Moorage Committee Report

The Moorage Committee wishes to thank you for your efforts in readying your boats for the upcoming season. It’s great to see everyone’s boats looking shiny and bright, proudly displaying the Club Burgee.

Our Club is now asking for some very important help from mooring members.

Presently, the Club has several large powerboats moored in firebreaks. This has happened because of a shortage of members who own sailing vessels, along with the commitment to fulfill members’ needs for moorage.

Recently, the Club submitted our fire prevention plan to the Seattle Fire Department. Work on this plan began years ago, has been approved by SFD, and we now have six years remaining to fully comply.

The scope of the plan includes separating vessels so that in a fire, the firebreaks (the open spaces between covered moorages at the Club docks) would minimize spreading of flames from one vessel to the next.

For the firebreaks to work it requires vessels in these spaces to have a height of no more than seven feet from the waterline to the top of the superstructure.

With the Seattle Fire Department looking at potential fire hazards, in our case a marina fire, a plan was needed to satisfy the fire codes, while saving the members from the very high costs of sprinkler systems and still maintain acceptable levels of fire safety.

The result has been some changes in the design of the QCYC docks and of the fire prevention equipment. Also changed is the way we must assign vessels to slips at the Club.

The entire process of placing only sailing or low vessels into firebreaks will take years to complete. Queen City Yacht Club needs the cooperation of its members to make this happen, and regrets any inconvenience that its members incur during the re-assignment process.

That being said, the Club is asking all members who own a sailboat, or a low level vessel assigned to open slips, to voluntarily move to a firebreak. Sail boaters that already are assigned to a firebreak know how nice and roomy these slips are. Contact the Moorage Chairman, Richard Frisch, or Cochairman Dan Wilshin at: moorage@queencity.org

Richard Frisch
Moorage Committee Chair