| Porthpean Sailing Club |
The Balcony
The Clubhouse was built in 1971. At the time there was a wooden veranda between an end wall and the Race box. Over the years the timber deteriorated and needed replacing. In 1998 the timber was replaced by a larger, concrete balcony, making it more of a permanent fixture. Unfortunately for us the design and quality of workmanship produced more problems than we expected. The joint between Club house and balcony was not good enough, with the result that heavy rain penetrated the Clubhouse and even worse, seeped below into the changing rooms. To make matters worse the front windows were rotten, replacement of these alone would cost several thousand pounds. Colin Wainwright came up with an idea which at a stroke would solve most of our problems and that was to enclose the balcony with plastic cladding. This would allow us to remove the rotting windows and also give an increase to the interior space of the Clubhouse. Colin drew up his plans & presented them, together with costs to the Committee. Now, we are in the fortunate position that we have a fit & healthy group of retired members. Many of them volunteered their services, so we were assured that the majority of the work could be undertaken by Club Members, which would keep costs to a minimum.
The plans were accepted and planning permission was sought from the Council. This too was approved, so materials were ordered and on Monday 10th March 2003 the preparation work was started.
The first job on the agenda was to remove the race box and so a temporary home for race recording was created elsewhere in the Clubhouse. The next job was to remove the race box itself. Major work here was to remove all the roof tiles, then the rest of the race box was taken down. An end wall was created to give some privacy for our neighbours next door.
