The McFall family take the notion of family business to a new level. Three generations of the family hit the glorious Portavadie resort on east Loch Fyne yesterday, 4th April.
They manned a stand issuing buoyancy aids. They readied the Highfield 7 metre RIB, Water Adventure 1 – the only 7 metre Highfield in the UK – for its photo call, with a video team in attendance and its first demonstration runs. The McFalls had ordered the boat at the 2014 Southampton Boat Show. It was supposed to be shown in London and come straight to them. It arrived last Wednesday. So when we talk of ‘readying the boat, we mean that precisely. But they had it all tickety-boo and Lewis was fully familiar with it by yesterday morning.
This is a mutually beneficial business arrangement.
Water Adventure gets the ideal base for their business – pontoon berthing for the ready access to the boat; a readymade serial and residential audience drawn to Portavadie, with children and families enjoying the opportunity to be taken to the water to see and experience the new; and the envied waters of Loch Fyne just beyond the sea defences of the marina.
Portavadie gets an extension to its menu of experiences and services for guests and visitors. The various adventires planned will cater for a range of audiences.
The Water Adventure menu
Families with very young children will enjoy the gentle in-marina trip providing a reassuring gentle water-tour of the huge and sheltered marina in its scenic location.
Older children and families will thrill at the water treasure hunts – carrying families to a little island in Loch Fyne where treasure has been buried – with helpful maps and clues on how to find it.
Some teenagers and adults will go for the high octane thrill of being in a performing RIB, with some speeding and curving turns in the generous water of Loch Fyne.
Others will enjoy the scenic tours – like the one south to Asgog Bay – a secret beach you never see from the land. Longer scenic tour are planned to start in two years time, as an extension to the business once it has settled in.
This is a well thought out business plan providing the right variety of experiences for the spectrum of visitors to Portavadie.
Skipper Lewis McFalls
The McFall family took to the water yesterday both in Water Adventure 1 and in friends’ accompanying RIB carrying the videographer, the sound man and Portavadie’s dedicated General Manager, Iain Jurgensen.
Campbell McFall, the patriarch, is backing this new business for his 16 year old grandson Lewis to operate. Lewis can’t even remember when he first got into a boat and must have been a water baby.
His professionalism was impressive – from the safety briefing he gave his first cargo of passengers – which was widely thoughtful [he even included a warning about taking care on the ribbed side of the ramp down to the marina' - to his boat handling skills, which were calm, confident and comprehensive.
On the water, he not only drives the boat - and in some pretty stunning fast sequences and Red-Arrow-like convergences for the cameras - but was obviously keeping his peripheral vision sharp, often picking up on a particular passenger who had forgotten to hold on for a few minutes and might have been destabilised in any sharp turn. This 360 degree constant awareness was the measure of the young skipper.
We noticed the attention to safety detail, with a 'Kill-Cord' round Lewis's upper thigh attached to the ignition. This means that should the improbable happen and the skipper be pitched out of the boat, the engine will automatically be cut off and the boat will come to stop in the water.
The emergence of Portavadie
The plan for Water Adventure - a private business operating out of Portavadie - grew out of Campbell McFall's long association with Portavadie. An experienced boat man, he had moored there before it developed into the high-end marine resort that take everyone by surprise when they see it; and berthing in repeated spells at the marina itself.
The marina began as a deep dry dock, dug out to build and float out oil rigs - with no single rig ever built there because the initiative was too late for the declining North Sea oil industry.
Just outside the sea entrance to the marina, tucked into the hillside to the south, is the famous 'ghost village' of Polphail - another feature you will see from nowhere else but the water.
Polphail was purpose-built to house the workers planned to build the oil rigs - but since no rig was ever contracted for there, no workers ever came. The key was turned on Polphail and it was abandoned. Its fully furnished houses, ere looted over the years and it became increasingly derelict. It seems to have been spray painted grey, to make it vanish against the landscape - which it successfully does. If you don't look for it fro the Water Adventure boat, you won't see it.
The 25 acre site was sold in November 2012 to Portavadie Forestry Limited for £250,000 plus VAT.
A spokesperson for Portavadie Forestry Limited then said: ‘This is an exciting opportunity for us to compliment the significant investment made at Portavadie Marina and to transform this site to an additional venue in the area.
‘We are in the process of reviewing options for the site, but initial proposals include plans for a mixed development including a micro distillery or brewery with visitor centre and residential development.
‘We look forward to engaging with SNH, Argyll and Bute District Council and the local community on our proposals and will publish further details in due course.’
For Argyll is unaware as yet of specific plans for the site.
In creating Portavadie as a marina resort, the sea defences were completely rebuilt and the 100 acre site has been transformed beyond anything remotely imaginable.
You don't see it until you're in it - and then there is this beautiful, very modern, astonishingly fully resourced leisure resort - beamed down, a universe of its own, with the marina, the observation deck, the light tower, the restaurants, the wedding and function facility, the shop, apartments - each with a sauna], lodges and cottages – all so superbly maintained that the complex it might still be in its first season.
This is exemplary management Even the bin area is cleaned very day.
A stunning spa and leisure facility is almost finished and will open during the coming summer season. Positioned high at the entrance to the marina with views over Loch Fyne to Tarbert, north to Loch Gilp and south to Arran, this will have an outdoor infinity pool looking onto the loch, an indoor swimming pool – a total of seven pools of one kind or another, just about every treatment you can think of – and fitness suites.
It’s very easy to see just how the experiences Water Adventure is offering are in productive harmony with Portvadie. The image of the place presented yesterday fitted the bill – with some spectacular motors in the car park – from cute vintage to the McLaren P1 sports car. Price? Don’t even ask.
A family business
And speaking of productive harmony, this article began by commenting on how the McFall family take the concept of ‘family business’ to new heights. This is wrap-around commitment – you could say ‘total immersion’ – but that night be inappropriate for a marine business.
A young McFall, Tom, was even on board with a Go Pro head camera – using his body as a very steady mount to get more footage.
The banter yesterday was hilarious, with Campbell calling the support boat, ‘Casualty. We’ve got a broken eyelash in the back’; and Tony, Campbell’s son and Lewis’s father as natural a candidate for stand-up comedy as you could find. He had reshaped another family member, ‘Uncle Mike’, into a fully mythic figure gracing a series of flights of fancy in almost every sentence. It was hard to remember to hold on to the seat-braces when you were laughing so hard.
Then there was Lewis’s younger sister, Erin, in command on the bow of the boat and loving every minute of it.
Water Adventure 1 is in business from yesterday. It is in pole position at the marina, in the berth at the foot of the ramp down to the pontoons – and immediately to the left at the bottom of it.
The synergy of the relationship between Water Adventure and Portavadie could hardly be bettered.
The company website will be on line shortly, with some great video footage. We will make sure its presence is made public.
