One of the club buildings that was burnt down at Himley Sailing Club, will be built again. The club are currently looking at plans and fundraising for the building. The previous one was in the perfect position for race control at events as you can see all the lake but sadly that no longer exists after an arson attack.
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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