Open Letter to MDL

John_Silver

John_Silver

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Location
St Mary's Island
allatseawithstargazer.blogspot.com
Just bashed the following off to Michael Glanville, Director of Operations for MDL, on discovery that booked lift outs for annual maintenance at MDL Chatham, are on hold with no planned solution. May be of interest to MDL Chatham bertholders.

Hi Michael



I have enjoyed the high level of service and professionalism offered by MDL since berthing my first cruising boat, Missee Lee, at Woolverstone back in the late 90's. I subsequently berthed both Goblin and Stargazer of Poole at Cobbs Quay. I am now in my second season at Chatham Maritime, with Stargazer of Poole, following a house move.



Both Woolverstone and Cobbs Quay organised the annual lift out season with military precision, much to their credit. Booking forms were circulated in early autumn, slots were booked and the schedule was tightly managed to mitigate the effects of bad weather.



None of this good practice has been transferred to Chatham. The result is that owners, with booked lift out slots, are finding that their boats are not being lifted. The local staff appear (from personal experience and from talking to fellow owners) to be making no pro active contact to advise of the problem, or indeed of any plan to resolve it. When I visited the office this morning I was told that "we have run out of cradles and space and do no know when any launches will occur, therefore we do not know when lift slots will come available. We cannot give you a revised lift out date"



I understand that two years ago there was a similar problem at Chatham, only resolved following a meeting between the MDL senior team and owners at the Boat Show.



It seems to me that fresh intervention is needed on two levels:

1. To transfer the good practice around the scheduling of winter lift outs in place in other MDL marinas to Chatham. This will prevent a recurrence of the problems which I have described.

2. To rapidly create an action plan to reschedule booked lifts for spring 2018 to a known timetable and to communicate that timetable to owners.



I welcome your thoughts on this matter,



Best Wishes



Doug
 
This has been a long standing problem at Chatham. They also had problems a few years ago with lifting capacity - following an H&S assessment, they announced that their equipment was not suitable for lifting several of the larger boats in the marina. We left soon after that.
 
Doug

Being a berth holder at Chatham, I experienced this problem last year. It stems from a limited space for storage, a number of long term boats in storage (2 of which take 4 of the largest cradles), and the idea that owners say boats must come out for the winter.

The size of the storage space cannot be increased. The marina is charging the same for boats out of the water as in the water. There is no charge for cradle use, all a marina berth holder pays is the lift out and in. There used to be a maximum of 3 months ashore, but this was dropped about 3 years ago. Most of the boats ashore for the winter are not worked upon for months at a time. Personally I think most yachts are safer in a marina berth for the winter than in a cradle. In the next month or two I will need to be lifted, but the advantage of warmer weather and longer daylight means jobs get completed quicker, unfortunately at the loss of some sailing time.

Another owner who needs the largest cradle and had to wait several months before he could be lifted, but they dropped all charges for lifting, which made him happy.

Last year I had wanted to lift in mid March, but there was no space and finally came out in May due to personal commitments. I was out for only 21 days and I worked on her for 20 days. 3 days after relaunching I went on three weeks holiday. This was a bit of a pain as there no time for several things that needed to be done at home. No, I did not get free lifts either.

What can be done? Very little until other owners decide to return to their berths. The marina have no leverage to force owners to do this. Your letter will be noted and replied to, but I expect they already know about the problem and know there is no simple solution.
 
John_Silver said:
......mind you, they do market (and price) themselves as a full service marina. You’d have thought MDL could scrape together enough pennies to invest in some cradles and an admin system capable of managing the available yard space.
Click to expand...

Chatham is pretty cheap compared with other MDL marinas - something's going to give.
 
Wanted a lift in last year, no storage , just pop my boat from low loader to water whenever suited them. Not exactly peak time either.

MDL. A brusque "Not lifting this week mate" and far to busy next week. .......

Went to Gillingham Marina where they could not have been more welcoming flexible or helpful. :)
 
The forecast this week isn't exactly favourable for working outside and lifting boats, coupled with the fact that owners commit to launch dates and then fail to get themselves together and cancel at the last minute which makes the organisation a headache to say the least.

The hard is relatively small, it's peak time for maintenance, the weather is bad.....
 
Same problem at Burnham Marina, hard standing full so I am waiting for boats to go back in the water before a lift out for annual maintenance.
 
A happy ending!
Through the good offices of first Michael Glanville (MDL Ops Director) and then Dave Wilson (Marina Manager of Cobbs Quay - now supporting the Chatham team) our lift out booking is to be honoured.
An impressive turn around after the disruption which last week's snow must have caused to the yard schedule. Well done MDL!
 
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