Galleon Storage and Mooring, Beccles, Norfolk Broads

About Galleon Storage and Mooring, Beccles, Norfolk Broads

Eco-friendly boatyard Galleon Storage and Mooring Limited is leading the way in cutting down on pollutants entering the waterways.

Galleon Storage & Mooring at Puddingmoor Beccles, has invested £500,000 in transforming a run down yard into one of the most state of the art and environmentally friendly yards on the Norfolk Broads.

Among its eco-friendly features is a unique decontamination facility, which removes toxic chemicals from hull wash water and bilge water. After the boats are washed down in a specially built bay the wash water is stored in a decontamination tank. It is then run though a WashTek filtration system and 98% of the pollutants are absorbed by cartridges before the clean water is returned to the river.

The American WashTek system is considered to be the most efficient equipment of its kind in the world and it can be mobilised to deal with oil and diesel spills.

The Broads Authority's Sustainable Development Fund has contributed £12,500 to the project.

Conservation Officer, Andrea Kelly, who has worked closely with the yard, said: "This is an innovative boatyard development which has adopted very good practice in protecting the Broads from pollutants, and we hope other boatyards will be inspired by it."

The yard is also the first on the Broads to offer a 'dry stack' system of boat storage which does away with the need to antifoul boats. The yard is able to store boats up to 33 ft long out of the water, launching them when owners wish to use them, saving the cost of antifouling and the cost to the environment.

The yard also offers three EZdock pontoons for storing small boats out of the water.

To add to the yard's environmental credentials the navigation lights marking the entrance from the River Waveney are solar powered.

Work to the yard has included dredging out and piling a yacht basin, building a slipway for the launch and recovery of 'trailer sailers' and secure facilities for storage of cars and trailers. There are also ten berths for boats either awaiting their owners or left ready for returning to the shore after use.

The man behind the venture, Mr William Bent, said: "We were concerned about a lot of antifouled boats being in a basin where there were no tides to sweep the pollutants away. Although I'm not obsessive about being green I think everyone should do their best to protect the environment.

I adopted the dry stack system because of the limited bankside moorings and slipways in the area. I wanted to provide a specialist facility which would enable people to bring their own boats to the Broads."

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