GreenLake wrote: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
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
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
![Very Happy :D](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
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.