Well, what a fantastic day! Friday night’s showing of the Aurora Borealis as far down as the South coast, set the tone for a great weekend. A nice early morning completing the final setup for the open day; flags & signs out on the beach, volunteers and local artists checking their artwork displays, small boats arranged outside and the refreshments tables set & ready.

09:45 the faint sound of drumming can be heard; STIX DRUMMERS are drumming their way along the promenade from the Redoubt fortress to us at the boatshed, attracting visitors for us along their way. A steady flow of visitors begins and continues throughout the day. Stix perform again a little later in the morning, followed by ANDERIDA MORRIS SIDE joining us and showing their talent around lunch time.

The afternoon continued with a great little set of Sea Shanties from a last minute mix of the PEVENSEY PIRATES & PEVENSEY PLUNGERS. They even had requests from others wishing to join their group, well done on your first gig! The steady flow of visitors continues, our volunteer team ensure every question is answered as best possible and the refreshments keep flowing.

A long hot successful and entertaining open day sadly nearly over, entertainment is rounded off by the PUGS; Pevensey Ukulele Group playing and singing old favourites. A great singalong session ensues!

Washing up done, cakes & biscuit supply almost depleted! It’s time to let our amazing volunteer team go home for a well earned rest.

Summary of the day:

• With visitor numbers estimated to be in excess of 500 people from all walks of life and of all ages, we can safely say the day was a huge success!

• We are very happy to report that the pennies in our donations buckets at the end of the day, are sufficient to cover the balance of our 3D surface scanning costs to scan the SQ & WA.

• No less than four entertainment groups kept our visitors smiling throughout the day.

• Gallons of tea, coffee & squash along with a few kilos of cakes & biscuits were consumed.

• Our visiting local artist Amanda & Gio reported they had a great day and did a great job of pulling visitors in from the beach.

• Three new contacts with teachers interested in bringing school groups to the boatshed in the near future.

• A Graphic Designer contact whom might be able to assist us with developing our 3D surface scans of the boats into something pretty amazing for our website! Fingers crossed!

• Contacts for future project facility ideas! Keep your eyes peeled for updates.

• An additional donation handed to us from Miss Rose of Langney Primary Academy. The Children and parents of the ‘Southern Queen’ class that visited is in November 23, took it upon themselves to raise additional funds through in-school events including an Easter egg raffle & movie in the school hall, sounds great fun! Thank you and we look forward to seeing you at the shed again soon.

• Brief meeting with an aspiring Marine Biologist, seeing if we are able to assist with our associates at ‘Plastic Free Eastbourne’ in their bid to create a marine study Ctr in Eastbourne. We have agreed in principle to assist in any capacity we are able to. Hopefully we can collaborate with PFE on future marine study projects using our small boats and maybe even our own marine scientist. Great to meet you Grace and good luck for the future.

• A very welcomed visit from Fred Elston & his Daughter; Fred is the last surviving crew member of the Allchorn pleasure boats from the very early days! See if you can spot him in the rogues gallery photos next time you visit us. Fred brought along more photos for our archives. Cheers Fred.

• Not forgetting a couple of interested new volunteers! One of whom has since attended and completed his induction, “welcome aboard Chris”.

A huge thank you to all of our brilliant visitors for supporting us with our project, we look forward to welcoming you again at our next event later in the year. Watch this space and spread the word!

Quotes from the day:

“What a hidden treasure!”

“This is my most favourite spot on the beach!”

“An inspiing proect1 Please can yo oen moe often!”

“Thank you for making my day”

“Its fantastic, keep going” Fred Elston ex crew member

Two of our talented local artists, Eastbourne printmaker Amanda Cardoso and artist Gio Martin have been taking inspiration from the boatshed. They produced work after spending time around the facility and came to the Open Day to exhibit and sell their artwork. A percentage of the sales were donated to the project and at the end of a great day Amanda said “we had such a wonderful time – the Open Day was a roaring success which brought people from across the county to see the wonderful work carried out here. It has been a pleasure to spend time here and be inspired by the project” Thanks Amanda, Gio and our in-house artists Hazel, Mick, Sue & Trevor for exhibiting your masterpieces & donating where you could. We are lucky you have you on the team and look forward to seeing you at the next event.

Finally, arguably, the most important thank you goes out to our volunteer team & the friends you roped in on the day! We truly could not run these open days without you and not just on the day! Such a great team that we are proud to call friends, thank you all.