A style of boat more used to plying the waters of Bangladesh will be chugging along the Leeds-Liverpool Canal next week.

The dhow has been refurbished at Hainworth dock, Bingley, by young people on the Bradford Motor Education Project.

The flat-bottomed, 32ft dhow The Lady Rani is crowned at the prow with the image of a damsel fly, a familiar insect on the canal.

Plans are to have the vessel decked out in all its splendour by Monday when it will be sailed the 14 miles to Skipton.

At the tiller will be the crew who helped refurbish the vessel, which will arrive with sister boat, The Two Shires a broad-beamed canal boat to take youngsters from Skipton schools on educational trips.

It will then join other boats for the Skipton Waterway Festival in the canal basin on bank holiday weekend, during which The Lady Rani will be among an illuminated flotilla, a highlight of the three-day event.

Overseeing the dhow restoration is Trevor Roberts, chairman of Bradford Motor Education Project, a registered charity which helps the personal development of young people by getting them involved in engineering projects.

He said the boat was acquired from people in the Spen Valley who built it to celebrate the new millennium but no longer needed it.

"We sailed it here from Huddersfield along the canal to Castleford into the Leeds-Liverpool Canal at Leeds and along to Bingley it took four days," he said.

"The young people have been working on the design for the sides of the boat based on images from Saltaire and the flora and fauna of the canal."

Because the boat is of Asian design it is hoped to encourage more Asian youngsters to get involved.

And once the boat is back in Bingley, a special trip is being organised to take out a group of Asian women on a canal day trip, he said.

Helping to sail the boat to Skipton is 23-year-old Adam Freear, of Undercliffe, Bradford, a project volunteer who has qualified as a canal boat skipper.

He has been working to prepare The Lady Rani while in dry-dock at Bingley.

Next month, the boat will travel by trailer to Bremen in Germany to take part in an event looking at how waterways can be used as leisure facilities. Five European countries are taking part.

e-mail: clive.white@bradford.newsquest.co.uk