Little buoy takes on big jobStudents help install device to provide
data on wave conditions near the barBy DEEDA SCHROEDER
The Daily Astorian
Monday, October 05, 2009
The former Coast Guard Cutter IRONWOOD at the Tongue Point Job Corp Center training young men and women for careers at sea.ASTORIA — When 60 Tongue Point Job Corps Center Seamanship students got under way on the 180-foot Cutter Ironwood, they knew they had special cargo onboard.
It was round, bright yellow and weighed 450 pounds.
Strapped down to the buoy deck of the former U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender, it looked like a giant, lemon-colored gum ball. The students were helping install a much-needed wave buoy off Clatsop Spit just outside the Columbia River bar.
Julie Thomas, program manager of the Coastal Data Information Program (CDIP) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, hopes the new buoy will continue to get the "special cargo" treatment long after it's bobbing atop the waves. She doesn't want to see it become another casualty of the Graveyard of the Pacific.
"It's a very small buoy, very low to the water. During rough seas it's hard to see. And since you have rough seas 90 percent of the time, we want to get the word out," Thomas said. It could get struck by passing ships if people don't know its position, she said.
The buoy will provide much-needed data to the public about wave conditions close to the treacherous bar and will give the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers wave data they can use to track sediment movement. The $80,000 contraption, made in the Netherlands, is compact, high-tech, and durable.
Winter weather has disabled National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration buoys on Columbia River for several years, which concerned the river's many users, said Columbia River Bar Pilot Capt. Dan Jordan. Accurate information was desperately needed for anyone considering crossing the bar, and now mariners have a place to look.
"This will be considerably better because the NOAA buoys have failed. In the past, if the bar conditions were rough enough, the only way to know has been to go out there," he said. "Now we can just go online and see."
Jordan helped rally local and national support around the idea for the CDIP buoy, bringing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Coast Guard, Lower Columbia Solutions Group, Columbia River Bar Pilots, Columbia River Crab Fishermen's Association and the Lower Columbia Region Harbor Safety Committee together for a discussion in June. Julie Thomas made a presentation about the CDIP buoy, and noted the long-time success of a CDIP buoy that was placed in Grays Harbor in 1981.
"We were talking about the buoys breaking, and trying to come up with ways to improve the buoy system," Jordan said.
Many local entities contributed to getting the new buoy in the water - Foss Marine donated the anchor chain, and a handful of local boats volunteered to be ready to be recovery boats should the buoy ever work itself free, Jordan said. But much of the cost of the buoy itself was covered by the Corps of Engineers, Thomas said.
For the deployment, Jordan looked to the students at Tongue Point.
"It's really great to get support from everyone to get this in place," he said. Jordan is hoping a second buoy can be installed next, 25 miles off shore. The two, a combination of deeper and shallow reads, would make for solid forecasts.
Dale Beasley, head of the Columbia River Crab Fishermen's Association, said he'll be using the buoy data right away. Before, the closest buoy was 18 miles offshore, providing information that was helpful, but not an indication of what one could expect closer to the bar.
"This is an important step forward," Beasley said. "We've had to guess a lot more than we will be now."
Small size can be a benefit The 450-pound buoy's relatively small size can be a benefit, Thomas said, because it doesn't require much special equipment to get it in or out of the water for servicing. Since the buoy's primary purpose is to measure wave movement, it doesn't take up as much space as the NOAA buoys, which also monitor wind.
"They can be deployed with a local fishing vessel," she said. Thomas' CDIP program monitors and maintains 42 similar coastal buoys.
Technological advances have made this buoy low-maintenance and easy to service. Batteries only need to be changed every two years, and the buoy transmits an iridium satellite signal to Scripps in San Diego, Calif. in about two to three minutes, a huge leap in timing that's only been made in the last few years, Thomas said. A gps, or global positioning system, signal is also transmitted, so the folks at Scripps will know almost immediately if the buoy has strayed from its mooring.
A 30-meter long bungee allows the buoy's line to stretch to up to four times its length, and it's held in place by 1,400 pounds of large anchor chain, wrapped around itself. A similar buoy has also been in place at Umpqua River bar since 2006.
In the photo above left Joey Kaeka, 22, of Hawaii, Caleb McPeters, 22, of Everett, Wash., and Randi Mays, 23, of Greeley, Colo., pull in the line to help dock the Tongue Point Job Corps Center Cutter Ironwood, after installing a wave-tracking buoy for Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In the photo on the right the Tongue Point Job Corps buoy tender Ironwood navigates downstream Tuesday on its way to place a wave buoy outside of the Columbia River bar.Tongue Point students suited for jobBecause the Ironwood was built in 1943 to accommodate some of the ocean's largest aids to navigation, manipulating the CDIP buoy with its giant arm of a boom crane was like picking up a soccer ball with a dump truck.
But Patrick Albers, director of Tongue Point's seamanship program, said his students can always use the practice. While a few of his students might shrug off training, or think the exercises aren't really work, that's a posture he tries to discourage.
"Once we get under way, the ocean doesn't know it is a training trip. It doesn't care," Albers said.
Now Albers' students can head out feeling a little better informed about the conditions they can expect once they are out on the bar and on the open ocean. And even better, now they know they've contributed to making the treacherous area safer for the river's many users, he said.
"When they realize what they've been a part of, they'll take a little more pride in what they're doing," he said.
Albers usually has about 60 students in the program at a time, and when they all get under way once a week, everyone has a job to do. Each time, Albers creates a watch bill that assigns specific duties so everyone gets to rotate through the different positions on board, from deck watches to stints in the engine room.
The goal of all the students in Seamanship is to get their rating as an able bodied seaman or qualified member of the engine department.
Besides going out to sea across the bar or up river every Thursday, every student spends at least six weeks doing work-based learning working for potential employers such as Alaska Maritime Highway, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Dunlap Towing, NOAA, Columbia River Bar Pilots, and National Response Corp.
A few days after the install, Albers said he and his students are already checking the bar conditions using the data from the new buoy, feeling a sense of ownership about the work that they did, and knowing how many others will be using it too.
"When we go by it, we'll be able to say 'We put that there.'" he said.
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