Most of the center dock removed
The final task in my marina mini-career was taking out the docks. The floating docks had to be removed from the lake and stacked on shore, to keep them from being crushed by the winter ice. This is normally a simple task, taking maybe a day and a half. This year it took a bit longer, due to the near-historic low water on Lake Champlain: the level when we started removing the docks was about a foot below the 100-year median and less than 6″ above the all-time low water of 1941. About a quarter of the dock segments were sitting on the mud and had to be dragged and/or lifted out of the non-existent water.
The launch dock came out first. I had started that process a week earlier by detaching the four segments that were still floating and tying them to the gas dock. I then removed the pins that connected the other 8 segments and just left them sitting in the mud. When the front-end loader arrived, it was used to drag all 8 of those segments to shore where they could then be lifted and stacked. The 4 floating segments were then floated to near the shore where they were also lifted and stacked.
The main docks – the ones that are rented to seasonal customers – were removed next. All but 6 segments could be removed by dragging them free and floating them again. I rode on those docks to shore, like Huck Finn on the raft. The final 6 segments took some heroic – and dangerous – work with the front-end loader, driven by the resort’s facilities manager. It took over 4 hours to remove those 6 segments.
The last dock to be removed was the gas dock. That was pretty trivial as those segments were all still floating (they were in the region dredged last year for the new state boat ramp that was next door).
The final task was to remove the 24 mooring balls. The general process was to string a “leech line” from shore to each of the buoys, tying the line to the anchor chain, removing the buoy and then dropping the chain to the bottom. This took longer than usual because 4 of the moorings were so shallow that the work boat could not get to them. we had to get a rowboat out of storage and use it to get to the final 4 balls. Even then we got stuck a couple of times because the water was less than a foot deep.
My final act at the marina was to take a photo of the dock-less lake. You can see the extensive mud flats. It looks kind of forlorn. Note the anchor block in the foreground – it was under more than 3 feet of water in May.
A long winter lies ahead.
Hopefully one with LOTS of snow.
Lifting a launch dock segment
Riding the docks
Removing a stuck segment
Docks gone