The last wooden racing boat builder

While rowing boats - the type used in racing - were once all made from wood, nowadays most boat shells are a lighter carbon-fibre plastic composite.

But Londoner Bill Colley is one of the few people in the world still proudly building wooden racing boats for commercial sale - although he has barely completed a handful of orders in the last decade because of the dwindling amount of trade.

So he spends his days down at his Richmond-upon-Thames boathouse waiting for his next order - and watching the world go by.

Video production: Dean Arnett

Real Time is a series for the BBC News website in which ordinary people tell their own extraordinary stories.

Follow @BBCNewsMagazine, external on Twitter and on Facebook, external

On a tablet? Read 10 of the best Magazine stories from 2013 here