What has been happening at the club during the shutdown? The short answer is lots! Most of the executive has been very busy during the shutdown. In the past few days there has been a flurry of emails between the executive and from other members asking questions and making various suggestions. Hopefully this will provide some answers and give a general idea on the amount of work that is being done at the club during the shutdown.
One of the reasons that there has been very little communication from the executive is because there has been very little useful information to share. That may change very soon but as I write this nothing new has been announced. We hear that marinas can prepare and launch boats, however, yacht clubs cannot. The announcement that marinas could start up produced visions of a late May launch and lots of phone calls and visits to the club, unfortunately visitors had to be sent away and for the moment the status quo remains.
When we get some concrete information about preparing our boats and launch possibilities you will know almost as soon as we do. We have been planning for member access but until we know what the rules for resuming operation are we cannot make any decisions.
Moving on to things we are doing, have done and can talk or brag about!
The law of the inherent perversity of mechanical systems requires when failures occur the greatest inconvenience to the greatest number of people is achieved. Apparently due to Covid-19 that law is apparently on hiatus. Literally everything that has gone wrong has gone wrong at a time or in a way that could be handled easily if not inexpensively. Given the number of issues it almost seems the club has been saving them up to make sure that it would be getting attention during the shutdown.
Fortunately we have been allowed to do necessary maintenance work and there has been a lot to do. A forty foot section of “A” dock was discovered to have severe damage and required immediate replacement. The refrigeration units servicing the walk-in beer cooler failed and also required replacement. Last year due to high water the mast hoist dock was submerged and very dangerous. With the water level rising again it was decided that a floating mast hoist dock was required. Inspection of the electrical service on “A” dock reveled significant renovations were required to improve capacity and meet standards. Given that the wiring is over thirty years old a complete rewire was necessary. In addition to these major projects there has been ongoing maintenance inside the clubhouse. Cleaning and some reorganization of the bar area was done early in the shutdown. All of the cloth covered chairs were shampooed, the carpets were all shampooed. Some new video cameras were installed to give more comprehensive coverage of the bar and interior club spaces as well as replacing poorly performing outdoor cameras. The storage areas have been decluttered and .reorganized. The bar manager has been tracking product dates and has returned a quantity for credit. That pretty much covers the major stuff.
As a club we are most fortunate to have members who have the skills and the enthusiasm to take on a project like construction of a new section of dock. We were also fortunate to have the necessary materials on hand thanks to a bit of forward thinking and a very fortuitous purchase of a quantity of large steel tube a year ago.
For most of shutdown there has been a small crew first pulling out the damaged section of “A” dock and then building a new section to replace the damaged section. With the damage to “A” dock in hand it was decided to remove the existing mast hoist dock and replace it with a floating platform. This is now pretty well complete. The new platform will be in place well before it is needed to step masts. This short paragraph does not do justice to the effort, time, hard work and dedication of the allowable group of members who stepped forward to deal with the problems we had to solve before our season could begin.
During this time we also had the opportunity to be a good neighbour to the latest residents of Macassa Bay. The police docks started to separate during one of the windstorms. A city employee noticed that we had a pile driver and wondered if we could do something to help. We were happy to able to help stabilize and strengthen their dock by driving in some piles for them.
My fingers are tired and I am out of stuff to tell you. Perhaps the next issue will be about access rules, bottom painting, and launch dates…I really hope so!!
Carl
Approved for Distribution by:
Brian Leslie
Commodore – MBYC