The Boat Team
by: Myron
Monday saw the Boat Team breathe in after a month or so of intense activity. A care and maintenance day was organised to give our boats some badly needed TLC. Not much to say except that the fleet is in a little bit better shape than what it was. Of note though, the worst job was by far changing the coolant on Margaret. It holds 120 ltrs, so taking the old stuff out And putting the new stuff in meant nearly a quarter of a ton of liquid was shifted. Thanks to everyone who turned up on a freezing cold morning. I hope you all recovered ok. W e even managed to send Goliath and a crew down to Ryeford to shift a mud hopper.
Tuesday saw Dave organising the BSS certificates for a number of our boats, which I think all passed, albeit with a few advisories. Nice to have that endorsement.
Wednesday turned out to be a bit of a mixed bag. We sent Weedie off to Ryeford early on, only to get a phone call from skipper Rob to say the slats wouldn’t move. She was returned to base to be looked at next week.
Goliath had better luck being sent off with Tony our training manager and a novice crew to move Delilah from below Ryeford locks to the Coal Wharf. They apparently carried out the task admirably and we look forward to having two newly qualified skippers soon. Delilah is now in a place where we can hopefully clear out all the tons of debris that has accumulated in it, making it just about unusable.
Progress on Margaret started slowly. By the time we had put in another 20 or so litres of coolant and one or two other things left over from Monday, it was getting on. By the time we got to Ryeford the hopper we were due to move had already been done the old fashioned way. Crestfallen we wondered what to do with our day. We really needed the experience. The solution was provided by the dredging teams, who said they would load and unload to a single hopper for the rest of the day, enabling us to take the other hopper and get some extremely valuable hands on experience. This proved to be a very valuable afternoon.
Doesn’t seem much to say for 3 pretty full on days, but I’m sure you get the flavour.
