Dartmouth Amateur Rowing Club

  Celebrating 140 years of Success 

                      Est 1869

We have been really lucky in gaining a grant from the phone company O2.  O2’s charitable foundation award grants to local community groups in order to improve the service they give in that town.  Suzie applied for a grant in order to reduce our running costs.  She applied for a grant to pay to insulate the loft space in the club house and to install a water butt system that could catch rain water off the roof, which then could be stored and pumped to wash the boats down when crews came off the water.  At the time we had NO INSULATION in the roof at all and used drinking standard water to wash the boats.  And that was literately money down the drain!  The cost of the work was estimated to be just over £1300.  We were really fortunate to receive a grant for £700 from O2.  At the committee stage we decided that both projects would be invaluable at reducing the running costs of club and would help us, for example, keep this year’s membership cost the same and not have to increase the charge of hiring out the Club house to all the other community groups.  So we decided to use the grant to purchase all the materials and equipment needed for both projects and put the man power in ourselves with a merry band of volunteers.  The roof was cleared of years and years of junk one weekend and insulated by Vaughan and Yorkie on the next. There is a noticeable difference in the temperature of the clubhouse and our fuel bill should also be lower this winter.  The water butt was the next project to be completed and this took a further few weekends of hard work.  The first boat was washed for free in January as you can see from the picture below.  If you are using the green hose with rain water to wash your boat please follow the instructions on the reel.  

We are also very gratefully to the continued support from our local Sainsbury’s during 2009.  Not only did they provide tea, coffee, milk and sugar for all our refreshment stall this year, meaning less costs and more money raised.  They also allowed us to bag pack on the 20^th December and a whopping £450 was raised.  A big thank you to all the members that participated in that event.  Also one of our link schools let us collect our own Sainsbury’s Active Kids Vouchers and ordered our equipment through them.  So a big THANK YOU  for Sainsbury’s for all the ways in which they helped us this year.  Acitve Kids vouchers are on there way so please collect them for DARC and drop them off at the club house or into Gillian’s Hairdressers.