Our lovely port and harbour here in the Millionaires' Playground is apparently being dredged this week, after five months of zip. Not before time. My spies with the blue blazers and brass buttons report that TransEuropa's Larkspur ran aground whilst in the turning circle within the port breakwaters on Thursday morning, only to wriggle free an hour and a half after her advertised departure time.Why don't Thanet Council just admit they're planning to save a whole loada dough by turning the place into a beach? Which they will then eventually transform into yet another car park, with the aid of an EU grant, thus providing a revenue stream with absolutely no outgoings whatsoever!
7 comments:
Richard,
When sally was sailing from ramsgate it 'Scraped the bottom' and had to have about 800k worth of repairs to its 'bottom'.
I suspect this was a smaller 'scrape' and , more importantly, may have been caused by excessive 'woodwork' in the area.
What about that floating gin palace that ran aground last year? Did the owners ever get the money out of TDC?
Richard my understanding is that when the port was built no proper assessment was done of the tidal flows, models that could have been made to produce a shape that didn’t silt up so much were never made.
The port harbour arms have no sand proof membrane, which makes the situation much worse.
Worst of all though the head of water in the inner basin, that was designed to be used to keep the harbour clear of sand and worked successfully form the 1700s, is no longer used and the sluices have been allowed to fall into disrepair.
About time too! Lots of yacht owners have decided never to risk coming here again and you can't blame them for not wanting to get their very expensive bottoms scraped.
I sense another boating magazine sending a hack down here to find out whats going on......
Anon 10.41
The hack will find that the ferry is like the rest of us mate.
When it finds its gone on it hopes to come off.
Is the port now dredged or not?
A concerned yachtsman from Nieuwpoort,Belgium
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