Work party Abbey Meads 1st July 2020
Charles Wand Tetley and I went to the lake to check on the things that are vulnerable to vandals etc. In particular Charles’s photo of the southern landing stage 4 foot out of water taken some weeks ago looked potentially dangerous. Our objective was to make it safe or rather safer, as well as to find the missing western landing stage. The other objective was work to make the clubhouse easier to use and remove rubbish etc.
Whilst Charles was rowing around the lake anticlockwise and finding the missing landing stage only 50 metres north of its usual location, I was removing projecting screws and timber bits etc that were dangerous and setting the southern landing stage free on its chain. As shown in the gallery, the corners have been irreparably damaged by the vandals racking the posts and before we can use them again, new corner reinforcement/post sleeves will be required. As the decking and main beams are in relatively good shape, the solution might be for me to mould such corner pieces in polyester, carbon, Kevlar etc and sketch is shown in the gallery. I have also followed up Martin’s idea of using a removable lightweight landing stage with the same principle of connecting to the post. This is also shown in the gallery.
Charles found 2 out of 3 of the posts and 3 buoys without their mooring lines or weights. In the meantime I installed a pulley system in the top right-hand corner of the clubhouse to pull the dinghy up to the corner to make it easier to fit in through the door. I now have 2 buoys at home which were full of water. I have emptied these and will fill them with expanding foam to make them bullet-proof.
After lunch we had a bit of a sail with Charles’ DF 95 and my BF 72 in a typical Abbey Meads wind putting boats under pressure at times, but with swirling holes on occasion. I’m delighted to say that my dumbing down design for the BOTTLE boat with a smaller rig and less sail has worked ok in this wind and the boats looked good together on the water and had a very similar scale and performance. The boats were launched from the beach without a problem as they only have something like a 350 mm draft, although you needed to be wet foot.
We then made up mooring lines with weights and counterweights and Charles relaid them. Putting the ‘gear’ away was very easy using a pulley system to raise it into position with the ‘puller’ 2 metre distanced from the other person feeding it through the door.
Whilst we normally complain about the vandals, a spray paint artist has decorated the front of our clubhouse and although drawing attraction to our clubhouse has certainly improved the look of it.
Finally, for the immediate future can really only sail these small boats until we can rebuild or renew the landing stages, which is likely to be an autumn job.
