00:00 Hi, morning, I'm Alan Dean from the Himley Hall Sailing Club. We're here at Himley Hall
00:06 and the lake and you can see some of my colleagues sailing. We have a small membership, we have
00:11 had a lot of damage in the port and this is the latest amount of damage. We had our clubhouse
00:16 burnt down, our starter hut burnt down in December and we're currently fundraising to
00:23 try to replace it and replace the decking which is essential to our sailing.
00:27 And it had been here for some 20 plus years hadn't it, without issue really?
00:30 It had been here for 25 years with minimal damage, but an arson attack destroyed it completely.
00:37 What did you use it for then? We use it to start the races and run the sailing races.
00:42 We keep all our sailing equipment in there for the races, the buoys, the paddles, the
00:48 starters flags, all of that kind of thing. We've got windows that we can see out of,
00:53 we can see the whole lake from the starters hut. We have big events, we raise money for
00:58 the RNLI every year, we've raised £106,000 over the 50 years we've been in existence.
01:04 We used to have a 24 hour race, we now have a 6 hour race. So big events like that, it's
01:10 an essential part of what we do. So that's impeded you holding these big events then?
01:15 Have you managed to find a way to work around this not being here, have you still been able
01:20 to have the events? Well it's only just happened and we tend not to sail much in the winter.
01:26 It's a nice mild morning this morning, but it's an essential part of having big events
01:31 here. And what's the estimated cost for a rebuild? Have you had some quotes? We haven't
01:37 got those quotes yet, because this is a listed park we have to get planning permission, so
01:42 we're out doing the drawings to see what the planners will approve. When it was built 25
01:47 years ago it cost £5,000, and this time we have to find some way of having a steel structure
01:53 that they will approve, which is going to be tricky. So fundraising, if people want
01:59 to get involved and chip in, how can they find out what's going on? Have you got a Facebook
02:04 page or a website? We have a website for Himley Hall Sailing Club and we have a fundraising
02:12 page as well. It must have left you all devastated and feeling quite flat when you realised it
02:18 had been burnt out, is that right? Absolutely, we've had six engines stolen in the past three
02:25 years, we've had a boat stolen, we had 14 boats damaged badly about a year and a half
02:33 ago, so this is just the last in a long line of things that have gone wrong. So I guess,
02:41 does that mean every weekend when you turn up there's a little bit of you kind of squinting
02:45 your eyes thinking, oh what am I going to find this week? It can be, yes, that can be
02:50 correct and we have a very strong group of members who help to renew things, we're just
02:57 doing some work on the decking along there, they were here last week doing some work,
03:01 they'll be here this weekend doing some work. How many members? We've got to rebuild this
03:05 and we'll probably rebuild it ourselves. How many members do you have? We have 28 members
03:10 at the moment, plus quite a lot of honorary members as well, so we've been going a long
03:14 time. Well good luck with the fundraising sir. Thank you very much, thank you for your
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