Fathoms Free wants to revive and restore the Cornish dive boat Stingray we recently purchased to its former glory in order increase Cornwall's capacity for marine conservation and continue Mark Milburn's legacy.
We want a boat that allows us to clear more ghost gear and marine debris than ever before, go further and get there faster.
Restoring Stingray will also enable us to provide other local marine organisations with a larger, faster boat, which, along with our volunteer skippers, will increase their marine conservation activities and facilitate greater community involvement.
The Stingray Story
Stingray was designed from the outset as a fast dive boat and bought from Barnet Marine a couple of years before the turn of the century by Looe Divers, based in Hannafore, Looe aptly named Looe Diver 1. This is just five miles from our current base.
Our trustee, treasurer, and highest-qualified skipper, Julian, was a regular skipper on it between 2000 and 2005, including for the sinking of the Leander Class Frigate HMS Scylla as and artificial reef in 2004.
During that time, Julian progressed his skippering development with the boat, completing the RYA Advanced Powerboat, Commercial endorsement and Instructor courses.
Approximately a decade after Looe Divers purchased the boat, they sold it to Starfish Divers, and it was renamed Starfish. Unfortunately, Starfish Divers ceased trading a few years later.
The boat was neglected, and its condition declined. We're not sure what happened to it in the following few years before it was found and purchased by Mark Milburn in 2015 as a project to restore. Due to Mark's various other projects and lack of spare time to start the work required, Starfish remained neglected until COVID-19 gave Mark free time to start looking at her. Up until this time, other than an unsuitable replacement aluminum framed trailer that needed refurbishing and a replacement second-hand engine that no one had seen running, there was no other progress toward getting the boat seaworthy.
Following a jet wash and stripping the boat back to its bare hull, the first step was to have her re-tubed, which took place in July 2022. At this time, Starfish took on the new name Stingray, named after Mark's first charter boat, which had been the foundation of his dive charter business, Stingray Charters. Sadly, Mark passed away the following year, and the incomplete boat, Stingray, was neglected once more.
Mark wasn't just a scuba diving school, dive shop, and dive charter operator; he was a stalwart in Cornwall's marine conservation efforts for decades until his passing. Mark supported all the marine conservation groups in and around Cornwall with his business and led his own ghost gear recoveries and underwater cleans-ups in Cornwall decades before some groups even existed. You would often hear of Mark giving preferential rates to marine conservation groups to ensure they could impact as much as possible on the limited budgets we all operated on.
Fathoms Free was, in fact, Mark's last dive charter customer before his passing in April 2023. We spent an entire Sunday with Mark clearing a wreck of ghost gear and marine debris in the Falmouth estuary, a memory we'll cherish forever.
When we heard Stingray was sitting in a hedge a mile from Mark's old dive center, we knew there was only one option to increase Cornwall's capacity for marine conservation and continue Marks's legacy.
With your help, we can honor Mark Milburn's legacy and ensure that the Stingray name continues to significantly impact marine conservation for years.
No matter how small, every donation brings us closer to our goal.
Please contribute to the Crowdfunder fundraiser here - if you are eligible to gift aid your donation, please do. It will then go 25% further at no extra cost to yourself
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