Articles in the local Villager News magazine
[written by one of our volunteers].

February 2012

The landing stage plans.
The plans for the refurbishment of the landing stage are well on the way, with volunteers having cleared the wooded decking around the dead tree and using 'low tech' tools, namely pick axe and muscle, teasing away the concrete to expose the roots ready for grubbing out. Our caution was not to damage service pipes running to our crew hut. Once the tree has been removed we will be in a position to re-align the slope from the car parking area to facilitate better access for people with disabilities.
The main rebuilding of the landing stage is a professional matter and a specialist company with 'high tech' equipment on a pontoon will move into the place where Dick's Folly is currently moored and begin removing the old and putting in the new.
When we say remove the old, it has in fact been removing itself by that natural process called erosion which occurs in all moving water situations. Unfortunately and unbeknown to us it had been taking place in the wrong place, literally under our feet and we were unaware of it until the day of the great big hole in September 2011. This was urgently and temporarily filled with rubble.

Dick's Folly A to Z of Volunteers
Continuing unmasking the unsung champions who are the mainstay of the Project and the A to Z of tasks that they do.

C is for Crew Call Out: the heading of an email from Ray, sent out to those of us with the Royal Yacht Association Helmsman qualification. The Project requires two people with this certificate to be on the boat whenever it sails.

C is also for Catering Crew Call Out: this merry band under the leadership of Judith have excelled themselves by preparing and serving tea and cakes for up to 100 people in the brief 15 minute interval gap of the Abbots Langley Winter Acoustic Concerts and just as deftly and in silence wash and dry up.

D can only be for Dicks Folly and Dick Gettins, the youth and community worker whose vision and drive it was to have a community boat. Originally called Lady Capel, the boat was renamed in his memory.

D is also for Diary Dates: Sunday March 11th at 3pm. This is the last of the second season of ALWA concerts and it promises to be exactly what is says on the tin and we can expect a feast of sound from The Oxford Fiddle Group. For tickets contact ALConcerts@gmail.com or Tim and Lesley Brookes on 01923 264536.

Angi Naylor
Project Volunteer & Chair