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Royal Lymington Yacht Club marks key milestone in the commencement of the new Pontoon.


The Pontoon Project team consists of Michael Derrick, Andrew Eady, Ali Husband and David Simpson, and after over three years of planning a key milestone was achieved during November 2015 with the disconnection and removal of all but the River pontoon. This will be removed on January 4th so we have the use for the Christmas and New Year period.
 
The project team was brought together in January 2013 and includes skills in Project management, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical design, Architectural Design and the needs of Wednesday Junior Sailing (WJS). The initial brief was to look at the condition of the existing pontoons and to establish if they could be refurbished and if not practicable, what the club required in a potential new pontoon arrangement.
 


Initially we undertook an assessment of our ailing pontoon to establish if it could be refurbished or re decked but quickly discovered what we feared that it was suffering from disintegrating polystyrene floats, heavily corroded steel structure and a decking support system that had simply rotted away.  In addition the steel structure of the platform where the gangway connects to the club was severely corroded and in need of replacement. The gangway also needs refurbishment.

Through consultation with industry experts we soon discovered that any form of ‘quick fix’ would not be cheap and only last 2/3 years so would be a wasted expense.
 

In December 2013 we undertook a consultation of all full members and achieved an 11% return which was disappointing but, apparently quite good by survey standards! This established what was required by members (11%!) from a new pontoon arrangement and covered RIBs , river mooring holders both cruising and racing, mark layers, boatmen and club event organisers. So we set about the task of designing a layout which maximised the pontoon space on the outside for members yachts and powerboats whilst maximising the storage on the inside for ribs, club tenders and the WJS fleet. At the same time making the whole design as flexible as possible for all users.
 
The major difficulty was we essentially have a fixed footprint to work with and the only way to gain storage on the inside of the outer pontoon was to push the main pontoon out into the river and to square it up with a knuckle to maintain the same gap between our existing pontoon and the Fortuna South pile for access to the moorings there.
 
 
Where we have gained
 
If you look at the drawing on the pontoon project page of the club website which shows the new layout shown in pink overlaid over the existing layout, you can see how much we have gained in the down stream basin and explains why we have had to put a knuckle into the upstream end for the 15 minute berth, to maintain the gap to Fortuna South.
 
We have also gained, after intense negotiations with the harbour office, 4.5 m on the River pontoon on the downstream end, thereby maximising the number of alongside berths. 
 
Coming inside, the basin where the club ribs have always been is now bigger due to the main pontoon going out and the WJS pontoon coming back towards the sea wall, this will give us an area for members’ RIBs to temporarily moor .
We will also use this basin for events where we want to store as many boats as possible such as the recent Rs Elite nationals or Youth Week where in the past we have ended up having to rent space offsite to store boats.
 
The WJS pontoon has been squared off but this just compensates for the extra water space created.
The outer upstream basin has also increased in size quite significantly and will now be entirely dedicated to the storage of club ribs and We’re Here, removing the conflict between rowing boats, club ribs and moored members boats which has existed in the past.
 
Club tenders will now be stored in the inner upstream basin removing the conflict with ribs trying to gain access to their berths, in order to achieve this the facility to store members inflatable tenders on the pontoon has been removed. The mast derrick has been reengineered and increased in height to make it useable at more states of tide and will now be located so that it can be used from either side to increase the throughput of boat requiring to step or unstep masts.
 
Finally boats using the new wall crane will no longer have to berth against the concrete wall as the pontoon will wrap around this wall, providing a fully fendered area for boats to be rigged for lifting.
 
To achieve all of this requires a significant amount of maintenance dredging as much of the areas close to the sea wall has become very silted up, and it has been estimated that 10 barge loads will be required to achieve the required depths across the project.
 
As you all know the shoreside pontoons go aground  at low water and it is the goal to obtain 0.5m at LWS.
 
To know if this was even achievable required a full survey of the sea walls structural condition and close scrutiny of the design drawings to establish that the sea wall would not be compromised.
 
Lastly, the team had to get down early one morning with a mini digger to dig a test hole in one particular position where drawing coverage was lacking, and then recover the mini digger ahead of the rising tide.



 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 







After completing our design scheme to create a pontoon layout which maximises in every aspect the useable space and the flexibility to all user groups we had to achieve consent and gain licenses for both the design and the dredging operation from many interested party's which includes the
 
Lymington Harbour Office
Lymington Harbour Commissioners
Marine Management Organisation (MMO)
Crown Estates
Lymington river user groups
 
The last of those licences was finally signed off last month giving us the green light to proceed.
 
The next blog update will give an insight into some of the decisions that have been made regarding decking finishes, utilities and lighting and the tricky operation of how we will remove the steel pile which now has the balcony built above it, preventing the crane from pulling it out from above........?

We hope you enjoy the updates and you will participate in the project along with the team.
 
Andrew Eady
Pontoon Project Team
 
2nd December 2015
 
 
 
Project Progress - Week 4 November 2015
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