Courtesy Photo | The 49-foot stern loading utility boat (BUSL) was brought into service in the late...... read more read more
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CAPE MAY, New Jersey – U.S. Coast Guardsmen removed thousands of pounds of damaged steel Aids to Navigation (ATON) structures used to support the day and night signals from the New Jersey Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) during a nine-day operation.
Coast Guardsmen from Aids to Navigation Team (ANT) Cape May, N.J. worked together with Coast Guard divers from around the country to remove 22 damaged structures from the waterway. ANT Cape May crewmembers then replaced the damaged ATON with seasonal foam buoys.
The 102-nautical-mile New Jersey ICW is marked by 326 steel pile day beacons and lights. Thousands of commercial and recreational mariners travel on the New Jersey ICW every year, which runs from entrance of the Cape May Canal to about 40 nautical miles south of New York City.
Many of the steel pile channel markers were 20 to 40 years old. Ice, Nor’easters and hurricanes, especially Superstorm Sandy, had taken their toll on the channel markers. Many of the structures failed and some of them were broke below the waterline, posing an unseen threat to mariners.
The busy waterway fluctuates widely in depth and width, from 30 feet deep to four feet deep and a quarter of a mile wide to 20 feet wide. Severe shoaling made the waterway too shallow for Coast Guard construction tenders to work on the ATON structures.
ANT Cape May first used its trailerable ATON boat (TANB) to create a safety zone around the diving operations and then used a 49-foot stern loading utility boat (BUSL) to recover the wreckage. The 49-foot BUSL was brought into service in the late 1990s, with the last one commissioned in 2001. They are equipped with an astern mounted A-frame crane that can lift 4,500 pounds.
Once on station, divers dove into the water, cut the steel piles near the mudline and used air bags to float the damaged piles to the surface where the ANT would hoist them onto the BUSL’s buoy deck.
During the nine-day evolution, the Coast Guard team spent more than 200 hours underway, removed 22 structures and saved an estimated $269,000 in contractor costs.
Covering a vast area of operations, the 17-member ANT Cape May uses three boats to maintain 570 beacons and buoys across four states.
“The wreckage removal project further affirms our commitment to safety to the boating public well above what we already do in maintaining all Aids to Navigation,” said Elijah B. Reynolds, the officer-in-charge of ANT Cape May. Reynolds is a 20-year Coast Guard veteran from Chatham, Massachusetts, who has served in ATON units for 15 years.
U.S. Coast Guard divers tackle a wide variety of important missions, from ATON wreckage removal to port security operations. Divers from Regional Dive Locker-East, Regional Dive Locker-West and Regional Dive Locker-Pacific took part in the operation.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Loren M. Powers from Regional Dive Locker-East served as the dive team leader and diving supervisor during the operation. He said the highlight of the job was the cohesion of the divers and the crew from Aids to Navigation Team Cape May.
“All of these divers came in from locations across the country to work together with an ANT crew they had never met,” said Powers, a Seattle native who has served in the U.S. Coast Guard for 22 years. “After the first two days of getting in step with each other, we were truly one crew at the end of the first week.”
| Date Taken: | 12.09.2019 |
| Date Posted: | 12.09.2019 14:53 |
| Story ID: | 354835 |
| Location: | CAPE MAY, NEW JERSEY, US |
| Hometown: | CHATHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, US |
| Hometown: | SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, US |
| Web Views: | 303 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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