A calamity fishing boat at the centre of an Angus community project will be formally renamed during a visit by BBC’s Beechgrove Garden.
The boat will be renamed The Sisters when the garden in Easthaven is officially opened at the end of June to mark its 800th anniversary.
The ceremony will take place when the Beechgrove Garden film for two days in the ancient fishing village.
In June last year residents acquired an old fishing boat which, with the help of a community grant from Angus Council, enabled them to begin the restoration project.
Members of the Easthaven 800 committee took steps to transport the Golden Rose back to their village after it was wrecked on rocks off the coast of St Andrews.
Polish migrant worker Grzegorz Gerle from Dundee gifted his battered vessel to the group after they approached him looking for a landmark to place at the entrance to Easthaven ahead of its octocentenary.
The boat will create a central feature in the garden to strengthen Easthaven’s identity as one of the earliest recorded fishing communities in Scotland.
Leader of the Easthaven 800 steering committee Wendy Murray said that the original name of the boat was the Three Sisters before it was renamed the Golden Rose.
However, the group recently discovered a mariner’s book from 1917 which revealed that one of Easthaven’s infamous old fishermen, Davie Herd, had a boat called The Sisters in 1917.
So the villagers felt it would be appropriate to rename the boat which was recently give a fresh coat of paint before being transported to the garden site.
Grzegorz Gerle arrived in Tayside with a dream of starting his own boat tour business and scraped together enough for a vessel.
He then painstakingly laboured for six months to restore it at a cost of £6,000 but a freak storm swept the 28ft cruiser from its moorings in St Andrews and wrecked it on rocks off the East Sands.
Facing an expensive lorry rental to dispose of what remained of his pride and joy, a devastated Grzegorz was at his wits’ end until the Easthaven 800 group heard of his plight.
They paid for the uplift of the vessel which is now being used as the garden’s showpiece to reflect the community’s fishing connections.
Six men from Easthaven went to St Andrews to coordinate delivery back to Angus. The boat was dug out to enable slings to be attached underneath and contractor Norman Jamieson was able to crane it on to a truck.
The aim of the Easthaven 800 project is to tap into the village’s identity as a former fishing community and provide a stunning visual impact for visitors.
The ongoing community-led transformation was recently hailed by Beechgrove Garden guru Jim McColl on a visit to the village ahead of the scheduled filming.
The development of Easthaven’s new community garden to mark the 800th anniversary has been chosen to feature on the BBC show.
The support from the Beechgrove Garden team means the village will be totally transformed when it welcomes the arrival of the Queen’s Baton Relay.
Photo by Angus Pictures