Jacksonville post Irma

[DigitalMechanic]

Yes, we have a real mess. Our little sailing club was basically annihilated by Irma. The big problem we have now (after a massive cleanup) is that our docks are all gone. The pilings are even toast (but were not in great shape before the storm). We spent the weekend building wooden floating docks that are anchored about 50ft out in the river to what is left of the old dock. It takes a bit of athleticism to scurry across the "creations" we made of the old dock to get to them, but works for now (and probably a little dangerous too).

We lost a few boats. Mostly because of trees falling on them on the dry docks. We tried to move everything to high ground, but the storm surge was so high boats still managed to drift away off their trailers. One boat floated up into a neighboring property's back yard. When the water receded, it got stuck. Sticking right up out of the ground on it's keel

If you look closely at the picture, you will see that the boats out on the finger piers are in lifts. A good example is the one on the left that is leaning really bad. The water lifted it and one the bunks broke off. When the water went down, the bunk went through the bottom of the hull. No bueno...

My buddy and I were itching really bad to go sailing yesterday after the long week of labor around the club. After the emergency meeting to vote on approval for the builder to put the new pilings in, we were the first to splash a sailboat since the storm (needed to make a statement, lol). Went for a nice little sunset/night sail. There was not really any wind, but just being on the water finally felt like the big reward for all the hard work from the previous week.

[TIM WEBB]

DM, is this at The Rudder Club? I saw a vid of that place that Lowell Stephens posted after the storm, and it wasn't pretty. The river was almost up to the bottom of the 295 bridge, and their docks were basically gone. BTW, the latest Google Earth and Google Maps satellite imagery of that area is post-Irma.

[DigitalMechanic]

Yes sir! That is the spot. Great little laid back sailing club

I believe I saw a picture of the water up on the lowest part of the I295 (Buckman) Bridge at one point, but cannot find it now. But that was nothing compared to the water that came into downtown (where the river gets real skinny). The surrounding areas (South Bank San Marco... where I live , Riverside, North Bank of Downtown, Springfield) all got a bad surge.

If you look at the Rudder Club in Goolgle Earth, you should be able to locate the pool. The water was up to there when the first person could actually drive to the club to check on it. Who knows how high it really got, but we are guessing maybe 10ft for the things to happen that did? The broken docks (ours and everyone else's) settled along a line from the pool over to next property north when the water receded. If you see the launch ramp, and look where the shoe horse of road is that goes by, we had to move wood to get trucks in to drop off 2 of those giant roofing dumpsters. It took 2 days, but we filled them both to the brim.

The current pictures on Google earth I am seeing were from before the storm, the docks just look strange because the pictures are smeared looking. If it were post Irma, all you would see is crooked and/or broken pilings sticking out of the water, with the finger piers orphaned... way out in the water. We have a fleet of Opti boats for the kids sailing program. They are what folks have been using to get out to the lifts on the finger pier to check on their boats. Yesterday, some kind person rigged up a 6HP to an inflatable dingy. My friend an I were sent on a mission in it to find the Aluminum ramp that used to go from the main dock down to the floating dock. We got real lucky, lol. Our prize is currently marked with a throwable PFD. Not sure how we are going to lift that thing out... and then there is the fact that we know that one of the railings is missing off if it. I am sure recouping the main mass of metal will be better than nothing though. Maybe we will find the railing as well?

After marking our prize for later retrieval, we decided to do our own survey of the finger piers (seeing how we had a dingy with a motor now). Most of the lifts seem to be in tact (enough), however nearly all of the decking is gone. My buddy climbed up one of those lifts to check the topside of another friend's boat... He is more acrobatic that I, lol... I stayed put for that one.

Trees, trees, trees... we spent so many days cleaning up fallen trees. Working on the dock and being a "human" marine metal detector was a nice break from the racket of all the chainsaws.

Sunday night sailing was the real prize for all the hard work

[fatjackdurham]

Nice. Good work all around for you. Are the trees any kind of usable wood? Do people down there mill windfalls for lumber? Up here, if a nice tree falls in the woods and the rangers don't hear it, it gets milled in place and the rough cut goes to be used for building new sheds and garages.

[DigitalMechanic]

Mostly pine. I am sure it would have been usable. It has all been cut up so it could be moved off the property to get the club back in order (or best it can be). Considering Jacksonville has so much water, and pretty much nobody has a dock right now, there is a sense of urgency to get a contractor to work on our dock before anyone else's Good news is that the club already had one lined up to deal with some other dock issues, so we were already in line... the scope of work just significantly changed though.

I have not ever seen anyone around here mill a tree in place. They were pretty big pine trees. The thought crossed my mind to grab a few trunk pieces to make some fun outdoor furniture with.

[TIM WEBB]

I always heard good things about The Rudder Club, and The Mug Race was always on my bucket list. Never did that one, as I found out about the FL 120 at about the same time, and couldn't do both. Lowell was (is?) the commodore of that race, and he and Dee were one of the boats that left Corky Bell's right before you guys got there last April. I sure hope your home didn't sustain any major damage?

Yes, in the video he describes the pool as now being an endless pool, as the water is right up against it. And you can see all the wood washed up along the shore. He posted it on the WCTSS facebook page a few days ago. All the latest Google Earth Pro and Google Maps imagery is post-Irma, with the water back down, as the docks are gone and boats are scattered everywhere. In GEP, make sure you have historical imagery turned off. The imagery you can see here doesn't quite go down as far as the Buckman, but you can still see a lot of the Irma damage, all over FL:

https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/irma/index.html

Good job with all the cleanup efforts, and I really hope you folks can rebuild. I think you deserve many more enjoyable evening sails this Fall ... ;-P

[GreenLake]

+1 on what Tim wrote.

[DigitalMechanic]

We got the votes in, and contractor approved. "Reconstruction" is already underway. Hopefully we will have the main dock back in 30 days (It's a decent construction effort so I am saying 60, lol). The fall series races are canceled for now. The next race they plan to do is the Gator bowl regatta in December. That will hurt the pocket book a little, but I am sure the club will pull through fine. While the main dock goes in we will need to figure out how we want to approach with the finger piers. I imagine we will do a lot of work ourselves to save some $$. Most everyone is capable and willing to work. A lot of knowledgeable minds are floating around as well to direct those capable and willing hands

My house got by un-scaved, miraculously never lost power, and considering I only have a few palms trees (that I previously had trimmed), cleanup on the home front was light. We were really lucky. So, we spent the first day after helping others in the neighborhood and a the rest of the week at the Rudder club.

If you are ever back in Florida during the time of year the Mug race is on, let Lowell or me know. I am sure we can find a spot for you to crew You can pretty much go up to the Rudder club on any given weekend and find someone that wants to sail. I am sure the there are lot's of crew spots available especially during the Mug race (on various boats of all sizes).

By the way, how is Cali treating you? Where did you land? Find any good sailing spots? I imagine there should be a few.

Speaking of "Cali", I recently aquired a cover for the boat since it is sitting down at the Rudder club (pine sap sucks). I have a friend that knows Mike Gillum pretty well, and have recently been in contact with him (where I got the idea for the boom vang rig on the CB). I believe he is up by Sacramento. Anyway, my friend told me about Mike being in the canvas business, he just made me a really nice cover for the ol' Daysailer. I have gotten a lot of comments on his craftsmanship. Reminds me that I need to post up some pics to show off his great work. I just have had a really hard time concentrating on anything but Irma fallout, lol.

[GreenLake]

I think we've seen some serious thread drift here that's no longer associated with the original captain's log.

I would like to follow this evolving saga, so I'm thinking the best would be to split the thread right where we start into the Jacksonville scene.

Should we move the "tail" to the Fleets/location section? I think I'll do that and title it "Jacksonville post Irma" - the author of the new "first" post (DigitalMechanic) can always go and edit the subject line to suit.

[DigitalMechanic]

I think we've seen some serious thread drift here that's no longer associated with the original captain's log.

We are sooo bad about doing that, aren't we lol. Thanks for sorting us out

[TIM WEBB]

Yeah, good choice to split it out.

We got the votes in, and contractor approved. "Reconstruction" is already underway. Hopefully we will have the main dock back in 30 days (It's a decent construction effort so I am saying 60, lol). The fall series races are canceled for now. The next race they plan to do is the Gator bowl regatta in December. That will hurt the pocket book a little, but I am sure the club will pull through fine. While the main dock goes in we will need to figure out how we want to approach with the finger piers. I imagine we will do a lot of work ourselves to save some $$. Most everyone is capable and willing to work. A lot of knowledgeable minds are floating around as well to direct those capable and willing hands

My house got by un-scaved, miraculously never lost power, and considering I only have a few palms trees (that I previously had trimmed), cleanup on the home front was light. We were really lucky. So, we spent the first day after helping others in the neighborhood and a the rest of the week at the Rudder club.

If you are ever back in Florida during the time of year the Mug race is on, let Lowell or me know. I am sure we can find a spot for you to crew You can pretty much go up to the Rudder club on any given weekend and find someone that wants to sail. I am sure the there are lot's of crew spots available especially during the Mug race (on various boats of all sizes).

By the way, how is Cali treating you? Where did you land? Find any good sailing spots? I imagine there should be a few.

Speaking of "Cali", I recently aquired a cover for the boat since it is sitting down at the Rudder club (pine sap sucks). I have a friend that knows Mike Gillum pretty well, and have recently been in contact with him (where I got the idea for the boom vang rig on the CB). I believe he is up by Sacramento. Anyway, my friend told me about Mike being in the canvas business, he just made me a really nice cover for the ol' Daysailer. I have gotten a lot of comments on his craftsmanship. Reminds me that I need to post up some pics to show off his great work. I just have had a really hard time concentrating on anything but Irma fallout, lol.

Sounds like y'all are already well on the road to rebuilding. Please give my best to Dee and Lowell. Hope you have more braves than chiefs! ;-P

Good on ya for helping out your neighbors. After big storms, if the house got by with little/no damage, I always thought it was very important to keep the karma bank full by spending the time and effort, that we didn't need to apply to our place, to helping those who didn't fare as well.

No immediate plans to return to FL, but will let you know if that happens. Appreciate the offer! We landed in Santa Cruz, and in the immediate vicinity at least, you have 3 choices: Pacific, Pacific, or Pacific. Monterey Bay to be exact. No rivers, no ICW, no sailable lakes nearby, no nuttin'!

Mike indeed does very nice work, at least that's what I've been told. Never did have a full cover for TRW, just the cockpit cover I made. 'Course, she was never under any pine trees ...

[GreenLake]

I think we've seen some serious thread drift here that's no longer associated with the original captain's log.

We are sooo bad about doing that, aren't we lol. Thanks for sorting us out

Actuallly, the forum is generally quite OK in this regard - it's natural to see it as a conversation; I just like to make it a tiny bit easier for people not in the conversation to find the interesting pieces. (We have a lot of people reading here who never write, hard to know how frequently they stop by).

Anyway, back to the topic: I'm curious to learn when the "aluminum piece" that's tethered to the PFD will be raised. If this were a novel, it would be my favorite sidekick

[DigitalMechanic]

Anyway, back to the topic: I'm curious to learn when the "aluminum piece" that's tethered to the PFD will be raised. If this were a novel, it would be my favorite sidekick

Me too. It was interesting enough finding it. We were sent out on the commodores inflatable RIB (or at least I hope it was his) with some PVC poles to hunt it down. My buddy and I of course had to crack a "can o' liquid knowledge" first and speculate about the possibilities. Here is what we cam up with...

1. By looking at the pilings that were holding the floating dock the in place that the ramp went down to, we noticed that they broke off in a south westerly direction. We believe this means that when the floating dock actually broke lose, the wind was blowing from the North east still (would have been early in the storm). Winds started NE, then went East, SE, and South as the storm progressed by us. I knew the wind had been coming from the NE all week, which is why I believe the storm never turned up the east coast of Florida, but I am not a meteorologist so what do I know? lol. I really had not expected the NE wind to hold as long as it did as the storm fell upon us (thought the winds from the cyclone would have shifted it quicker once over us).

2. The floating dock was found a mile or 2 north after the storm down by NAS JAX (Naval base), so that opened up the possibility that even though the piling broke something else held the floating dock around long enough for the storm surge to rise up and over the main dock and pilings. Else I would suspect it would have got caught up down stream either by the 295 bridge (Buckman) or some other property, and them when the wind changed came back north and got stuck there, or possibly the finger piers, who knows?

3. What we were hoping for is that the dock did not break off, stay put, rise and flatten/laydown the metal ramp, and then lift over the piling and cruise away with it northbound and dump it somewhere in between the Rudder club and NAS JAX. That makes for a 1-2 mile wide search

4. Then there was the possibility that the surge had not rose enough early in the game while the winds were blowing from the NE still, but broke the piling and separated the the floating dock from the metal ramp while still trying to drift south. If this was the case, then the aluminum dock would be close to the location it started in before the storm.

Option #4 sounds like the logical place to start, so we headed over in the inflatable dinghy with our PVC metal detectors (orphaned water lines from the main dock) and started using the poles to stab the seafloor and see if we could fine anything. Starting in the original location we came up empty handed. It was a little tiring trying to keep the dinghy in place as the current was pushing us around. We gave up after a little while... or wait... maybe we ran out of beer. That was it, so after a quick beer run up to our cooler on land (I think we just wanted an excuse to cruise the dinghy around), we came back and checked some more. We started by moving a few feet away from what we think we identified as the starting location, a few feet at the time. When we finally heard the big thud we had been waiting to for, we made sure to keep feeling it out to make sure we had not simply found a rock. We marked the staring point of it about 5-10ft towards land from the starting point, in between the old main docks's pilings. We marked the end of it SW about 6-7 feet from there. We know the ramp was not that wide, but at the same time we know the ramp was longer than that. My buddy jumped in the water and quickly found the rail on it, which made it easy to stand up in the river and tie it off. However, we know by the direction the rail is going that the thing is laid out on the sea floor in a SW direction. Also, only being able to feel out 6-7 ft of it, I would say that a good portion of it is buried under the sand. Then there is the fact that we could not identify a second rail

So, here is what I think happened... which is fun to speculate as we will never really know because nobody saw it...

1. The pilings for the floating dock broke early in the storm while the winds were coming in from the NE
2. The tide was possibly going out at the time?
3. The water had not rose above the main dock?
4. The floating dock was fighting being pushed by the wind one direction and another by the current?
5. After a few bounces off the main dock, and getting pushed toward the shore, the floating dock dumped the ramp between some pilings?

I have no idea if that is how it went, but all I know is that we got pretty lucky that the ramp had not voyaged as much of the river as the floating dock. I am pretty sure that we would have given up on the search effort pretty quick if that were the case

I believe that one of the guys with a bigger fishing type motor boat is going to bring it to the club next weekend and try and pull it out. We really do not have any motor boats hanging around, well we did have one club boat but it got destroyed. If he can drag it close enough to the retaining wall, we think we can lift it out with the crane.

[DigitalMechanic]

Sounds like y'all are already well on the road to rebuilding. Please give my best to Dee and Lowell. Hope you have more braves than chiefs! ;-P

I will be sure to tell them when I see them. Hope you find a good sailing spot soon!

[GreenLake]

Cool story.