Shepards Wharf Marina
Shepards Wharf Marina is one of the harbour’s main marina facilities offering a full range
of services and amenities suitable for yacht racing events, rallies, and catering also to the
needs of the cruising sailor and powerboater. The marina has capacity for 130 visiting boats,
40 resident berth holders, and specialises in providing dry sailing packages for day class
yachts, RIBs, motorboats and trailered keelboats.
The Sugar Store Events Centre Events Centre benefits from a prime waterfront location
at the marina, and has added considerably to the Shepards Wharf offer. The venue offers
contemporary facilities for up to 400 people, with a bar and stage, and media facilities.
In addition to the full marina facilities available at Shepards Wharf, there are four onsite
businesses, Amabi Basque Restaurant, Solent Sails, Island Divers, and Girls for Sail, who
are all permanent residents, bringing additional visitors and customers to the marina.
The marina and Sugar Store combined, hosted a good number of regattas throughout
2016, including the Tempest World Championships, J70 Southern Area Championships,
Loch Long National Championship, Sunsail Regatta, and successfully held a variety of
functions in the Events Centre for companies such as Red Funnel, the IW NHS, and the UK
Maritime Pilots’ Association.
Shepards Wharf Marina is one of four affiliate shoreside venues for the annual Cowes Week
regatta. Over the autumn of 2016, we carried out a complete review of our strategy and
objectives for the Cowes Week shoreside offering at Shepards Wharf. Central to our Cowes
Week offer going forward will be to ensure that we focus on regatta competitors and marina
customers in the provision of all our shoreside activities, and that we successfully complement
the overall Cowes Week event. Following a very thorough tendering and selection process,
that allowed us to ensure we chose the highest calibre and most appropriate events partner
to fulfil our pre-set objectives, a three-year contract was awarded to JHAV Ltd to be our new
event partner for Cowes Week at Shepards Wharf.
In early 2017, the marina and its fairway approaches benefitted from a full maintenance
dredge. The dredging work was contracted to Jenkins Marine who returned the areas
specified above to the original design depths as charted on Admiralty Chart 2793. Shepards
Wharf worked closely with contractors to complete the planned maintenance dredge in a
timely manner with the least possible disruption to marina visitors and resident berth holders,
and local residents. The marina now enjoys depths of 2m to 2.5m throughout the inside of
the marina basin, and a depth of 3m on the outside fairway pontoons.
A review of our health and safety operations has been carried out at the marina, resulting in
the introduction of a “traffic light” zone system in the Yard to improve customer safety. The
red, amber, and green “traffic light” system incorporates dedicated, safe customer walkways
within the Yard, away from boat lifting operations.
New for 2017, the marina has introduced seven days-a-week crane operations and dry
sailing basin management from our Dry Sailing Coordinator. All Dry Sailing customers now
also benefit from new changing rooms installed for 2017, along with inclusive wet berthing
in our exclusive Dry Sailing basin.
There have been a few new faces on the team at Shepards with Jack Billings joining as a
Harbour Patrol Officer. In addition, the launch of our first Port Operative Apprenticeship
attracted a considerable amount of interest and after a rigorous interview process, the
successful applicant, 21-year-old Sam Saunders, was selected for the new position and
started in January 2017. Sam will learn a range of skills relating to moving and storing boats,
marina maintenance, environmental good practice, security, health and safety, customer
service, mooring and berthing boats. He will be working towards the SQA Diploma in Maritime
Studies: Marinas and Boatyards, a level 2 qualification that is suitable for candidates who
wish to enhance their career prospects, particularly those working as marina or boatyard
operatives. A full team of a seasonal staff is now in place to support our permanent team
during the summer months of 2017.
Annual Report 2016 - 2017
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