SUMMER 2008 NEWS
Mike King, Chairman
of the Management Committee that raised the money to restore Endeavour, has
decided to step down.
Mike has been at the helm since 2001 when both the Endeavour Trust and the Management Committee, overseeing the day-to-day running, were established and has seen Endeavour restored from a very poor condition to her present excellent state.
Mike
recalls his first sight of and subsequent involvement in Endeavour, "When
Mike Guy from the Leigh Times, Peter Wexham, a previous owner, the late John
Porter and I went to Kent and saw Endeavour it was obvious that we couldn't
just leave her to rot. We agreed then to move her to Leigh and she returned
on a huge low loader to be welcomed back to her home-town.
Much activity, both in money raising and physical work, resulted in a sparkling Endeavour going back to Dunkirk four years later. I am grateful to the many people who have put in a lot of hard work during the restoration."
He continued, "I would especially like to mention Reta Cocks, Finlay Marshall and Peter Dolby. The last two of these sailed with skipper Paul Gilson to Dunkirk in 2005; both are now involved in the Management Committee. Finlay is responsible for the upkeep of Endeavour and Peter has agreed to take over from me as Management Committee Chair.
"Peter is no stranger to Leigh and has many recent successes to his name from chairing the Leigh-on-Sea Town Council for two years to making a great success of the Leigh Fishing Festival. Both Peter's father Russell and grandfather were Leigh fishermen, and I feel that Peter is the ideal choice to take over the Chair."
The Endeavour Trust itself, which is a Registered Charity, is separate from the Management Committee that looks after, and is responsible to the Endeavour Trust for, the day-to-day operations of Endeavour. Mike King has not severed all his connections with the Endeavour as he will retain his position as Chairman of the Endeavour Trust and stay on the Management Committee.
Mike has been at the helm since 2001 when both the Endeavour Trust and the Management Committee, overseeing the day-to-day running, were established and has seen Endeavour restored from a very poor condition to her present excellent state.
Mike
recalls his first sight of and subsequent involvement in Endeavour, "When
Mike Guy from the Leigh Times, Peter Wexham, a previous owner, the late John
Porter and I went to Kent and saw Endeavour it was obvious that we couldn't
just leave her to rot. We agreed then to move her to Leigh and she returned
on a huge low loader to be welcomed back to her home-town.Much activity, both in money raising and physical work, resulted in a sparkling Endeavour going back to Dunkirk four years later. I am grateful to the many people who have put in a lot of hard work during the restoration."
He continued, "I would especially like to mention Reta Cocks, Finlay Marshall and Peter Dolby. The last two of these sailed with skipper Paul Gilson to Dunkirk in 2005; both are now involved in the Management Committee. Finlay is responsible for the upkeep of Endeavour and Peter has agreed to take over from me as Management Committee Chair.
"Peter is no stranger to Leigh and has many recent successes to his name from chairing the Leigh-on-Sea Town Council for two years to making a great success of the Leigh Fishing Festival. Both Peter's father Russell and grandfather were Leigh fishermen, and I feel that Peter is the ideal choice to take over the Chair."
The Endeavour Trust itself, which is a Registered Charity, is separate from the Management Committee that looks after, and is responsible to the Endeavour Trust for, the day-to-day operations of Endeavour. Mike King has not severed all his connections with the Endeavour as he will retain his position as Chairman of the Endeavour Trust and stay on the Management Committee.
The icons below link
to the Annual General Meeting agenda, minutes and Chairman's report from
August 2008 and the Balance Sheet and Accounts of the Endeavour Trust from
2008.
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| AGM Agenda | AGM Minutes | Chairman's Report | Balance Sheet & Accounts |
All documents are in Adobe PDF format. If you do
not have Adobe PDF Reader, you can download it by clicking
here. To save documents to your hard drive, place your mouse over the
relevant icon, right click and select 'Save'.
Over eighty happy diners sat down on the Wilton,
headquarters of the Essex Yacht Club, for a great evening on Friday 30th
May. The evening was a joint exercise by Reta Cocks, Heather and Paul
Gilson, and was deemed to be a great success. Those present included
veterans Frank Grove and Bill Reynolds, ably looked after by Bill's
grandson.
Also most welcome were John Milgate, Brian Kennell and Shaun
White who were responsible for advice and restoration of our lovely
Endeavour, A splendid evening aboard the Wilton and who were
accompanied by their respective spouses.
The evening was enlivened by a spirited discourse between
Reta and Peter Dolby, while the latter showed the initial draft of the
PowerPoint slide presentation designed for use at presentations to schools
and other gatherings.
Previous Newsletters have detailed the dilemma of where to
keep Endeavour, trying to balance the demands of easy access and visibility
with safety and prevention of vandalism. Thanks to the generosity of
Endeavour Trust member Richard King, we now have a mooring to the East of
Two Tree Island slipway, to the South of the main creek. Richard has
also made space available for a dinghy on the rack to get crew out to
Endeavour from the slipway.
Spring was a little late this year, and so were the tides. Endeavour spent
her winter in Leigh Marina and was pulled out for the spring clean, paint
and anti-foul, but then got fouled up (ugh!) and stranded. Finlay and his
merry painters did a grand job, but unfortunately re-enter into the water of
Leigh creek was somewhat delayed.
Sailing is a lovely pastime, and when it is done in a classic
like Endeavour, it is doubly enjoyable. However, pleasure can easily
turn to disaster if safety rules are ignored. Your Committee was very
lucky to lure the Deputy Leader of Southend Council to undertake a full
safety evaluation of Endeavour. John Lamb - no mean sailor himself -
used to conduct these evaluations in his professional life. He spent
some time on the Endeavour and drew up a full Risk Assessment.
As a result of this, we now have special purpose made webbing
straps, running the length of the boat on both sides. Anyone
progressing along the decks wearing the special life jackets with harness
can clip on and be quite safe. Passengers, also wearing life jackets,
are in the hold area where they can see all that goes on, and are safely out
of the way.
"I would like to dedicate this story to the memory of
Dudley Cooper, who was sadly lost overboard in the river Crouch in June
2007. A good friend lost." -
Dave Spurgeon
The Endeavour over the
course of a year had to do lots of different jobs as the seasons went by.
White weeding as well as angling parties in the winter, shrimping, fishing
for Dover Soles and eel fishing in the summer. For small boats to catch
eels, you had to 'pair trawl' for them. This is achieved by towing a big net
in-between two boats. I used to pair trawl with my friend, Dudley Cooper. We
had been fishing in the river Crouch for about two weeks. Most eel fishing
is done at night. We had been catching 150 to 250lbs of eels each night.
This particular night, as we
went aboard at Walasea Marina it started raining. By the time we had steamed
up to Fambridge to start fishing, it had turned from slight rain to the
worst rain storm for years. We could see lights moving about behind the sea
wall. These belonged to water board men opening the sluice gates in the
dykes to let the water go into the river (they were hand operated in those
days). We started fishing, and after about an hour we hauled and caught
about 60 to 70lbs of eels. We then moved up river a bit and shot the net
again. This time we had about 300lbs of eels.
"This is really good,"
Dudley said, "So let's move up again and have another go." So we went up
river just below Hullbridge and shot the net again. When we hauled about an
hour later, I said to Dudley that we had caught something heavy in the net.
What happened next, I will
remember for the rest of my life. When we got the net to the side of the
boat, we could see it was all fish; hundreds and hundreds of pounds of eels.
Now we had a problem. Where to keep them? You have to swim eels for about 36
hours before you can send them to market. By putting eels into wooden boxes
with lots of holes in them, the water flows through the boxes keeping them
alive. They also empty their gut and then they stay alive for weeks with
just a trickle of running water on them. Anyway, back to the story; we had
enough eel boxes for about 800lbs of eels. We found an old eel net in the
hold of the Endeavour and tied up one end. We put the rest of the eels into
the net and tied up the other end.
We put floats all along the
net to keep it up and left the eels to swim well. What a night! The biggest
rain storm in years and the best catch the Endeavour had ever had. 36 hours
later, we sent the eels to Billingsgate market. When we got our tally back
from the market we were paid for 1,100 lbs of eels!
This for two small boats was
just fantastic. The best night's work Dudley and myself had ever had. Well
done the Endeavour.
"Why has that green boat
got LO41 on it?"
asked a small boy.
"Because it's a tripper
boat and the manager calls out "Hal-lo 41"
when he wants it back in,"
said the ill-informed father.
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