Friday 18 October 2013

For sale, Yot Grot and boating gear

The Yot- Grot, Cape Town, story has been added to this thread, read below.

Do you have some engine or boating gear for sale?

We move stuff all the time from boats to engines and often many of the bits in between.

At the moment we have a customer wanting a Raymarine SPX 30 type 2 direct drive or similar to suit his

43ft yacht and autopilot, or it could be hydraulic with a 12v drive motor also The B and G type 2 blue hydraulic 12 volt ram will also suit this application, failing which a chain driven rotary drive?

To see the Yanmar diesel we sold, copy and paste the link below.

http://ckdboats.blogspot.com/2012/09/yanmar-gm10-small-diesel-for-sale.html


We posted this in September 2012, it was sold this week, even though the motor is an old one and the seller advised me there was no compression!

We take a 10% posting commission and can often handle the collection and delivery side as an extra fee, so what have you got to sell?

Roy

Yot-Grot, Cape Town, some history.

There was one in Durban, was that the first?

Then Kate Stewart opened her own Yot-Grot store here in Woodstocks old Castle Brewery, thats  down on Beach Road, it was in a cellar and a very interesting place to take a look around in!

Kate was quite a sailor, she once loaned a hard chine plywood yacht and sailed it from Cape Town to Rio Do Janerio but none stop! She took her Saxaphone with her as comfort and only crew.

Then Eddie bought the business and moved it to what had been the customs checking point as you enter Table Bay Harbour, the selection of stock grew once Eddie was in control. As the V&A Waterfront expanded Eddie had to move out and found premises on Section Street and Shropshire street, close to Marine Drive near the Total filling station in Paarden Eiland.

Eddie sold to Lyle and Lisa Diedericks due I think to an illness, I never saw Eddie again, he owned a Far 38 at one time, it was maroon, did Tommy Walker build that and name it Santana, I think so? There was by now a second trading name Pirates boat chandlers.

Lyle ran the store with his wife and was doing fine, then I think they had a child and traveling from either Noordhoek or Kommetjie each day all the way to Paarden Eiland became too much for them?  By this time his uncle Chris Diedericks had been helping out and decided to buy Yot-Grot for himself, are we now about seven years on since Kate started, that at least? Did the store close for a while when Kate owned it?

Chris had his up and downs as the boating trade went into a recession, to help pay the rent he started a  backroom set up with some very talented ladies with sewing machines, they could and did do all your canvas work rather well.

I dont think Chris was really making money, paying the rent may even have been a hard thing to do, he had brought in a bank to handle payments and to ease his cash flow, that of course would further slice more of a wedge off his income.

In the end Chris took a plane to the West Indies to attend his sons wedding, the rent on the store was left unpaid and in his absence the the owner of the property closed the store down, the lady left running the place was quite helpless to stop this.

What happened then was ( i was told) all contents of the premises went to a storage place in Bellville, then I assumed sold?

Did Chris ever return? I wonder as I never saw or heard from him again !
As he stayed in a small apartment  on the first floor premises, once the landlord moved in and took posetion
of whatever he found, there was no point in Chris returning? 

I like many owners of parts and equipment never heard from the liquidators, this was despite the fact that Yot-Grot / Sailors kept a record of the owners so that they could be contacted for payment when their goods were sold. As a lot of gear was on consignment, this sounds like theft to me.

I had Yazaki and B&G marine gear on display, gone to where I wonder?

R.I.P. Yot-Grot, we need you back again.

Roy





Roy