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Displaying items by tag: Boat Repairs

An inquest into the death of company director Kevin Keeler, who was crushed while working on his boat in Weymouth a year ago, has heard that he had made the boat’s cradle unstable while painting the bottom of its hull.

As previously reported on Afloat.ie, the 56-year-old was crushed by the half-ton yacht in a Weymouth boatyard on 16 April 2018.

Keeler had been a member of Weymouth Sailing Club since the previous year with his partner Tatiana Saltykova and had purchased the 29ft yacht Ginny Kwik that Christmas, according to Mail Online.

The yacht was lifted out for maintenance in March 2018 and Wheeler, an electronics engineer, borrowed a cradle from a fellow sailor to carry out the work.

However, the inquest heard that he had made this cradle unstable when he lowered one of its supporting props to reach the underside of the hull, which caused the vessel to collapse on top of him.

Another man on a nearby slipway told the inquest how he heard a ‘loud crash’ as the boat fell in his direction — and how he attended to the fallen Wheeler whose condition deteriorated quickly before paramedics arrived.

Mail Online has more on the story HERE.

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A man has died after he was crushed by the half-ton yacht he was working on in a Weymouth boatyard, as Mail Online reports.

The 56-year-old, believed to be a company director, was carrying out repairs on his 29ft sailing yacht yesterday (Monday 16 April) in advance of the summer sailing season when the boat suddenly fell over.

“The man in question was a full member of the sailing club and he joined last summer,” Weymouth Sailing Club Commodore Euan McNair said in a statement. “He was coming up to a year of membership and it’s tragic what has now happened.”

The incident occurred at a time when many boats are being worked on and lifted back into the water around Britain and Ireland ahead of the summer season. 

Mail Online has more on the story HERE.

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Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.