Sport England - Places and Spaces has provided £8,000 of match funding
Dart Gig Club Boat Shelter
Dartmouth, United Kingdom
Aim
Building a shelter to protect our traditional wooden gigs - Freeing up our volunteers time to take more people out rowing
We did it!
We have reached our target and can now complete our gig shelter.
A huge thank you to all our wonderful sponsors and supporters. We have been thrilled and humbled by your support.
Thank you again to Sport England, both for their practical help and for their £8,000 ‘match funding’ which meant that for every £10 our supporters gave, we got £14.
We are delighted with the Shelter. It is a very attractive eco-friendly construction, which the club and town can be proud of. Its low profile allows it to blend sympathetically into the park environment. The sedum roof will be applied at the end of March.
The problem:
Currently our beautiful, vulnerable wooden gigs are kept in the open, at the mercy of the weather. Protecting them takes a great deal of our volunteers time - for example in summer our volunteers are back and forth with wet towels to cool them.
The solution:
A shelter which will protect our lovely boats and free up our volunteers time to take more people rowing.
26-hour sponsored row
Huge congratulations to all rowers young and old - it was an inspiring 26-hours with some amazing personal achievement. Well done everyone.
Enormous thanks to our wonderful sponsors - what stars you all are!
We had some great experiences (including the juniors singing while rowing - just lovely!) and some outstanding personal achievement.
They’re off:
Nighttime rowing on the Dart and inside. Thank you to the Dartmouth Rowing club for the use of their facilities.
Those still standing on Saturday afternoon got together at the shelter for a short celebration, with cake:
Last of all - badges of honour, which were shared by many - Cara’s blisters!
Thank you to all our wonderful sponsors
Huge thanks to all those who got behind our campaign to build our shelter. We have been thrilled and humbled by the support.
Thank you to Sport England, both for their practical help (Neil was a star!) and for their £8,000 ‘match funding’ which meant that for every £10 our supporters gave, we got £14.
New shelter taking shape
As our sponsored row has finished, encouragement for rowers and sponsors as we see what amazing progress has been made:
Thank you James for all your hard work (even over Christmas):
Who are we?
A modern Gig Rowing Club based in Dartmouth
Pilot gigs are traditional, open, six-oared, wooden rowing boats and, as working boats, have been on the river Dart since the nineteenth century.
Gig rowing is a structured and modern sport whose governance and safety is overseen by the Cornish Pilot Gig Association (CPGA). Our club is formally run with a constitution and annual elections, and is recognised as a Community Amateur Sports Club by the HMRC, allowing us to claim back gift aid.
The club is run completely by volunteers all giving their time for free.
We have British Rowing qualified coaches, and we have always worked hard to make sure that everyone who wants to row can do so. We keep membership fees low to encourage wide membership, and so must fundraise for large projects.
We are Inclusive
We have over a hundred members ranging in age from 11 to 77 and from all parts of our community. Some row socially, others like to race.
We encourage young people to row
We actively seek out new members at local schools. Our juniors section has been really successful in teaching dozens of teenagers to row – and learn the value of winning – and losing. But more than that they learn life skills, confidence, team building, fitness and social skills that stay with them once they get out of the boat.
…..and older people
Our senior men with an average age of 65 recently took a gig to Ireland and were first gig over the line on a 28km row from Ocean to Cork.
We race
1. We represented Dartmouth in the annual World Championships, County and National Championships as well a dozen or so friendly regattas across the South-West during the season
2. We have Under14 crews, Under 16, Men’s and Ladies A,B,C, Veterans, Super Veterans, Masters (over 60s) and Mixed.
3. We completed in the 26 mile London River Race, and in Holland
4. We rowed the English Channel in record time and to Guernsey and back to raise funds for a new gig.
Our Community impact
- The benefits of rowing both mentally and physically have been proven time and time again.
- Our new shelter will make our club more visible and will help us attract more, and a even greater variety of people.
- Making the club available to the community can, and does, have positive impacts on individuals, especially young people in the communities and wider society.
- The membership of our club has always been a broad church and we aim to keep our annual fees as low as possible to help promote an inclusive approach that means nobody is put off because of cost. We think we’re one of the most affordable, friendly and accessible clubs in town.
Bringing people to Dartmouth
We host:
1. an extremely popular annual regatta in April to which clubs from Cornwall, Devon and Dorset are invited
2. local clubs at the Port of Dartmouth Regatta gig sprints
3. the end-of-season Lyzie Pyne memorial race to Dittisham and back.
All ages come together often and help each other out with coxes and coaches swapping crews and older and junior members making up crews where necessary
We are a vibrant Dartmouth club with a proud history and we’d like to ask for your help in securing our future.
Why are we crowdfunding?
We would like to ensure that everyone who wants to row can do so. To do this we need help caring for our gigs. Traditional gigs are very beautiful; they have a history which goes back hundreds of years and they are a joy to row. We can only race with traditional wooden gigs and racing is a focus which holds together the whole club.
Looking after wooden gigs takes a lot of our volunteers’ time. Gigs must be protected from hot sun and cold winters, and our ‘best’ gigs towed back and forth from a barn several miles from Dartmouth.
The solution is a gig shelter. A shelter would enable us to provide much needed protection from the elements for our beloved traditional wooden Pilot Gigs, it will lessen the work of our volunteers, who can then give more time to people’s needs, and also give the club a base.
How we’ll spend the money raised
- After 25 years of waiting we have been given the opportunity and relevant planning permissions to build a shelter for our valuable gigs on Coronation Park. The build started at the end of October 2022.
- We are very fortunate and grateful to have some generous sponsors and we are committed to completing some of the work ourselves. We have been fund raising for five years but have a shortfall of over £20,000 due to an escalation in costs and the current economic climate.
- The shelter has been sympathetically designed to help minimise any visual impact. The low, single-story shelter will have a Sedum roof and natural wood or feather board cladding to blend into the park surroundings and reduce visual impact for homes directly above the site, as these artists impressions show:
Why we have ‘stretched‘ our Crowdfunding target
We need over £20,000 to finish our shelter. Originally we planned to raise this in three different ways:
- ‘Sponsor a plank’
- A sponsored row
- A Crowdfunder campaign
Our original Crowdfunder target of £10,000 was just part of the total. But all three ways are now feeding into Crowdfunder, which excellent, so our target needs to be increased accordingly.
How our project will be united by Birmingham 2022
- Our project will build on the legacy created by the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth games by providing greater opportunities for everyone, including those who are currently inactive, to get active on our beautiful river. The shelter offers a space which will allow us to give more people access to rowing and so transform mental and physical health. It will give lasting impact at a true community level.
Sad news
Our club was very sorry to hear of the passing of Dilly Emsley. Dilly was a huge supporter of the club and her husband Mike was a founder member and chairman for many years.
Our first ever plastic gig was named Dilly after her, and it must have been rowed in practice sessions by more people, and for more hours than any other boat we have.
Dilly had a ready smile and was a lovely person to be around. Dilly will be remembered with great fondness by all who knew her.
Our 26-hour row started with a bunch of flowers tied to the light mast of ‘Dilly E’ and the flowers were taken inside the shelter as the row closed.
We are very touched that Dilly’s daughter Sasha has has asked that donations in her memory go either to Alzheimer’s or to the gig shelter.
How you can play your part
1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is important….and we have some excellent rewards.
2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
3. Offer rewards. If you are a local business help us by donating things, or offering discount. We will give you a shout out!
4. Run your own fundraiser to support us, or collect individualised sponsorship for our 25 hour row at the weekend. Use the 'start fundraising’ button at the top of our page - it’s simple to set up.
This project successfully funded on 6th February 2023