Hugh Marriage Posts

The start to another year and it’s all go again on the harbour. The builders are working away on the Fish Quay, and the Whitestrand showers should be finished by the end of March in their upgraded design with a pitched roof and natural stone elevation: nothing but the best. There is even a scheme to have some of the interior tiles in the showers designed by the children of the local school, so we can look forward to how…

When I described the proposed Kingsbridge mooring pontoons last month, I thought that was it. Not at all: it’s all changed into something even better. Everything has now been agreed by the Harbour Board, with building planned for next autumn so that the new pontoons should be ready in March 2014. The final scheme is to replace the current residents’ pontoon with a single, straight, greenheart piled, 220m 132-berth pontoon, with fingers both sides. It will run 16m parallel to…

The summer weather may have been indifferent but, astonishingly, the Harbour revenues so far this year are less than 15% down. That’s pretty good in all the circumstances. The number of visiting yachts is down yet again but visitors are staying a little longer, which is good. Unfortunately (who would want to run a harbour?) a longer stay means that it’s worthwhile visitors inflating their tenders so yacht taxi revenues have fallen. It looks as if a solution has been…

Each summer I spend a Saturday or Sunday with the Harbour staff who helpfully describe me as “a member of the Harbour Board on work experience”. This has been the quietest season the permanent staff can remember, with the number of visitors well down. Indeed, at one point on the Bank Holiday weekend there was only one yacht on the visitors’ pontoon. I heard how the new pontoon arrangements at Whitestrand seem to have settled in well, perhaps especially the…

No resolution has emerged over the moorings in Kingsbridge. There is anxiety about the basin taking on the impression of “a crowded marina” so making it less attractive, and concern to maintain the continued use of the ferry steps at the head of the estuary. The Harbour Board’s proposal that the ferry could take on its passengers from what it saw as the safety of the car park seems to have gone down like a lead balloon. Another ferry controversy…

The continuing poor weather is not expected to change until the beginning of August. The Arctic has become too warm and so moved the jet stream south, with the result that we are getting the weather which is normally reserved for Scotland. As this seems to be part of climate change, summers like this could become more common from now on. We saw the impact on the Harbour in the first three months: visitors were down by a third. On…

After such a mild spring, what a slow start to the season, with the wettest drought on record and a cold and inclement double Bank Holiday for the Jubilee! This is worrying for the Harbour: for the last couple of years, at least we had a good early part of the season before a let-down in August. This year we’ll have to hope that August will save us. Running a Harbour (like farming) is just so weather-dependent. Nevertheless (and to…

Last time I wrote about the pollution problems of the Helford. This month we can move just round the corner to Falmouth and see the issues there. Falmouth is a spectacular natural harbour and the largest port in Cornwall. It is home to both a major industrial port and a thriving fishing industry. But, although the harbour is deep ̶ according to Wikipedia, Falmouth is the deepest port in Western Europe ̶   it is, apparently, not deep enough. The shipbuilding…

We recently spent a week in Keswick at Words by the Water. There were several sessions there on the changing climate and, in particular, what is happening at the poles. They may seem far away, but it may not be long before South Pool feels the effect of what is happening at the South Pole. The South Pole consists of Antarctica, a land mass the size of Europe covered in ice up to a thickness of 15,000 ft (4.5 km),…

Some of you may think that I go on a bit about water quality. But the harbour is such a special place, and one of only a few with sandy bathing beaches, so it is important to safeguard it. It is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in a Marine Nature Reserve and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. But marine SSSIs are uncommon: there are plenty of SSSIs where the intertidal range – the shore between the high…