A major new attraction featuring live boat restoration and displays of historic craft is due to open at Cardiff's Discovery Quay this summer, reports Classic Boat magazine.

Boat Lab will be run by World of Boats, the public brandname of the Eyemouth International Sailing Craft Association (EISCA) - the charity set up by maritime philanthropist Andrew Thornill QC. The Display will be the third, and largest, site opened by the charity, since it rescued the contents of Exeter Maritime Museum after closure in 1997.

The collection has now grown to about 400 craft and is in storage at various locations around the UK. The main warehouse is in Eyemouth in Scotland, where there has been a small, themed exhibition on the waterfront for some years.

The other display centre is the Tithe Barn at Beale Park, on the Thames near Pangbourne. Near the site of the annual boat show, it was opened briefly last year, then closed again for further development. Its full opening, with around 40 river craft and sailing dinghies, is scheduled to coincide with this year's Beale's Park Boat Show (8-10 June). Plans for an all-weather, purpose-built centre at Beale are the design stage, and could open within the next five years.

In Cardiff, work is forging ahead to meet a mid-July deadline. "We want to be open ahead of the new Dr Who Experience, which will be next-door," explains Stephen Walters, spokesman for World of Boats. "It will be the first major visitor attraction in Cardiff in 21 years."

Boat Lab will be based around a fully-equipped boat restoration workship, where visitors can see work being carried out and watch progress on four or five boats at a time. Around this area, additional displays will shopw up to 50 historic boats from the collection, with touch screens explaining how they were created and what they were used for.

The first large 'feature' boat in the workship will be the Elena Maria Barbara, a Russian-built replica of an 18th-century Baltic packet schooner that measuers 62ft (18.9m) on deck. She is a sister ship to the one used for the replica HMS Pickle on 2005, briefly called Cymru, a 'Tall Ship for Wales', before entering into an extensive programme of restoration under various owners.

She will be followed in 18 months' time by registered historic vessel Silvery Light (image top right), a herring drifter built in St Ives, Cornwall, in 1884 for use on the East Coast.

Eventually, the plan is to move the bulk of the collection down from Eyemouth and display it properly at the Cardiff site. "Eyemouth has been an excellent, and economical, storage facility, and it will be keeping its exhibition and boat restoration workshop," says Stephen Walters. "But sadly, it just doesn't get the visitor footfall that we need. Cardiff will give the collection the visibility it deserves."

Plans are here:

http://planning.cardiff.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=_CARDIFF_DCAPR_100154

I have a feeling some of it is already in place. I am sure the white tent is part of it. I may be wrong. I was hoping that would go.