I am a member of the Brighton Sailing Club on the south coast of England, We have pretty much reached saturation point as far as boat storage is concerned and to make matters worse the local council have just approved a shopping center to be built on the beach next to our club which will see us lose half of our current space.

Although there are more dinghies than catamarans the catamaran sailors make up the majority of the active sailors, however the catamarans take up more space than the dinghies, some of which are stored in racks.

The builders of the shopping center have pledged to help us with our storage problem, by constructing racks etc, but not by giving us any more space.

Do other clubs have boat storage problems and how do they deal with them?

Wow, I have never heard of anybody building a shopping center on a beach! Sounds like a zoning problem.

In the U.S. beach storage for cats is hard to find, space at clubs is very limited, and we are steadily losing beach access, but it is to high-rise condos and hotels and expensive homes. It is hard to imagine using precious waterfront property for a shopping center. I would think the entire community would be against it -- not just the sailors.

Is mast-up storage a necessity?

Mary,

Its a little more complicated than that as the shopping centre is an "enabling development" built around a historic Pier that is crumbling in to the sea. The idea is that the commercial shopping centre will provide the money to save the pier. Even so there has been a lot of opposition but not enough to stop it.

There used to be two sailing clubs on Brighton beach but we had to merge the two, the old one has since become a nightclub.

Gareth

Mast up is desirable, but we are open to all suggestions.

What is the condition of the water around where you are? Is it an active beach with breakers or swells or is it tranquil usually?

Our sailing club is building floating docks for our dinghys that will enable members to raise the sails and shove off in a matter of minutes, AND we wont have to pay for dry storage at our lake anymore.

Just a thought.

Sounds more like the pier problem is "enabling" the developers of the shopping center.

Its a very "active" pebble beach with a big shorebreak at high tide, so much so that when they held a round of the world windsurfing championships here many of the pro's could not get off the beach. The organisers were getting so desperate to get people in the water that they were even offering to replace the kit of those that tried and failed.

This means that it will also be difficult to store boats infront of the existing boats as in the winter storms the sea can come pretty high up the beach.

I have attached a photo, you can just see the pier on the left



Gareth

I think you are right Mary, but its all been decided and we have to try and find a way to cope with its effects on our club now.

Now I'm curious. What is the history behind this pier that makes it important to renovate and preserve it?

You can get more boats on a piece of properties by looking at how cars are parked.

Most sailors just line up their boats or try to park them in row with large allies between them. You can make the parking more dense if you have too.

One idea is to park the boats in a skewed way, this limits the necessary width of the allies leading to the parking spaces.

The second thing you can do is to place two row of skewed parking places back to back with a single ally to either side. You can get a coverage of better than 60 % with that.

Now if you plan where the boats go ; say group 5 mtr boats and 6 mtr boats together you can limit the used area even more by taking out wasted space that you get when you place a Hobie 14 next to a Hurricane 5,9.

Or group the boats with spi boom.

The last thing your can do is alternate dinghies with fixed wing with laser 1 and let the wing hang over the laser 1's.

Laser 1's are also very easy tyo stack so stack those first.

when need be you can require all spi boat to have a quick pin release at the base of their booms and a simple tensioner device at the bridles (jamcleat). By releasing the jam cleat they can detension the spi wires up front and unhook the pole from the mainbeam . The owners can them walk back and put the entire boom on the trampoline and fix it there without the need to take it apart. Simple enough and wins you lots of space with only 5 secs of more effort.

Have a small rigging area or rule that boats may only be rigged away from the parking. This makes sure that the slots are accessible by only a lowerof number of allies.

Just a few idea's but with this stuff you could get a very high % of coverage which is what you need.

Hope this helps,

wouter

Also, only allow boats there during the sailing season and require that boats are being actively sailed, like X number of times during the season. Otherwise, you end up with a boat graveyard.

Other things you can do to ingratiate yourselves to the town council and to the shopping center developers:

Offer to put on a "Save the Pier" fundraising regatta.

Point out that sailboat races off the beach will be an added attraction to the area and draw more people to the pier and also draw more shoppers to the mall.

Host an Olympic training regatta there for your British Tornado sailors. (Appeal to patriotism and national pride -- and economic benefit to the community.)

Also, in the United States, it has worked for many clubs to ingratiate themselves to local governments by offering free learn-to-sail programs a couple of times a year and also having low-cost programs to teach children to sail. It would be good marketing/promotion/good will for the shopping center if they were a "sponsor" of such programs, in exchange for providing some beach storage space.

If you know somebody in the media who is sympathetic to sailing, sometimes you can get public opinion on your side and then you would have more leverage to negotiate with the shopping center, especially if they can see some benefit to themselves in terms of their public image, i.e., make them look like benefactors instead of bad guys.

In other words, in order to get what you want, you have to offer something of value in return. You have to convince the developers that they would benefit from the sailors just as the developers convinced the town council that the shopping center was needed to save the pier.

It's politics, and usually sailors are not very good at it.

Perhaps this is an idea for storage ?

In L.A. County, we had worked out a beach storage area with the local gov't. It worked well for 15 years, with low fees. We had over 50 boats there at one point.

Sadly, the beach eroded very badly over the past 5 years, with many rocks and boulders now in the launch zone. Sailors have left (I pulled my boat out two years ago) and now we have mostly a big pile of trashed boats.

The County has now notifed all users that the beach will be permanently closed for launching as of March 31 so that's that.

Sheldon
P-18

Gareth,

The last time I was on Brighton beach was in 1994. I remember the pier, though. I paddled on the channel with friends from the local canoe club. They had an indoor storage building on the beach. I forget its proximity to the pier, but I wonder if they're losing space, too.

This sounds like the kind of situation where, if you did have a fleet of sailors interested in using that site, they could work out a deal with the county to be able to use it in exchange for cleaning it up, getting rid of the rocks, putting in some sand, etc. That kind of thing has been done by fleets and clubs elsewhere.

Our own beach here at Rick's Place would be nothing but rocks if we did not replenish the sand every year. But a government agency is not going to spend taxpayer money keeping a beach nice if it is only going to benefit a bunch of catamaran sailors who are not pitching in to help.

Kevin,

I don't think there are any canoe clubs on Brighton Beach any more, and certainly no one is likely to lose any arches.

Although, it looks like the issue may be going away as the pier is currently on fire




live image



for more info see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2894981.stm

Gareth

Wow! Who do you suppose had the incentive to torch the place? So, now the shopping center gets to go in without spending the money to renovate the pier. Maybe you can talk them into building you a nice sailing facility with all the money they're going to save

"This sounds like the kind of situation where, if you did have a fleet of sailors h...."

I don't know. Our beach was always a problem for them. From the beginning, we got nothing for our money but the promise to let us launch there. No water, no tie ups, we even had to call them to get trash cans!

All of the beaches have lost sand. In our case, the drop is nearly 6 feet from 15 years ago. See the attached pix taken about 10 years ago. Buried in those days directly under the boats is a sea wall.
That wall now sits head high with sand behind it. To get a boat to the water would require dropping it right off that wall!

Sheldon

Are you saying the water level has dropped 6 feet? If you are having erosion problems, wouldn't that mean the water level is rising?