Client notes
Comments from people who keep the wall, not from a ratings widget
These notes refer to named commissions. Names of harbours are withheld where the committee paper is still circulating.
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They spent two mornings with the pilots and one awkward afternoon with the fuel barge operator. The charts matched the complaints I had been hearing, including the Tuesday pinch I had half hoped they would ignore. The bound copy is now the paper we pass to new committee members.
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I already knew the east berth ran hot. What I did not have was a clean picture of the empty hours after the second sailing. Their review is short, a little dry, and useful in a budget meeting. I would have liked the crane-cycle overlay included in the base fee rather than as an extra.
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Our call log was a mess of agent abbreviations. Content Craftline sat with it until the trades made sense. The report named the fishing boats we still rely on, which the previous consultant had folded into ‘other’.
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They stood on the ramp in a rain jacket and did not get in the way. The briefing at the harbour office used our own shift names. That sounds small. It meant the night crew recognised the page.
A longer note: the Tuesday pinch on a Solent municipal quay
Helen Vickers instructed a harbour activity study after two winters of complaints about the east wall. The movements book showed occupancy that looked even across the week until the bars were split by tide. Tuesdays after a spring tide stacked fishing landings against a regular coaster that would not wait for the next rise. The fuel barge, which had been treated as a footnote, occupied the only remaining fendered length.
We spent two mornings with the pilots and an afternoon with the barge operator, who was not pleased to be asked about his hours. The bound copy did not recommend a new timetable. It showed the pinch, named the trades, and left the committee to decide whether Tuesday bunkering should move. Helen still uses that copy to induct new members. The mild discomfort in Owen Grant’s occupancy review, elsewhere on this page, is useful too: a crane-cycle overlay was extra, and he was right to say so.