MADONNA PROJECT AT BAY SHIPBUILDING - 21.0

Upper deck shows screening and handrails in place.  These were
fabricated by a subcontractor and painted white prior
to installation. Handrails are stainless and
will not be painted. (Rich Ellefson photo)

Detroit Harbor, Washington Island -

Weather changes and Island outdoor appearances happened rather rapidly this past week.  Ice has all but disappeared. Only small bits, or banks, remain here and there.   Driving rain and NE winds on Saturday and Sunday created a high lake level.  Two cool and cloudy days followed, along with lower to mid-30s temperatures Monday and Tuesday.

Sculptural piping connects port main engine to keel
cooler, an exterior heat exchanger fastened to the hull.

Wednesday, April 1, however, was pleasant and sunny (no foolin'), and Thursday topped Wednesday, with temperatures in full sunshine and out of the breeze reaching 50.   It was so warm that I bought several buckets of stain and went to work on the boathouse cedar shingle siding.  It's been six or more years since I had last stained them, and the shingles were dry.  While I stained, Dougie Foss continued work nearby on the boardwalk project I had given up on in early May of 2019, when high water made it too difficult.   A wind shift to the NW Wednesday, and then to the west Thursday morning, drove lake water back to Charlevoix and helped dry out grounds surrounding the docks. Ideal working conditions.

Ramp kingpost, starboard, forward.

Looking for afterwork activity for himself and his boys, Hoyt launched Moby Dick late yesterday.  This craft enables them to enjoy scavenging planks and pieces of wood along shore, fenders, pieces of docks - whatever they find of interest that surging waves have broken loose and washed onto beaches of nearby shores.

The morning struck us as being unusually pleasant. Even though there had been a heavy white frost on the grass at 7:00 am, nary a ripple marred the harbor's surface.  Mary Jo and I satisfied our urge to cruise around the harbor's perimeter, our first such outing of 2020.  High water permitted coasting close-in along the shallows for a look at dwellings, docks and natural shoreline features.

That's what's happening in this corner of Detroit Harbor in the first days of April.

Meanwhile in Sturgeon Bay, at Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding workers continued construction on the Madonna within the large paint shed.  Rich Ellefson was on hand Monday and part of Tuesday to observe and take photos.  

Rich reported that the yard work force remains at "full strength," although the numbers assigned to the Madonna have been reduced to a couple of workers in each of these areas:  pilot house, upper deck, engine room.  The upper "sun" deck is undergoing a sand blasting in the latter days of this week in preparation for painting.

Passenger cabin on mezzanine deck, an
intermediate space between main deck and
uppermost sun deck.

A May 30th delivery date, target date since the project began, could possibly extend a few days into June in order to accomplish noted change orders.  But over all, this project is still on schedule.  The shipyard plans to move the ferry from the paint shed outdoors, and then into the water before mid-April.  The Fajoli transporters, key piece of equipment for moving this vessel from one building to another and, finally, to the launch site, must be returned to the Fincantieri Marinette shipyard at mid-month.  
 

Sun deck, uppermost passenger deck. 

Coast Guard Marine Inspectors remain on hand and as active as ever, with an inspection staff member keeping abreast of work being accomplished.

Pilot house, with life jacket storage
locker beneath. 

Pilot house construction may have slipped a few days, but that fact shouldn't alter the launch plans.  It can be set later as one piece on the ferry upper deck once the hull is floating.

Thoughts of a christening date have been shoved to the back burner, not knowing what the Coronavirus situation may be when the vessel is ready for delivery, whether or not a public gathering will be at all prudent then.  We're not pressed in any way to place the new vessel into service once it has been delivered.  As of this point in early April, often a time when construction projects pick up pace, people begin to open up their summer homes, and fishermen test nearby waters, our four daily round trips have offered more than enough capacity for essential vehicles and goods needing transport.

Stated another way, the delivery and christening of this new ferry Madonna is well down the current list of Ferry Line concerns.

-  Dick Purinton

ROCK ISLAND STATE PARK GETS NEW WELL

Rock Island and Thordarson boat house, after rain clouds cleared Wednesday.  
(Purinton)

Washington Island, Wisconsin -

I had the pleasure of operating the Karfi this past week on Tuesday and Wednesday.   Weather wasn't so great.  We had heavy fog early Tuesday, and then light rain, with rain again the following morning, finally giving way to a short stretch of afternoon sunshine and clear atmosphere.


Tuesday saw light passenger traffic and  a few campers heading back home.  Wednesday, after transporting a few passengers in the rain on the first run at 10 am, there were no takers for our noon trip to Rock Island. As it turned out, there were none waiting to return from Rock Island, either, so Christian Foss and I took advantage of the empty vessel to shut down, moor, and hike up the trail toward the lighthouse to examine the predicament faced by well drilling trucks the previous afternoon as they traversed the rugged, mostly uphill route.

Unloading the well drilling rig, one of the heaviest pieces of
equipment, with close wheel base, of the various vehicles carried
aboard the ferries.  (Purinton)

At midday Tuesday, in the height of the fog, Jeff Cornell and Hoyt had brought three trucks from Detroit Harbor belonging to Charlie's Pumps and Well Drilling, Brussels, Wisconsin.   As it turned out, transporting the equipment to the Rock Island dock and unloading it over the rather narrow pier was the easy part.

Karfi approaching Rock Island Tuesday morning.
(Kathleen Ernst photo)

The real challenge lay ahead for Randy Holm, Park Manager, his co-workers, and the operators of the trucks.   Anyone who has walked that trail knows that it is steep and rutted, sometimes sloping away from the hillside.   In addition, soils were soft and greasy from consistent rains over the previous several days.  Progress toward the light was halted, temporarily, approximately 3/4 of the way to the light.  That's where the trucks were parked for another attempt on Thursday, in hopes the rains would let up, giving the trail a chance to dry.

On Thursday, efforts to get the drilling rig and pipe truck to the light resumed.  Sixteen fiberglass mats were transported to Rock Island that morning, weighing approximately 100 pounds each, which were then laid end-to-end to ease the trucks over the, muddiest, steepest, and toughest patches.  Randy Holm described this operation as successful, but not without intensive labor on the part of the two drivers and the park employees who laid mats, then lifted them after the trucks had passed, scraped mud and rock from each, and then reset them on the trail that lay ahead.  With that effort, the drivers managed to get their trucks to the lighthouse grounds.

Then, as a first step, the well head was removed from the original, three-inch well, giving the drillers access by means of a pump dropped down the hole to a ready water supply, and with lubricating water, drilling commenced.  However, at approximately 25 feet, the drill head bit broke from the drill shaft.  As of this Saturday morning, their hopes are to retrieve it from the hole, possibly by adding cement and then pulling the entire plug, drill bit and all.   Not only is the drill bit worth several thousand dollars, it currently blocks drilling efforts made thus far.   If extraction is unsuccessful, a new hole using a new bit will have to be started.

This rather involved effort to provide a new well is designed to replace the original well, one that's been in use by lighthouse residents since approximately 1904-06 (the date is uncertain), when it was drilled by the Koyen brothers using a drop drill.  Randy Holm believes the old well was drilled to a depth of 155 feet (probably close to the vertical distance to the lake level from the top of the bluff).   For the past 100 and more years this well tested A-OK, but as older wells go it was uncased, and the State wishes to replace it with a new, cased well.   Undoubtedly, this new well will be of a deeper variety, probably producing typical iron content and water not nearly as tasty.  [Note:  In a conversation with retired Rock Island Park Manager Kirby Foss this afternoon, he said that August and Volney Koyen towed their drilling rig over the ice to Rock Island by horse team, and drilled the well in winter, to a depth of 195 feet.] 

This newly acquired liquid may be some of the most expensive water-per-gallon in the state!  We wonder how many cases of bottled drinking water could have been supplied for the same cost as drilling this well.  There would, of course, have to be the carrying of the occasional bucket up the steps from the lake for washing dishes and clothes, bathing, etc., the way it was done in the old days!  The thought of it all gives one a greater appreciation for life at the lighthouse prior to advent of the turn-of-the-century well, when fetching water from the lake must have been routine, in addition to capturing rain water.

Those new knees worked just fine

Christian and I paused near the Thordarson gate at the top of the first hill, above the tank house.  It's been fenced in for safety reasons recently, and in fact it was slated for removal this spring due to its deteriorating condition and the resultant liability it posed for park visitors.  However, keen public interest in trying to replace it with a similar structure brought a temporary stay to its demolition.  During what might be a rather limited window, Friends of Rock Island and park officials will seek funding and ideas to construct a similar replacement gate, one that might weather another 70 or 80 years.

Gate with hanging flower planter, made of native cedar, one of several
iconic structures on Rock Island built by Thordarson.  From this
location, visitors can enjoy a sweeping vista of the boathouse grounds
and Washington Island's northern shoreline.   (Purinton)

Christian and I then hiked past the gate another half-mile or so,  where we came upon the trucks parked in the center of a level section of trail.  This truck roadblock was the reason Holm had elected to temporarily close this trail to park visitors (other trails remain open), and for obvious safety reasons the grounds at the lighthouse will be likewise be closed during drilling operations - at least through June 6th.   Reopening of the lighthouse will depend on progress made in drilling during the coming week.

Every so often along the trail shoulders we saw deep ruts where the wide-tired front wheels of the well driller rig had gotten slightly off to one side.  On steeper portions of the slope where there were rugged vertical sections, there was evidence of struggles to move forward, and then get unstuck, using planks and gravel fill.  Given the challenges faced, it was surprising these two trucks got as far as they did that first day in the rain, with the steepest portions still awaiting passage.

To aid this project along, on Friday park workers carried a portable mixer and sacks of cement in the park's backhoe to the light, from the closed truck that was parked in the field near the boathouse.

When completed, this well drilling effort will mark a bizarre beginning to what we hope will be a good season for Rock Island park visitors.  Memorial Weekend traffic was steady, for both Washington and Rock Islands, and there are widespread hopes for good summer weather to provide many pleasant days outdoors for visitors.

Well drilling rig operated by Charlie's Pumps,
Brussels, Wisconsin, when progress was stalled
partway up the lighthouse trail.  (Purinton)

Meanwhile, our family has been preparing for months for a trip to Iceland, and in future blogs I'll feature what we'll see and do, as well as concerns we have regarding our travels.

-  Dick Purinton

AN AFTERNOON POSTING

Detroit Harbor, Washington Island -

Rain changed over to snow as the air temperature fell. As predicted, the wind picked up speed about noon today, and wet snow began to accumulate.  Thursday's afternoon ferries were cancelled.

Out at the Potato Dock, dredging is still on the slow side, but there is production.  Hard spots have been passed by, for now, in favor of digging as much volume as possible in time available.

There won't be more hauling of spoils from the site until road conditions improve, so Roen's crew will spend this night keeping an eye on their equipment.

There have been a few spectators, among them Magnus, Aidan and their dad, Hoyt Purinton, looking on as the crane's bucket brought another mucky load to the surface.  Aidan is sporting a new look since Saturday when, he said, his brother Magnus sat on his head.  That action took out one tooth and loosened the other, to where it dangled.  His mom removed that one to complete the symmetry.   We suspect the pair might have been ready to go soon without the extra help, but now he's all set for those permanent teeth to grow in.  A classic look for Christmas, we reminded him.    -  Dick Purinton

Although visibility was still quite good, snow began to fly by 2:30 pm
when this photo was taken.   The heavy rains of morning, plus wet snow,
made a slushy mess of roads.   Island plows were out to
scrape the mess before more serious snow
amounts fell.

 

LAKE LEVELS

Scene at Kap's Marina Friday, Oct. 12.

Detroit Harbor, Washington Island -

The Army Corps of Engineers report from the internet (which they update weekly due to general interest) shows that we are "zero" difference from the all-time recorded low water of 1964.   In other words, we're at the bottom of the recorded lake level curve, a statistic that took almost another fifty years to reach once again.

I stated in yesterday's blog that we had dropped approximately 8 inches in the several weeks I was away, and I believe that to be true, although it was based on casual observation rather than accurate readings from known benchmarks.   According to Hoyt, who used a line painted on sheet piling, the loss since September 1 has been 16 inches.   During northerly winds, which we have had of late, the levels drop more noticeably, what might be referred to as a "basin effect," where pressure of wind forces water from bays and shallows in the direction of the wind's flow (lower Michigan).

This fluctuation is serious for us, but it is all relative, of course.   If we lived where there were daily tidal movements of several feet, we would be equipped to deal with such phenomena, or would locate essential water services where there was less chance of being adversely influenced by the tides.  (Floating stages for loading are common on rivers and coasts, especially for boarding passengers;  more elaborate, longer sections of ramps are used for boarding vehicles.)

At the dinner table on our trip we visited with a man from a large inland lake in Texas, an area hit hard by drought of the last year, where cattle have been shipped to northern feedlots due to lack of hay, and where his lakefront has seen an 80-foot drop.   He laughed when we said we had experienced a drop of several feet in recent years, and that the historic fluctuation between high and low was in the range of six feet of lake level.

Hard to get sympathy and understanding with those figures, and we didn't even try.

Access to the marina's slips and launching ramp may be for
canoes only, given reduced depths.

But the real difference, I think, is that he could still exit his front door, on the highway side of his house, and drive to work with no real impact from his dried up lake frontage.   Here, that's not an option.

And, there is the matter of our getting used to a routine, one that was based on stable lake levels, where use of harbors and other natural shoreline features led to the development of both shoreline and upland properties.  There is no law that says today's level couldn't be the new normal lake level, but we happen to have faith that precipitation will sooner or later cause a net gain in lake storage over the next few years as has happened in the past.

The immediate future, though, will cause us to examine how we operate ferries, and what contingencies we will adopt during the interim.

-  Dick Purinton

TIPTOE THROUGH THE PERIWINKLES

Detroit Harbor, Washington Island -

"Richard, can you help me create something that I can mount some shoes on - old wooden clogs - in front of my shop windows?"

The idea shopowner Ruth Gunnerson had was to provide pockets for plants: petunias, periwinkles and such.  (I have no idea what I'm talking about in flower-speak.)

I procrastinated on this project for several weeks until one afternoon, while shopping the metal pile at the Island Exchange, I  came across a thing that had been welded up from old hay rake tines.  These were tines that are about 3/8" diameter rod, hardened, and are bent with a loop in them for spring action in the event of striking a large stone in the field.

There were five such tines goobered together with weld, as if the outcome had been intended for use as an outdoor table base.

These I disassembled, having to cut them in half with a torch as I did so.  Then I rewelded the pieces into approximately 40-inch standards with loops on the top end , and with small washers welded to the loops.  Then, selecting from an ample supply of old wooden clogs saved by Ruth, I chose several with brighter colors to fasten with screws to the washers.  I pushed each finished planter into the ground the other morning and waited for Ruth to do the rest.

Fortunately, the idea seemed to work, and more importantly, Ruth seemed pleased.   Well, that's a cheap birthday gift in advance.  (Our birthdays are nearly the same day in September, as is Mary Dawn, Ruth's sister, and son Hoyt.)   Old shoes, old metal, new use.

Stop by the Kaupstadur to admire her flowers-in-clogs when you are out shopping.

- Dick Purinton

CALLING ALL TURKEYS

Washington Island, Wisconsin -

We're in the middle of the spring turkey hunt, and island hunters have been out prior to sunup, sneaking into field and forest before the birds get down from their tree roosts to set up hunting blinds and decoys, and to get themselves situated for approaching birds.

What else might motivate a hunter to load his gear in an open aluminum boat - a long-barreled shotgun, backpack with decoy and turkey calls and a bicycle - and then motor over to Detroit Island before the sun was up, ride his bicycle a mile or so down the rough dirt road, listening for tom turkeys calling as he rode?  

The hunting on Washington Island has been pretty good, or so the reports seem to indicate, but after several unsuccessful outings near home, Hoyt decided to try Detroit Island.

Shortly after bicycling south, to a point approximately 2/3 of the island's length from the boat landing, and having heard several turkeys, he got off his bicycle and successfully called a tom to within shooting range.

Then, with his bird in hand (approximately 25 pounds), shotgun and backpack filled with gear, he pedaled back to the boat landing and motored home.  He was back on Washington Island by 7:30 a.m., where these photos were taken.  

Hoyt pointed out two middle tail feathers that weren't yet fully developed in pattern, and he guessed his bird was perhaps two years old.  The spur length, half an inch at most, seemed to confirm this.  But as for weight, this bird was a handful to lift, and must not have been an easy partner for riding double.

Turkeys are wary, having excellent eye sight and very sharp instincts, and yet it is hard to refer to them as being smart.  A case in point:  several weeks ago I looked out my window to see a tom turkey challenging its image in the chrome fender of my pickup truck.  This activity went on for over an hour, until dark, with occasional pecking at the bumper and the lifting of his beard in what seemed to be an aggressive, self-promoting manner.  During this time, he left a dozen or more deposits, littering the asphalt at the truck's rear bumper.

-  Dick Purinton