Orkney’s boat museum is more than a plan - some of the boats have already been collected. These range from a prehistoric log boat to working boats which have been in use quite recently.

Len Wilson, a director of the boat museum, said the boats included an Orkney dinghy, built by Duncans, of Burray.

“It belonged to one family, the Measons in Shapinsay, and must be more than 70-years-old,” Mr Wilson said.

The sailing dinghy is 12ft to 14ft long and is a traditional clinker-built boat.

An Orkney yole in the collection is unusual because it has a straight stem.

“It’s almost vertical,” Mr Wilson said. “It was specified that it was built like that and an extra £1 was paid to get it built.”

The yole sailed better to windward like that, he said.

“It’s the only boat we know of which was built in that fashion.”

The writer Eric Linklater commissioned the Skua, a boat which has just been bought for the museum. Mr Wilson said the Skua was built in Deerness by Wally Ritch in 1934 and was designed for racing.

“The design was a new development for a yole. She had an elliptical stern,” he said.

The Skua was also a very light boat, he said.

It also subsequently had a life as a lobster boat, being worked by Ted Jeffrey and his wife, from Stromness.

“The plan is to put the Skua back into seagoing order,” Mr Wilson said.

The museum also has a flattie, the kind of boat in which most boys would first learn boathandling skills. The flat-bottomed rowing boats were mostly used to reach bigger boats.

The example owned by the museum was built in Guernsey for George Linklater about 1948.

Mr Wilson said the plan was for the museum to be more than a static collection, with visitors able to see different kinds of boats on the water and possibly sail in them.