The Denver Cruising Club is, as the title of this post says, a member's club, meaning that the members are responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the club. For the most part this means that you keep your own mooring neat and tidy but twice a year the club has a working party weekend where all the outstanding jobs get done by the members attending.

It is not compulsory to attend the work parties, but miss one or two and your mooring will not be renewed as per the agreement the members signed when joining the club.

So our next work party is on the first weekend in November but I suspect that I'll not be able to do much by then since I am developing a frozen left shoulder. I had one in the right shoulder a few years ago and I know what the pain feels like from that and I also know what to do and what not to do. I'm at the stage where the shoulder does not hurt much unless I jar it, twist my arm outwards or try to reach behind me. If I do any of those then the pain is excruciating. In a month or two I'll be at the arm in a sling stage.

So, assuming that by the next work party I'm not going to be able to do much, I set out this morning to replace the bank capping on my mooring.

And here's why. The old capping is falling into the river as most of the wood is now rotten. And it looks ugly and untidy.

The rot extends all the way along my mooring and the mooring next to me, but I'm only able to do my side since there are batteries and boxes on the bank the other side so I can't get to the the river's edge.

Here I have two planks, liberally coated in a pseudo-creosote preservative...

... and three ten foot scaffold poles.

By this point I have cut away the old capping and taken it to the wood pile in the back car park and sunk two of the poles into the river bed, one down as far as needed and the other one still up a couple of feet.

The poles are sited as close to the piling as possible but not too close or the capping will not fit.

The reason for leaving this pole too big is so that the output plank can be bolted to the first pole and then the holes for the second pole can be drilled in the correct place since I can easily draw a line where they need to by made by sliding a pencil up either side of the pole. this would be difficult to do if the pole were all the way down.

Here is the outer plank now bolted in place. The middle pole was not done the same way as the two outer ones but instead the holes for the U-Bolts drilled first and the bolts put in place and the pole then slid into the bolts and then down into the river bed in exactly the correct position.

You can see the ends of the U-bolts here where the nuts and washers have been recessed into the plank.

The top piece was screwed to the outer plank using long timber screws and this is the result.

A new, sturdy bank capping that should last a few years.

This took about 5 hours to carry out but I did have several cups of tea and a lunch break during that time.

I also sealed the underside of the poop deck. Self-adhesive neoprene strip 15mm wide and 3mm thick was place on the three appropriate side of the deck.

I think this should be thick enough to do the job.

The forecast for tomorrow is for torrential rain, so we shall see if this is sufficient.

I made up two bungs from the legs of the broken supports.

Time to test fit...

... and this bung fits snugly.

Now for the other side and ...

... this one does not fit. I'll have to take it back home and sand a bit off the sides.

Still, a good day's work even if I didn't get to sail.