Removing some park docks for the winter

[skip1930]

Removing some park docks for the winter; At Wave Point in Little Sturgeon Bay.

Even though the airport is my Door County summertime job, I'm 'loaned out' at the end of the season to the Door County PARKS department [all in the same hanger building] where extra help is used to pull the Canadian made floating docks out of the water for the winter and place the 15 sections in the parking lot where they are pressure washed later. Usually in the snow and ice. The very two end sections make an 'L' shape, hence the orange balls 'out in Indian territory' and not in a straight line.

To start someone reaches down into the water on a clam day and pulls heavy chain out of a key hole stamped into the steel of the floating dock section and up on the deck. A safety line is clipped on and the chain is fed back down a 4" x 4"-12" long tube where we grapple the line and pull the chain back up on deck. A numbered orange float ball is snapped on to the end of the chain and the safety line removed. The ball and chain is tossed back into the water, locating the chain for next spring. Later we come back and snap on a weight to sink the ball under water so the ice flows don't mess up the numbering system.

All the chains are crisscrossed under the dock sections and that makes a very stable dock and keeps 15 sections straight in the wind.
Where sections meet we take a dock board off so the 12~13/16 inch nuts, washers and bolts holding any two sections together through rubber pieces can be impact gunned apart. [requires we bring our generator].

Once floating free a couple of guys drag the floaters to the take out ramp for rigging and pulling and parking.
We switch off between unchaining, unbolting, pulling and rigging the sections.

Here are some pics. skip.

Several sections already pulled out.



A couple of sections pulled and floated to the ramp, waiting to be rigged.


One typical 10,000 lb section rigged and being lifted.


It's nearly too many pounds for the lift. Pulls the back wheels off the tarmac extended and going up hill.


They are kind of big. Kind of ugly.


Off to the other end of the parking lot for placement, unrigging, and washing.

The terminal and my shop, dump and snow plow ready, articulated tractor with blower. Couple of shots of Michelle washing the front mounts prior to being put a way. A few hanger pics. It's going to be a quiet winter. We are laid off till spring.



We have 60 hangers here on 470 acres.

[Gerry]

Being just up the road in Fish Creek; all I have to say is the only day worse that taking the boat out of the water for the winter is the day the docks are pulled.  Good luck with those plows.  Hope we don't need them until I am in Arizona.

[Subsailor637]

Not sure I understand the purpose of pulling "floating" docks out of the water? Don't the floats lift as the ice forms? They don't pull the docks in Kenosha Wi.

[nies]

One reason to take floating docks out is if there is a chance of when the ice goes out the wind push from ice sheets can move and destroy anything in its path,..................nies

[skip1930]

If we don't unchain and pull them out on land, the ice flows at 20 degrees below zero tend to dislodge the concrete block anchors and allow these to drift with the ice out of line.

It would be a real mess requiring divers, barges, and cranes to realign the block anchors and dock sections and re chain in an X pattern.

The reason why we pull the orange balls 4 foot down under the surface of the water with lead weights is to 'park' these balls under the depth of the ice in water so they can be found and collected in the spring.

These docks are almost 20 years old and you can see by the waterline just how far down into the water they float. We usually have a foot thick of ice. Good enough to drive a pick-up truck out onto the ice. You pay for what you get. Don't go cheap.

skip.