Nanaimo Yacht Club has new shelters for boats at its marina on Stewart Avenue.
The club employed a large crane from Kebouw Cranes of Ladysmith to lift sections of boathouses, called A sheds, from the club’s parking lot and set them in the water Monday.
The sheds were then floated into their designated locations in the marina where they will be completed with roofing, siding and utilities, which includes electricity and water for such things as washing and filling boat water tanks, plus a fire suppression line for fighting fires.
Bill Maluish, a Nanaimo Yacht Club member and volunteer, said the sheds were designed and built by volunteer members of the yacht club. Maluish explained that four sections were placed Monday. Each section forms two boat sheds and the walkways in between them.
“We’ll be doing two more major lifts, the same as that one yesterday, to finish the project,” Maluish said. “So, that section went in yesterday and it will take about three weeks or so, depending on weather, to have the next section ready to lift and then the final section will be three weeks to a month after that.”
Each section lifted Monday weighed about 5,000 to 8,000 kilograms. All together, 11 sections will be built and installed to create 22 new boat sheds and the entire project is expected to be completed in mid May.
The new A sheds are replacing a row of boat houses that were 50 to 60 years old. Those were dismantled and recycled. The old docks and walkways were sent to a non-profit society in Sooke where they will be reused to create a floating platform for a sail training program.
“We had looked into the concept of just refurbishing [the sheds], but when it went to our planning committee group, they determined that you get to a point where you can fix and old car up forever and you get to a point where eventually it goes to the recyclers and that’s where these sheds were at,” Maluish said. “They passed their best-before date a long time ago.”
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