In Your Shoes - Zak Hegarty

Meet the Neighbours - North Car Lighthouse Ship

With the weekends being the busiest time for Foxlake, my “weekend” this week was Monday Tuesday. So back to work this morning and starting the week off with an early morning gym session then over to the City Quay to open up the site. A staff meeting first thing with all the Foxlake Staff, discussing the season and the week ahead, most importantly the Wakeboarding competition at the weekend.

The competition will see the best wakeboarders from all over Scotland come to Dundee to compete in the comp. I will be judging the competition and so had asked Taymara, the charity that manage the North Car Lighthouse Ship if we could use the ship to judge the comp from. David Kett from Taymara has given me the go ahead and also gave me a tour of the ship!

Admin… someone has to do it

I spent some time sorting out the banking this morning before the rest of the staff came in to set up the site. A busy day of aqua park and wakeboarding bookings and the sun stayed out for most of the day. This afternoon I dropped off a raffle prize to be used at the re-opening of a city centre café.. no spoilers for the café’s new name! Back to Foxlake for some admin and organising a staff day out for Brew Dog- here’s hoping they bring us some beer!

Competition preparations

Today was all about getting ready for the competition tomorrow. It is the first wakeboarding competition Dundee will have hosted and should be a brilliant day. A lot of preparations are needed so today was made up of running about with the rest of the team and getting everything together! Wakeboard cable maintenance, banners, flags, the podium, the prize bags, sorting running orders and warm up sets for all the riders.

COMP DAY

Big day ahead so it was down to the dock early to get everything set up. The day started with a SUP yoga session, this has been a brilliant addition to Foxlake this year and runs every second Saturday morning in the summer. Soon after the zen of yoga we had the first riders out on the water for their practice sets for the comp. All levels were welcome from rookie to open, and from age 6 up. Practice sets finished it was time to do a rider briefing and then to head onto the North Car Lighthouse Ship for the judging to start. Comp days always have an amazing buzz about them with people of all ages and abilities coming together to wakeboard. A brilliant day with loads of old friends and new coming to experience Dundee’s first wakeboarding competition.

Saturday evening I went to a re-launch of what was “tea and cake” on Exchange street, re-launching as “Simpsons” the family run business put on a brilliant party with amazing food cooked by the eldest daughter, and cocktails by Bird and Bear. An ideal end to a big Saturday!

Staff training - Careers outside the norm

Being a small and growing business, the need for younger staff to progress into more senior roles in rife at the moment. Luckily I am in the position to be spoilt for choice with my current staff looking to grow within the business and having the skills to do so!

Sunday’s day took the shape of doing some in house training with my “teamleaders”. These two have chosen to spend a year after university working for Foxlake Dundee. Keen to persue a career in an industry outside of the norm. We spent time leaning about the workings of our business behind the scenes.

Safe to say it wasn’t as exciting as they had thought!