Look at this monster which toured Ventnor marina last week.
As you might have guessed, what this monster eats is weed. I mentioned recently that the dreaded blanket weed was spreading in the marina and I'm glad to say that Aquavista, the marina owners took action and booked contractors to cut and clear it all. Of course the paddle wheel design is the sensible thing to use because propellers don't do well (to put it mildly) in blanket weed.
Actually two boats were involved, one to cut the weed (about a metre deep apparently) and one to rake up the cut weed and dump it on the bank. Here they are in operation.
The rake/dumper boat was fun to watch as it rocked and dipped alarmingly when the weed filled rake was lifted.
In all they took the best part of three days to complete the job and it looks like they were pretty thorough, passing time and again over some of the open areas. I should imagine the bill for the work will be sizeable. The cut weed (some tons of it I would think) is being left in huge piles on an unoccupied bank of the basins to dry out after which the marina says it will be composted.
In other news, we return to the mystery of the piling spotted in the towpath (see a couple of posts ago). Just outside the marina I found this sizeable length of it.
1 comment:
I suppose they are not aiming for speed, but the paddle wheels have tiny blades. No chance of getting tangled with weed. Rainman.
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