Big ambitions for Strand Quay

After a major upgrade and repair, Strand Quay is poised to boost Rye’s economy and to play a more pivotal role in the town’s tourism offering.

So says the Environment Agency, the public body that has just spent £3.6m to make the quay safer and more attractive to boaters in a bid to reverse a steep decline in leisure craft visits.

About 60 people attended a ceremony on Thursday, April 17 to mark the official opening of the quay. The new floating pontoon, access ramp and timber jetty were on display, along with other mooring improvements and safety features. In addition, essential maintenance has been carried out, including unforeseen repairs to piling ties and repair work to the slipway, walls and concrete capping.

In 2010 about 200 leisure boats visited Strand Quay, but this number plummeted to only 50 boats five years ago, pre-pandemic. The main reason was that the quay was perceived by boaters as a difficult and unsafe place to access their craft.

The centrepiece of the two-year quay upgrade is the £2m floating pontoon, which rises and falls with the four-metre tide — meaning that boaters on the town side of the river can simply walk ashore rather than scale slippery ladders. Up to 16 moorings with electricity are now available at the pontoon. There are a similar number of berths on the other side of the river, now accessed by new ladders. In total, 33 boats each up to 15 metres in length can moor safely at Strand Quay.

Climbing up and down the ladders often posed an obstacle for the more elderly members of the boating community. As Charlotte Amor, the EA’s Waterways Manager, confirmed: “It’s the additional facilities for the boaters which is a vast improvement … what we want is the long-term viability of the harbour.”

“We hope this investment will help bring more visitors by boat to spend time and enjoy Rye and the beautiful surrounding area, and give a boost to the local economy.”

The mooring fee for Rye currently stands at £30 a night. Boaters find a tidal window of about five hours is the norm. Interestingly, more boats visit the town from Europe, especially the Netherlands and France, than from the UK itself.

Rye Harbour Master James Bateman said: “We’re open to permitting the use of the quayside for the local community, but the community must know what it wants.” For example, the Rye International Jazz and Blues Festival (August 21-25) and the Rye Pirate and Smugglers Day (August 9) could make use of the quayside space.

Relishing his ribbon-cutting role at the ceremony, Rye mayor Andy Stuart was enthusiastic about the Strand Quay facelift, describing it as a wonderful new community facility, which will “put Rye back on the map as a destination [for boaters]”.

The mayor went on to describe the newly refurbished boules pitch (terrain) on the quayside as “the Amex Stadium of pétanque courts”. It’s possible that other low-profile facilities or amenities might be developed on the quay for boaters’ and the wider community’s use.

While Strand Quay cannot replicate larger marinas such as the 800-berth Sovereign Harbour in Eastbourne and 1,200-berth Brighton Marina, Rye has proven pulling-power as an historic medieval town, a Cinque Port and a unique visitor destination in its own right.

The two-year contracting work for the Rye quay project was carried out by the Van Oord owned Mackley, a local Sussex firm which built the original quay in 1936-39. As the EA admitted, “it wasn’t an easy project”, with damaged piling ties needing to be repaired last year and local people complaining about the disruptive noise.

Mackley’s area / contracts manager Andy Martin confirmed that the problem with the corroded anchor ties (tie rods) in the quay wall had taken an extra three months’ work to repair last year after the quay wall was found to be creeping forward.

“An innovative solution was needed. It wasn’t easy because of limited space,” he said. This involved sinking stiffer, heavy-duty steel piles in groups of four, joined in a square-shaped arrangement.

Unfortunately, ramming steel piles into existing metal reinforcement caused louder noise than would have otherwise been the case, which led to the complaints.

On a lighter note, when Andy sought to introduce his engineering crew at the opening ceremony, he spotted three of them heartily tucking into lunch outside the nearby Strand Fish and Chips. Somehow it seems fitting that work on Rye’s quay was fuelled by locally-made sea food.

Having spent a couple of years on the quayside, Mackley’s staff clearly knew the lie of the land. The contractor’s pétanque team narrowly beat the U3A Wednesday group, but the U3A Tuesday group triumphed over the Environment Agency.

Image Credits: Environment Agency , Kt bruce .