Refurbishment

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When I took over as commodore in January 2020, I really did not know what I was letting myself in for, the first sailing session on New Year’s Day went well with a good number of boats on the water and a crowd on shore watching and either recovering from the night before or catching up on a few drinks they missed. 

Then came several weekends of too much wind, no wind and floods then we got a race weekend followed by the government deciding, that was it for 2020 and all sailing clubs (and basically the country) would shut down. All club meetings transferred to WhatsApp, phone calls and emails, which in some ways made them quicker but not always as fluid. 

At one of these meetings Richard Kendall suggested that maybe we should look at refurbishing the club house, now when the treasurer (who is due to retire at the next AGM) decides we can spend some money and also offered to project manage the job, what could I do but support him. 

So, with a unanimous agreement we started planning the workload, breaking it down to small units of work with people already in a bubble carrying out specific tasks and on some of the outdoor projects a team on the roof and one on the ground. We removed all the old seating and cushions, some dating back 50 years along with similar aged curtains and flooring, the walls went from 50 shades of white to 3 strong coats of the same white, we fitted new windows and blinds, a couple of new doors, new seating frames were manufactured, and yet another team set to work finding fire-resistant, water-resistant foam and material to make the new cushions. 

Then we needed to prepare the floor in the main area to take water and stain resistant carpet, the changing rooms are now washable nonslip vinyl and the lighting updated to LED strips. We had a full skip of rubbish, the same again in old wood from the roof and old seating, plus many bags of rags, paint tins and other items going home to our dustbins. In total we probably got the time scale right within a week or two, but the roof increased our costs when we discovered a lot of rotted wood. 

At long last we got it finished, and with the help of the RYA regional team and their legal team we started to open up again, with hand sanitisers, social distancing, one-way systems different styles of racing and a bit more social sailing rather than racing. Now (as of August 2021) we are open up almost the same as pre covid, and ready to have a full house again with both weekend sailing sessions and social events in the club house. 

It proves that the original ethos of the club remains after 50 years,” When the club needs its members, they are there to support the it”. 

Richard Harris 

We would like to thank the following who carried out various projects plus many others who came down to collect rubbish, cut back grass and weeds, cleaning club boats and many other tasks.