Chichester Yacht Club Magazine February 2020 | Page 17

Progress Report on the New CYC Pontoons
By Chris Hodge
After 12 months of applying for licences from the
Chichester District Council Planning Office and the
Marine Management Organisation we are now
getting to the interesting part of the project, when
we will be able to see tangible progress. The final
adjustments to the drawings are now being agreed
with Walcon Marine to ensure that we are getting
exactly what we need.
In the design process we have tried to anticipate
the future demands the club will be placing on the
pontoons and build this flexibility into the designs.
Durability is also important; we currently have a
good group of volunteers who work hard to
maintain our assets but we would like to make the
new pontoons as low maintenance as possible.
One of the labour-intensive elements of our
current pontoons is the timber decking which has
a relatively short lifetime and sections have to be
replaced regularly, so we have specified a far more
resilient non-slip GRP mesh surface on the new
pontoons. We hope that this will also allow the
generous donations we get from the seabirds to
wash through!
The standard non-slip on this mesh was, we felt,
too coarse for delicate, young, and not so young,
knees so we have a finer surface on special order.
We are expecting work to begin on the concrete
structures which will carry the end of the bridges
towards the end of February and this could take
as long as three weeks, depending on the weather
and allowing for the tides. This will mean that
access to area outside the sloop and to the dinghy
park will be restricted during the week. However,
there is no racing or coaching planned for that
period so the disruption should be minimal.
Nonetheless, with machinery on site we must
ask all club members to be tolerant of a little
disturbance.
The next exciting part we expect to be in April
when the piling barge arrives bringing our new
pontoons. In the meantime, the Mid Week
Working Party is carrying out a great deal of
preparatory work every Wednesday morning, and
anyone who would like to help is welcomed with
coffee and biscuits.
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