Oxford Sailing Club Dinghy Disposal

The Boatbreakers team had the difficult task of removing around 20 Dinghies for Oxford Sailing Club. Disposal of dinghies is usually fairly straightforward. They can usually be manhandled by our team onto a trailer and back to our yard to be scrapped. Even two or three dinghies can be easy enough to sort. As we can chop them down and put them inside eachother for removal. However, 20 presents a different challenge as dinghies are fairly hard to stack safely. If we tried to stack 20 Dinghies on the back of our lorry we wouldn’t have enough straps to secure it down safely. The last thing we’d want to do is leave a dinghy trail along the A34.

The 20 Dinghies we had to remove were a very in classes and sizes. There were Wayfarer, Enterprises, Lasers, Toppers and even a small club boat. The small safety boat was used to accompany young sailors on the reservoir.

First of all we sent our HiAb truck to collect the small club boat. Plus as many Dinghies as he could get on board. There were also a number of windsurfing boards that the club had asked us to scrap. On their own, they’re fairly simple to collect, however when there is over 10 they can be difficult to stack.

Once the HiAb had taken all it could. Our next plan was to send a Luton van to stack the rest into. The thought process behind this was that the Luton has hard sides. Which would mean that there would not be a chance of any falling out on the way back. It also had a tail lift which made it a lot easier to load the dinghies, especially once we started stacking them on on top of each other.

Our team trimmed some of the dinghies down to size so they fit in comfortably. It still took three trips to Oxford to clear the site but the Luton van worked well. There wasn’t really any parts to strip from the dinghies as the club had already taken spares for the other members. Oxford Sailing Club had hundreds  of dinghies in the boat park. And we could see it looked like a good place for young people to sail. Once we got back to base on the south coast, we unloaded the dinghies stripped off any recyclable materials and crushed hulls.

The Commodore of the club was extremely happy to see his dead Boat corner empty and he left us this message in an email, "Just to say thank you so much for all your hard work in clearing our ‘dead’ boats and boards from the Club’s boat park."

" It was one of those projects that has been waiting to be done for years, with everyone having great ideas on how to do it, but no commitment to carrying them out."

"Hopefully we’re done now, at least until a few more come to light, but, if we do need ‘the odd one’ removing again, then you will be my first port of call – efficient and no fuss, job done."