Boathouse Restructuring

Today we turn the calendar back 16 years to Rosslyn’s boathouse restructuring.

Some eighteen months or so into our rehabilitation project we had already sailed past our most generous timeline for completion. And the end was far from near. In fact, the finish line continued to retreat the more we advanced upon it. And, as you can see in today’s photographs, we had only just begun to undertake the looong overdue boathouse restructuring.

Today’s photos portray a sunny morning on March 6, 2008. But the day-to-day reality was often considerably more inclement. Rough water. Freezing temperatures. Sleet. Snow. Ice…

Not optimal conditions for rehabilitating an historic building on a failing pier in Lake Champlain! Especially restructuring the pier itself and integrating a sophisticated engineering solution to the whimsical physics of a building that the inspector had warned me was “one ice flow away from a watery grave”.

And yet this team persevered boathouse restructuring, a race against time and weather, a race against losing this whimsical historic building that had smitten us from the outset. During the fall. The winter. The spring. It was a monumental accomplishment on the part of Jonathan Pribble and his team.

And a decade and a half later we remain profoundly grateful.

Thank you, Jonathan.