The squadron has participated in this event in the past so we were on the Harbormaster’s list to contact for volunteering this year. The call went out and the squadron responded wonderfully. As we gathered for the event orientation at the Coast Guard Pier for coffee and donuts, we easily formed the largest group of volunteers from a single organization. The picture of us on the pier doesn’t include all of us but it shows how we dominated the crowd.
Because of our numbers, we were all assigned to one finger of Marina 2. We had two divers assigned to our finger and they went to work shortly after our arrival at Marina 2. Divers had surveyed the marina in the days prior to the clean up to identify key items to be removed. When the silt on the harbor bottom is disturbed, visibility is significantly impaired, so they wanted to get those key items up first.
The divers would tie a line onto the item and then bring the line up to us and we’d haul the item up. We needed to be on the dock near the diver to grab the line but it wasn’t hard to figure out where the diver was due to his bubbles.
The orientation we received stressed that we were to keep the docks and nearby boats clean of any mud that would be hauled up so in addition to the “hauler team” we had several “wash down” teams. Finally, we had “wheelbarrow teams” who carted the stuff off to the roll off container in the parking lot. The teams coordinated like clockwork and we removed a surprising amount of unusual stuff. Some of the items included: two marine toilets, a Marborg garbage receptacle, a marine stove/oven, a bicycle, several crab/lobster traps, and some kind of vintage sonar scope.
Our group was so efficient we wrapped up at about 10:30am. The Harbormaster had promised lunch for all the volunteers so several of us relaxed for a social moment on the Seagoes boat which just happened to be in Marina 2 (I’m sure the Seagoes weren’t responsible for anything hauled up…).
