Our "boathouse" arrived yesterday!

Hello everyone,

I apologize for not giving you a dose of NBCR craziness yesterday, so here are two posts to satisfy your cravings. We had a shipping container delivered to Popes Island yesterday and this will be our unofficial "boathouse" for the fall. I spent all day yesterday organizing it and emptying the trailer that was holding all of our equipment. It's still very much a work in progress, but at least now we have a way to secure our belongings and lock up personal items. There will be fence sections arriving next week for us to put around the boats.

Once we get a system in place for storing the oars, things in the 'boathouse' should be easy to keep organized. That only leaves the adjustments to the dock. Peter Durant, the Executive Director of Community Boating (sailing program here in New Bedford) loaned us a whole bunch of "Jet-Float" bubble dock squares to use for our temporary dock. Kristin Decas, the Executive Director of the Harbor Development Commission worked feverishly to work out all permitting issues to get us set up with access to the water. Her guys at the HDC are amazing and were able to put a ramp and the dock in all in one day. We had a short gangway the first day, but they switched it out with a much longer one that made it a lot easier for us.

The dock pieces are floats rather than typical dock pieces, so they are made to be adjustable. We need to have each of the bubble pieces filled with either water or sand to lower them to the necessary low freeboard that our boats require and that is quite a project. It means that the dock needs to be taken apart piece by piece and each bubble filled, and then put back together. I've already expressed the need for our dock to be lowered to one of the HDC guys, so hopefully we can get that going soon. In the mean time, our rowers have done a FANTASTIC job launching and landing boats on a dock that is about 10 inches too high for us. It's been a little hairy a few times, but our rowers are amazing and they can do anything.

More pictures to come!!