b'C H A P T E R E L E V E NWater Watchers as one examplehave been uncontested and memorable. Its losses, not always visible, have stemmed from resistance by an agency, communications breakdowns, or ineptitude on the part of a supplier.There was a time in the Nineties when one aftermath of the North Beach break-through had to be dealt with. Reacting to that storms drastic coastline impact, some fishing boats relocated from Chatham Harbor to Stage Harbor. Meanwhile, with the economy in overdrive, pleasure boats were swarming in that same watercourse. The cure was obvious: more moorings had to be set. To move that forward, FCW said it would help pay for a mooring grid to make the most of Stage Harbors area. But when no support was forthcoming from the Harbormaster and very little from marina operators, the Friends went ahead on its own. It spent about $4,000 for an engineering firm to do the plotting. The result? As Lew Kimball grades it, a flawed and unusable plan based on inadequate bottom information.We learned something, added Kimball. It was that FCW simply did not have the horsepower to push through projects against the active opposition of the Towns officialdom. At another point in the mid-90s, with the Stage Harbor Management Plan going into effect, FCW stepped forward to help put it to work. Among many things, the plan called for testing saltwater embayments. FCW board member Martha Stone picked up on that particular mandate. She made a pitch to the Waterways and Shellfish Advisory committees to join FCW in buying a Hydro Lab. The cost: $7,000 (Waterways and FCW put up 25 percent apiece; Shellfish contributed one-half). After the money was spent, the three underwriters discovered that nitrogen in the water could not be tested with the device theyd paid for. And while the Hydro Lab could be useful in other ways, says Martha Stone, we never got any word about any of the data col-After years of pressure to abandon it, the onetime Coast Guard Station launch-way on Stage Island the Davis dockstill stands, rotting away all the while.Many see it as a hazard for harbor traffic.FCW belives its seasons are numbered.Gordon 7,ellner199'