VIDEO: Watch Burntisland Sailing Club installing its new pontoons in the east dock

A Burntisland Sailing Club boat passes a cruise ship in the Forth. Pic by Jenny Dingwall.

The pontoons will provide mooring for 14 boats as well as an easy access ramp which will help the nearby Kinghorn Lifeboat with any medical evacuations it may have to carry out.

And the club hopes the new facility, right on its doorstep, will lead to more leisure boats from home and abroad visiting the area where they will be assured of a warm welcome.

The club raised almost £75,000 for the project, with grants from Fife Environmental Trust, Fife Council’s locality fund, Burntisland Common Good Fund the Big Lottery and Babcock which has been running a special apprentice scheme to help refurbish the pontoon.

Club member Gordon Alder, who took the video showing the work being carried out, said: “It has been a busy time.

“Last Wednesday and Thursday were spent putting in the main pile attachments while club members put together the pontoons in sections like a jigsaw.

“On Monday the contractors were back doing more attachments and fittings and on Tuesday the crane was back lifting the pontoons into the water.

“The rest of the week will be spent doing the fixtures and fittings and by then we will have around 80 per cent of the work done.

“At the weekend we will be moving all our boats from the yard into the harbour and trying out the new pontoons, so it’s an exciting time for us.”

Sarah Price, the club’s commodore, told the Press: “This is a really significant week for Burntisland Sailing Club.

“The installation of pontoons in the East Dock represents the culmination of six long years of planning and fundraising.

“By allowing 24 hour deep water access to a top-quality moorings area, Burntisland places itself firmly on the chart for a wide section of the sailing community – especially for the local area, but also from elsewhere in the Forth and even from overseas.

“If our pontoon development helps encourage more local people to enjoy sailing, as our increased membership already shows, then we can be happy, in our small way, that the rescue of BiFab is not the only good news story in town.

“For a complex development like this it’s been necessary to engage professional contractors and fabricators for the specialised installation work. Fife Environmental Trust, Fife Council’s Locality Fund, the Burntisland Common Good Fund and Babcock Engineering are all valued supporters of our fund-raising efforts, but it’s the club members themselves who have turned out time and again for work parties, often in screaming winds and sleet, who have helped push to the limit what we can do with our hard-won funds.”