LFHA Members’ Home

License Labels are available from the Electricity Supply Pillar on the hardstanding now.

Please ensure that a current License Label is clearly visible on your vessel when stored or moored on LFHA property.

There are Four types of License Label with different prefix letters

w – for moored  or wet-harbour-berthed vessels  (wet)

d – for dinghies and tenders stored on the hardstanding  (dry-berthed) & VIS*

r – for craft licensed for horizontal storage on the racks

h – for Homebased personal Craft ( HPC )

Licensed Canoes & paddleboards may only be accommodated in the horizontal storage racks

*To avoid confusion over canoe racks and those for the vertical storage of inflatables, the latter are now referred to as the Vertical Inflatable Store (VIS), a part of the hardstanding.

New keys to the LFHA Engine Store are now obtainable from the Membership Secretary

Invoices have already been emailed to 2025 members who might wish to renew or amend their licenses.  If you do not have your invoice, please email the membership secretary

The plan to introduce a new way of renewing LFHA Licenses has been postponed until 2027.

Be aware of different Harbour facilities available to different vessel types/sizes
The Association has finite storage & berthing capacity.  Dryberth capacity on the hardstanding in both summer & winter is on the limit from year to year.  It follows therefore, that requests for greater or different capacity, may be declined.  It therefore is essential that you enquire of the Harbour Board before purchase if you hope to keep a new vessel at Lympstone Harbour.
There is a limit of one each per household for each of the following categories irrespective of the availability of space:
   Dinghies – maximum length for summer only dry-berth storage is 4.9m
   Canoes/kayaks – maximum length in racks, <4.9m –  limited number >4.6m
   Inflatable tenders (small) –  maximum length on hardstanding summer or winter, 3.5m
   Moored vessels – will you need a new mooring?

Further restrictions by vessel type
   RIBS – large RIBS are not permitted to be stored on the Hardstanding at any time
   Cruisers – as a general rule, only private bilge-keel vessels <=8.5m loa & <=2.9m beam will be craned, but other constraints may apply.
   Vessels >10m cannot be accommodated in the tidal harbour
   Catamarans are not accommodated on the hardstanding at any time.

Advertising Boats for Sale
Members advertising their vessels for sale should confine wording to vessel-related features and not speculate on what facilities might be available in Lympstone to a new owner.

The Harbour Board is about to re-survey our moorings and many buoys appear to be unidentifiable.

It is a requirement of your membership to mark and keep clean and legible the mooring number on your buoy apart from keeping it serviceable for the associated licensed vessel.

Please visit your mooring and address the above in the next fortnight.  Thanks.    Lympstone Harbour Board 6/8/2025

HARBOUR WORKS

The work done by our masons, Oldbury’s of Exmouth, in 2024 was so effective that there have been no visible signs of wear despite the storms of this winter. This means that the total sum expended on maintenance of the walls remains at £56,967. Oldbury’s are content to be on call at any time for any repairs identified by the Board. The Wet harbour and the brook were hydraulically dredged last in April 2024. The operation may be repeated this year depending on whether or not the winter rains have kept the wet harbour relatively clear. There have been a series of cliff falls as a natural result of the continuous rains since December, particularly behind the canoe racks and, again, behind the club. The Board will assess the situation and seek to rectify these and the build-up of shingle in the brook in the four days following craning-in. Rory McDougal attended to an impressive list of pressing smaller maintenance jobs such as securing the bolts of the pontoon mooring brackets and planning for repairs to the wooden wall alongside the brook. Our joint project with LSC to fund an internet PTZ camera, the images of which are available to all members of the Association and the Club has proved to be a great success.  The ability to monitor the harbour remotely with such high-quality images will add greatly to security.  We owe much to the project manager of this initiative, the new Commodore of the Club, Peter Turgoose.

FISHERIES

Ingham Fisheries has continued to prosper with an extension of the timber frameworks in the oyster farm. Provided there is no environmental compromise Jason is confident that the business will prove viable. Alan Harwood remains as our Fisheries Officer.

PRESSURE ON HARBOUR

The pressure on Association facilities has eased slightly as the LOA of registered moored vessels has decreased together with the number of sailing dinghies stored on the Hard. The Board administered 232 licenses over the year with a total LOA of 920 metres. The restriction on the number of licences by vessel type issued to any household in the parish has helped with a more equable distribution of facilities and our members are congratulated for accommodating the change. The Membership Secretary has provided the table attached to the end of this report which displays the breakdown of the issued licences and shows that the harbour is operating consistently at around maximum capacity.

DRAFT HARBOUR REVISION ORDER

The Harbour Authority for the Exe Estuary, Exeter City Council, submitted in October 2025 for public consideration a draft Harbour Revision Order. The stated intention was to collate all the relevant historical legislation relating to the Exe and request the grant of additional powers so that the Authority could meet the requirements of the 2002 Port Marine Safety Code (PMSC) and the Marine & Coastal Access Act of 2009.  Why a PMSC for a nature reserve with virtually no commercial activity is necessary is a moot point. The Board responded with the following essential points:

1. The proposal that the Marine Management Organisation has the power to demand that all existing and new moorings are registered is statutory over-reach of an egregious kind. The sub-letting of this right to the Port Authority transfers significant powers to act against the interests of the owners of the fundus. Some of these are given specific exemptions in the draft HRO but the LFHA – which owns 113 acres of foreshore and fundus and leases a further 22 from the Crown – is not on the list or even mentioned as a land owner. This is a nonsense and must be amended.
2. The designated Port Limits excludes the wet harbour but then extends down the south wall to the tidal gate. 90% of the area of fundus and foreshore owned by the LFHA is dry at low tide and 50% of that area remains dry on Neap tides. The whole area is thus not navigable by any vessel for over 70% of the time on any day. It should be noted that the brook not only needs annual dredging to maintain it as a navigable passage but also to remove silt deposits which threaten the operation of the tide gates. If these fail, lower Lympstone will flood. Extending the area controlled by the Authority as presently proposed would be a classic example of statutory over-reach.
3. The HRO proposes that the Harbour Authority exercises control over moorings by issuing a bulk license to existing mooring organisations. The necessity for this for all those mooring areas, such as ours at Lympstone, which are nowhere near the navigable channel is not at all clear.  The Authority is being somewhat disingenuous in issuing a separate consultation on the draft license and not mentioning it in the HRO and by conflating that with no mention in the HRO of how the issue and exercise of increased powers by the Harbour Authority are to be funded.

CRANING OPERATIONS

Successful last year.  Vessel owners are asked to plan ahead as last-minute appeals for bespoke treatment may not be accommodated – the default obligation is that owners will be present for craning.  We will continue to use the practise of not having a briefing in the Clubhouse but we will assemble outside the club for a brief verbal emphasis of the essential points.  Boat owners will be asked to assemble at a given time and must agree to a full set of instructions for the operation by email beforehand. All applications for craning and for wet and dry winter berths must be submitted to the Board by the 1^st of September each year so that they can be considered by the Board at its September meeting to enable a craning-out plan later in the same month.

WATER QUALITY

The work of the Village Water Quality Group continues. Richard Crisp remains as the Board’s representative on the Steering Group and on the Port Users’ Group so that the views of the Association will continue to be represented.

FUTURE PLANS

Our Membership Secretary has put a great deal of work into commissioning a new invoicing and accounting software package which we hope will be operating in time for the 2026 boating year. The Board will examine the condition of the tidal fence on the southern side of the slipway with a view to repairing or replacing rotten planks and iron brackets.

THANKS TO MEMBERS OF THE BOARD

I am grateful to my colleagues for the sheer effort that they put into the management and the upkeep of this unusual and rather precious place.  It takes hundreds of hours of unpaid voluntary work which is always freely offered and cheerfully delivered.

Colonel G F Wheeler

Chairman, LFHA

30-day predictions numbers & graph 

To view a pictorial representation of monthly tides past & future, click here.   Thanks to Tim Jupp for these.

LFHA Point, Tilt & Zoom CAMERA