Thursday, May 26, 2011 by Eugene.

The camper ferry was able to load passengers from our newly installed float today! I just want to thank The Santa Catalina Island  Conservancy for sending down the overwhelming force of workers and equipment. Between them and the underwater salvage company we hired, Warren Diving, the project moved forward at unprecedented speed. I should mention that Jeremy, Grant and Kyle from TCX really stepped up and made the new float install happen. Their knowledge and experience with the cove made all the difference in the world.

We have some more work to do to make the pier-side moorings more permanent, but the float is now functional and ready for a busy Memorial Day Weekend.

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Thursday, May 26, 2011 by Eugene.

Wednesday was a busy and semi-successful day. The Conservancy team was able to demo the rest of the old float and assist in the launch of the new one. It was a great moment when that all came together around med-day. The remainder of the day was spent trying to connect the new float to the old anchoring system. Ron (from Warren Diving Service) ran into some problems there.

It seems that we still didn’t have enough chain to connect the western anchor. That is the seaward anchor that holds the keeps the ferries from pushing the float out of alignment. However, Jeremy made another attempt (free diving) to find the missing section of chain, and where all previous attempts had failed, he suddenly succeeded! We spent several hours trying to dig out and move over 70 feet of chain, but are yet to recover all of it out of the sand. The pounding surf of last weekend buried it well.

Also, one of the “dead man” cables (lines heading to the beach and attached to posts called “dead men” ) had snapped during the storm surge. Finding that cable, buried somewhere in the sand in the eastern section of cove, will prove difficult, if not impossible.

Today’s tasks are to recover and utilize the section of chain that Jeremy found and rig a temporary anchor system where the cable had snapped. Then we will assess what hardware is needed to provide a permanent mooring for the new float.

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011 by Eugene.

Today, the Catalina Island Conservancy crew did double duty. Jose did some more work on the pier to make the damaged section stronger, and Mark did his magic with the bulldozer. Robert operated the back hoe, breaking up the old float so that it could be loaded into the dump trucks Lenny sent down. Ryan helped us open up the drain plugs on the replacement float so that Capt. George (of the Sand Dollar) could pressure test the drums. He found a ton of holes in the old steel drums that are designed to keep the float floating. He and Kyle patched it up, and even Dan helped!

Ron found that we were missing a large section of chain from both the west and east anchors, so he took the skiff back to the mainland to bring back enough chain (hopefully) to finish the job.

Jeremy and Kyle got the anti-fouling paint on today as well, and although Jeremy spent an hour and a half in the surf looking for our missing anchor chain, he was unsuccessful. The surge has made visibility a challenge in our cove, and recovery efforts have suffered.

Finally, the section of old float that is further down the tide line (and nearest the pier) remains stubborn to efforts to pull it up on the beach. Mark will continue to work on that with the dozer tomorrow at low tide.

Although we had a couple of set-backs today, I am confident that we will have the new float in position for the camper departure on Thursday, and the landing will certainly be ready for Balboa Yacht Club’s outstation opening day on Memorial Day Weekend!

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