When we were doing the renovations to the docks, we had the permits, the barges, the crane and clam bucket. Once that was completed, the water was still up so the club sold everything off and never renewed the permits. Now we will need to contract someone to do the work, however there is only one game in town as the other company closed (retired). Dredging is being discussed however no one really expected the scope of the issue.

Here's the story.....as near as we can tell, back in the late 1800's they used to harvest ice off the bay where our club is now located. The process involved sawing the bay ice into blocks, get it to shore, up the bluff and into enormous buildings with very thick/insulated walls. That ice would then be sold throughout the year to the residents of the city and the fishermen. In order to get the ice to shore they had some sort of moveable walkway made out of rubber to slide the blocks on. The took slabs of slate and stacked them up in the water to support the walkway. Fast forward to 10 years ago. Our club expanded the basin out maybe 200 yards past where the sea wall was, building a new breakwall and enclosing a huge amount of water into our new basin. In the process of doing this during high water times, they unknowingly built our basin around all these rockpiles left over from the ice harvestors. Now we have all the new floating docks in and the water started to drop......people started running aground on?? When the season was over and everyone with 4'6" or greater draft was hitting stuff all over the basin trying to haul boats we started investigating and discovered the story above. The sediment cleared and we went out looking around to discover that these piles of shale are everywhere! To try and clear the entire basin would take forever and cost a fortune.