Seawork success as WaterMota hits century
WaterMota added a quayside display at Seawork 2011, in additional to its usual inside location.
Devon UK based marine propulsion specialist WaterMota celebrated its 100th anniversary last month only a few weeks after another successful appearance, with a greatly expanded presence, at Seawork 2011.
The company had an extremely busy show, with particular interest especially shown in its Doosan engine range.
WaterMota MD Mike Beacham said, “It was a very successful show for us. We met several of our customers at the show and have received some very good enquiries and expect to get several orders.”
WaterMota had four stands at Seawork this year, also displaying the latest Hyundai engines, Dong-I reversing gearboxes, power take-offs and steering systems, WaterMota assembled gensets and power packs, Westerbeke propulsion engines and gensets, plus seawater pumps from JMP and AZCUE.
On the quayside stand were two Hyundai SeasAll powered vessels, a Coastworker 21 and a Pirate 21, which gave demonstrations in Southampton Water together with two Williams Shipping vessels powered with Doosan engines. Wilsupply is a new multicat-type vessel built at Manor Marine, featuring twin L126TIH engines, and Wiljive is a new Meercat with L136 engines.
WaterMota celebrated its 100th anniversary with festivities over the weekend of 16 and 17 July based at the Grand Hotel Torquay and including a visit to WaterMota facilities, a traditional English hog roast, a boat trip on the River Dart to Dartmouth and a grand banquet.
The company was established at Kingston upon Thames in 1911 by Walter Fair, producing a range of innovative engines and products including a variable pitch propeller which could be set to allow speed, ahead, astern and neutral by altering the propeller’s pitch.
In 1994, the company was bought by Mike Beacham, who over the last 17 years has turned it from a manufacturing business to a distributor for engines and gensets, pumps and strainers, transmissions and steering systems working with Doosan, Hyundai, Westerbeke, Universal, Dong-I, JMP and Azcue among others.
“WaterMota has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, which I am very proud of, said Mike Beacham. “We’ve expanded the range considerably, signing an exclusive distributor agreement with Hyundai SeasAll just last year.
“We’ve a great team here who all put in huge amounts of hard work and dedication to ensure installations are successful.
“One hundred years is a huge milestone for any company to reach and I hope the company will go on for at least another 100 years.”
Over the years, the company has designed and built many engines. The first were American Waterman two stroke inboard and outboard engines built under licence. The Mark 1 was developed during the war, designed for the British Admiralty, and produced until 1926 when it was revamped for outboard racing, winning the first ever outboard motor boat race in England with British Maid.
A wider development of engines took place in the 1960s, the first one being the Sea Wolf, based on the Ford Anglia 105E 1000CC engine and a major leap forward from the 24 year old C4, which had led to WaterMota becoming one of the worlds leading petrol engine marinisers.
One of the most ambitious engines developed by WaterMota was the Sea Panther, prompted by the increasing movement from petrol to diesel in yachts.
Today the company provides propulsion equipment for a variety of commercial marine applications, including trip boats, ferries, multi-cats, fishing vessels, pilot boats, tugs, wind farm support vessels and many others.
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