Concrete/Culverts and Reef Balls

Soon after Spike was placed, in fact it was one month and one day after
Spike was place, we placed 10 nm miles off Ponte Vedra, 19 nm SxSE
of the Mayport Jetties, in an area knows as Floyds Folly, 750 tons of
concrete/culverts and Reef balls, where two reef balls were memorial
reef balls containing the ashes of Philip Busnot and Capt. Bill Newman.

You have to go back to 2006 when Mandarin High School, using molds
and donated concrete, began forming what’s knows as reef balls. The
reef balls stayed on the front lawn of Mandarin High School for the next
three years.

Following the same process of acquiring funding, the city returns to the
state, FWC in this case with the paper work requesting a grant. We get
one and with city fundings and the helps of volunteers, we begin the
process of locating material, locating transportation from the sites
where the concrete//culverts are located, video, pictures, loading,
unloading, getting the barge, the tug, cranes and personel.

We do it and all within a one month span of placing Spike.
Here is a video of the Pre-Deployment dive made by the
Jacksonville Reef Research Team as filmed by me, Larry Davis:
[xr_video id=”5205926e2eb34fe494930ae60e7637fe” size=”sm”]
Divers in the video are:
   Dana Morton(Scientist)
   Joe Kistel(circular sweep)
   John Perkner (Capt-Circular sweep)
   Larry Davis(Video)
   Sue Wilcox(measuring sediment depth, circular sweep)
   Phil Harvil(Photo, Water Temp., sediment samples, water samples).

On August 18th, we left Mayport on Bulldog, the tug, pushing a
barge with over 750 tons of concrete. The trip was the exciting
part. I’ll tell you about that right now.

We didn’t leave as early as we left with Spike. We left at around
5AM. It was still dark out as we navigate the riverway towards
Mayport. The trip should take us about 1.5 hours to get to the
jetties, then another 3 hours to travel 19 miles. It was a beautiful
day. The sky was turning red with the light of the rising sun
reflecting off the sky. Dolphin were playing, jumping all around us.
Dolphin are a good omen. The city boat pulls up next to us before
we reached Mayport and we say our morning greetings and inform
the crew that the time to our destination will take approx 3 hours.
They take off ahead of us to locate and mark the placement site.
Using GPS and a bouy to mark the spot.

Now, it is known that the roughest part of the trip will be at the exit
of the jetties to the open ocean. Here the waters from the St. Johns
river meet thee open ocean. The seas get turbid here and the current
will move you one way or the other. The current happen to be heading
north this AM. Then suddenly, Bam! our starboard cable attaching the
tug to the barge snaps. We’re now holding on to this barge carrying
750+ tons of concrete and a crane by one steel cable. We’re drifting
north and the captain begin attempting to control the turn by applying
speed to the port prop. This doesn’t quite work and we are now about to
perform one of the largest 360’s between a large ocean marker bouy
and the end of the stone jetties.  I little harry…  Some of us are thinking
Jacksonvilles newest artificial reef may be right off the jetties if we don’t
get this under control. We eventually do and we begin our travels, South
towards Floyds Folly.

The ride was nice and at 8 knots we figured about 3 hours… until…
Bam! guess what? The starboard cable snaps again. So here we go again.
Another huge 360 in the middle of the ocean. Shore is only 5 miles away.
Also note the lenth of the barge was a football field. so image that going
360’s with a tug attached to the back end.

Well, someone say, why push, pull the darn barge. So that’s what we did,
all the way to the site, 5 hours later! So we pull up on site at around 1pm
and begin unloading the concrete/culverts on one side of the barge,
followed by the reef balls on the other side of the barge.

We di dnot have the crowd we had at Spike, but this isn’t as exciting.
Besides, Jacksonville first artificial reef in almost 10 years was placed
last month, so what’s the big deal… lol. 🙂

Video of the project is in the works all the way to the placement of
the concrete/culverts and reef balls. Stay tuned.

© 2009, lars2923. All rights reserved.