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Bangor Marina Bangor, Northern Ireland -
Conwy Marina Conwy, North Wales, Wales -
Deacons Marina River Hamble, Southampton, England -
East Cowes Marina East Cowes, Isle of Wight, England -
Haslar Marina Haslar, Portsmouth Harbour, England -
Penarth Marina Penarth, Cardiff, Wales -
Portishead Marina Portishead, Bristol, England -
Portland Marina Portland, Dorset, England -
Rhu Marina Rhu, Firth of Clyde, Scotland -
Royal Quays Marina Royal Quays, North Shields, England -
Weymouth Marina Weymouth, Dorset, England
14th September 2023
Portland
Channel Queen
Roy and Chloe's Go Fund Me campaign
Earlier this year we proudly announced our new partnership with Clean Jurassic Coast and Channel Queen, Chloe McCardel's new charter business. The aim of the partnership is to create a Sustainability Sea School through Clean Jurassic Coast as an environmental educational tool for school and youth groups. The workshops start with a beach clean and then return to Channel Queen for a classroom based session looking at the geology of the Jurassic Coast, why it needs to be protected and the impact of the items the group collected on their morning beach clean. The Sustainability School ties into Portland Marina's bigger project 'Plastic Shores' which involves creating sculptures from beach clean debris to display during Portland Week and was, in part, inspired by Bangor Marina's Citizen Sea project which Assistant Manager Bee spotted during a visit to our sister boatfolk marina there.
Originally the Sustainability School was due to start during the Autumn of 2023 when Channel Queen was in her off season as her role as a swim support vessel for Chloe's swim camps, but in July Clean Jurassic Coast and Channel Queen had a gap in the diary and hosted their first Sustainability Sea School workshop for students of St Osmund's School in Dorchester. It was the realisation of CJC's founder Roy Beal's long held dream to create this educational platform for young people and by all accounts was a resounding success.
Sadly Channel Queen, Roy and Chloe's floating classroom, foundered on an Isle of Wight beach not long afterwards during a swim event and Roy's dream has been put on hold, not to mention the distress he and Chloe feel at losing the boat, many of their possessions and the environmental damage done by the wreckage. They're determined to clear as much as possible through salvage and beach cleans when the weather permits and to bounce back from this disaster to continue the educational workshops for local schools and youth groups. A friend of Chloe's, Esther Guy, has created a Go Fund Me page to help raise funds to replace lost items, purchase a new floating classroom and swim support vessel and, if possible with weather and time, retrieve submerged wreckage off the coast of the Isle of Wight where the incident happened.
A team of boatfolk swimmers swam a relay on Wednesday 6 September in the marina reaching the 6km distance they would have swum from Hurst to The Needles, a swim they had planned to do on 29 August to fundraise for Clean Jurassic Coast.
If you would like to support Roy, Chloe and their Sustainability Sea School dream, you can help by visiting Esther's Go Fund Me page and by sharing far and wide!
www.gofundme.com/f/channelqueen-uk
