lots of different things.

We do the great river race, the meander.

We go abroad sometimes.

There's a good social fitness side of it.

So they'll basically come down, they'll get a coach, we'll take them out three times, about an hour each session, and they'll go through the techniques and, yeah, they make A decision whether they'd like to join and come down to this tranquil, beautiful bit of the Thames.

The membership runs from tax year April 5, so it's £275 for a year.

That gets you the use of all our skiffs.

You know, they're very expensive boats.

You get the use of hold of the clubhouse, includes the showers, parking.

I mean, that's less than the gym, isn't it?

I think it's 75p a day or something, you know, and the experience you get, all the coaching and everything's free.

You only have to.

Most people say they're joining just for pleasure after B.

So how much is a race top?

Because they want to come and race for us as well, you know, and we have social evenings on the summer bars, open cycle down, get the barbecue going.

So, yeah, 275.

And then I think your partner only joins for a third of that.

So I think, yeah, it's only another 100 pound for your partner to join.

So compared to a gym golf club, the outlay is very minimal for what you get.

That was John Graham, founder and chairman of Sunbury Skiff and Punting Club.

10 Boats, 40 members, a boat shed built bit by bit, and a fundraiser that kept skiffers on the Thames for 24 straight hours.

This year's Skiffathon money is being split with cruise bereavement care.

If you'd like to try skiffing taster sessions are free.

Head to their website to get in touch.

That link is in the show notes and if you're part of a community group and want us to cover your event, get in touch.

It's to time.

Totally free.

And if you're a business who'd like to get in front of the Sheppartonian audience, there are paid [email protected] Business Club.

Thanks, as always to the partners and members backing the Sheppartonian through the Business Club, the Ferry Coffee Shop, Me on Media, the Sound Boutique, Island Motors and Love Bill Tong.

Their support keeps this podcast rooted in the community.

I'm Gareth, this has been the Sheppartonian and until next time.

I'll see you around, Sam.