Ritchie Saunders has been involved with Irish shipping and engineering for a long time. He worked on the pilot boats in Dublin Port for most of his life and has had a lifelong interest in all things maritime.

Ritchie is currently restoring one of the old Dublin ferry boats that operated on the river before the East Link Bridge was opened. The boats were built in the same dockyard where he is restoring the ferry. The particular boat he is working on is the number 11 Ferry, one of five built from steel in the 1960s. Apart from one other boat, now converted to a pleasure cruiser on the Shannon, this is the last remaining example of these boats. When Ritchie got the boat more than three years ago it was in an awful state, covered with dirt and rotten with rust, getting it back in the water looked a tall order.

But Ritchie, along with his wife, his two sons, Barry and Stephen and Lithuanian boating enthusiast Ernie have worked diligently for three years; chipping, welding and painting, to get the boat back in mint condition. Ritchie’s boat is the old number 11 ferry with a wheelhouse cabin salvaged from the number 9 boat. After removing all the rust and fitting the wheelhouse, the craft was given 10 coats of paint. It looks better now than the day it was built and Ritchie hopes to have it back in the water by May this year.

The 35 foot long boat has a lot of sentimental value for Ritchie as he briefly captained one of the Ferries himself in the 1960s. He got the job after one of the wooden ferries was broken in two by a cattle boat, the Slieve Bawn. Luckily there were no fatalities as a nearby pilot boat was able to rescue the two people on board. In their heyday, the ferries carried around five hundred people a day, mostly Dockers on their way to and from work.

Ritchie now hopes to get it back to being a working boat once it passes all the tests. He has a mooring for it in Dublin bay near St Patrick’s Rowing Club. He would love to keep it on the Liffey and is looking forward to doing a bit of fishing in it. But he wouldn't mind the idea of seeing it going into a maritime museum some day.

Ritchie would also like to thank all the lads on the Dublin Dry dock for all their help and advice on the mammoth job of renovation. Also Ciaran Callan, Captain Dave Dignam, Seamus Fitzpatrick and Seamus Mc Loughlin from Dublin Port and Docks who kindly provided a workspace and a shed for storing tools over the three years of work. We look forward to seeing the number 11 ferry back in the water.