We have completed a comprehensive reconfiguration of the mooring facilities at Lymington’s popular and picturesque town quay. The quay serves both leisure boaters and fishermen and Lymington Harbour Commissioners had concluded that an upgrade was required to meet the demand for more visitor walk-ashore berths in order to ensure that the area continued to be a successful tourist destination.
The project took place over the course of November 2019 to February 2020 and involved a series of smaller jobs as the various existing moorings were moved and replaced and the new ones added. Topping the list was the more than doubling of the number of walk-ashore berths from 19 to 46 while at the same time continuing to offer a choice between visitor walk-ashore berths with power and water, and lower cost river moorings. To achieve this Walcon first relocated the existing moorings.
These moorings included 17 commercial fishing boat berths which have been moved upstream to new pontoon berths located immediately south of the railway bridge, placing them nearer to the commercial quay and further away from the leisure boat facilities. Walcon has also repositioned 43 small boat leisure moorings for local residents and upgraded them to a mix of new finger pontoons and new fore and aft moorings, and moved the commercial boat landing closer to the slipway to make it more visible and lengthened it so it can now accommodate two boats at the same time.
All the pontoon infrastructure has been replaced with new Walcon System 21 pontoons to match that of the new walk-ashore facilities. The pontoons for the fishing fleet have additionally been fitted out to a commercial standard with rubber D-fenders, GRP mesh decking and internal pile guides. The piling work was undertaken by the Walcon Wizard piling barge and the pontoons brought in by sea by the Walcon Warrior and Walcon Wolf barges.
An additional benefit of the new layout is that it improves safety for all users of the river by widening the navigation fairway and enlarging the turning areas opposite the commercial quay and the Berthon boatyard.
Lymington Harbour Master & Chief Executive Ryan Willegers commented: “We are delighted that this project, which has been in the making for a number of years, is now complete. In line with our past experience, the Walcon team ensured the project was managed efficiently from start to finish and we now look forward to welcoming many new visitors to Lymington so they can enjoy the wonderful new facilities.”
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