On Saturday the 15th of November, 2014, the work party assembled in order to pull 69.M onto the shore, in church bay. Help arrived from all four corners of the country, and along with some ESB poles, two tractors, a JCB and a length of cable. The barge was pulled into position the evening before, so that in the morning, all we had to do was secure the cables around the back of the barge, place the tyres on the wire in place, and secure the cable to the back of the tractors. Colm had placed the ESB poles in place using the JCB a few days beforehand so by 10.00 we were ready to begin the lift. The barge rolled up nice and handy, with minimum dragging of the poles, and most of them rolling along as planned. By the time the boat was clear of the lake, she was sitting pretty on the poles all down along. The next issue we had was trying to balance her, so that she could be jacked up in place. Using the bucket of the JCB as a lever in a number of locations, Colm managed to straighten it up, and get the relevant rollers straight and level for the jacking to start. We had two Jumbo jet landing gear jacks, a 15t and 35t jack so weight wasn’t the issue, it was stopping the boat from rocking side to side when jacking at either end. This was easier at the back then at the front, due to the skeg, but everything was in place by 16.30 that evening. Myself and Colm did some more jacking to move the support timbers around a few days later, and then the boat was ready to begin welding the new 10×5 4mm plates onto the bilges.
Barge77m 