December 2016 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 5. Dysart's Marina Getting Added Protection
SOUTHWEST HARBOR – There are only a few places along the mid-coast of Maine for boats to dock in the winter, especially places that are protected. It is a nice luxury for commercial fi shermen to walk down a dock and climb on to their vessels. In the mid- coast there is some dockage in Rockland, Camden, Stonington and on Mount Desert Island. One marina that is making a major upgrade so they are protected is Dysart’s Great Harbor Marina in Southwest Harbor. They are building a breakwater to protect them for an eastern/southeasterly storm, and this will give them protection from any storm blowing in any direction. Jane Peabody, who helps manage
the marina with her husband Micah, said, “Over the last four years Dysart’s has been actively applying for permits. We have got permits from the Army Corps of Engineers, DEP, and submerged land lease. Basically we have been approved for permitting on the east side of the marina, which is the protected side where there is an existing ledge called Black Ledge. When it is low tide and the ledge was exposed it off ers great protection for the marina. When there is a storm surge at high tide the wind and waves come over the ledge. The docks and anybody storing here could get severely damaged, cleats broken off , rub rail chafi ng and dam- age to the hull from smashing into the docks. We approached everybody locally because there is not much for winter storage space available in the area.” Dysart’s Great Harbor Marina stores
three of Steve Pagel’s commercial passenger vessels; whale watch boats, and a number of smaller commercial fi shing vessels during the winter. They have also been approached by the U. S. Coast Guard for them to use the marina when their docks on the Clark Point Road are exposed to high waves and wind. “We got the backing of the town and the town thought it would be great support because it would benefi t the town to have year-round protected dockage,” said Jane. “Even Northeast Harbor harbor master was behind us because he has to turn people away and there is nowhere else for them to
go. We are hoping by adding rocks onto the ledge and raising the height will off er us protection at high tide during easterly and slightly south of easterly storm surges. We are 10 loads into the project, which we start- ed a month ago. Prock Marine of Rockland has been contracted to do the job. They are bringing the rocks up from Rockland from a quarry right there. That was the hardest part negotiating the rocks because it is hard to load them onto a barge. Initially, Prock has piled rocks onto the existing ledge so it wasn’t much of a load requirement to bring it up about six feet above normal high tide. Now we start the really expensive part of the project of building up from the seabed. We have about 12 feet of rock to build up. So far we have had two storms come through, one of them was quite virulent with strong 50 knots winds out of the east. Unfortunate- ly, we didn’t have a lot of rock in place at the time, but we saw a small positive eff ect on the north side of our dock. Now we are working on the south side.” “We also managed to get permitting for
dredging,” continued Jane. “We are going to be dredging a 300 foot section on the south side of our southernmost docks. We have about 10 feet at dead low and the larger vessels require deeper draft of water than that. Hopefully, Prock Marine will be able to scoop up and dredge along our southern side. They just require a diff erent barge so they can drop the sediment at the drop site. We are only allowed to do this work during the winter months because of salmon and the osprey nesting season. They seem to be moving along quite nicely, but there has been a slight delay in the quarry, because we are looking for specifi cally sized rocks.” “You can’t just really build a straight
wall and stop the waves because you will get refractive energy around the side, so you need an absorption wall,” said Jane. “So it is curved from the seabed up at an angle that will also curve out in a C-section sort of shape slightly out towards the east so that it absorbs the waves.” Once this is all in place and they see that it is working, they will begin replacing
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A view of Dysart's Marina in Southwest showing the rocks placed on top of Black's Ledge.
sections of their main docks, particularly C dock, the southernmost one. “This will help us with our infrastruc-
ture maintenance,” explained Jane, “but will also off er really good protection for the commercial fi shing boats and the commer- cial storage boats during the winter months.” When asked if they have liveaboards
staying at the marina, Jane said no, and in fact they discourage it. In the winter they have limited power, no water on the docks and the showers on shore have been winter- ized. However, if the breakwater works and it is a mill pond behind it they may allow liveaboards to stay at the marina all year around.
Micah and Jane have been running the
marina for 14 years. It is also the the two met in 2001. Jane said, “I had friends who were running a Hinckley 70 in the Carib- bean and they wanted a delivery crew to bring the boat up from Antigua to Hinckley for maintenance work. We got delayed in
Bermuda waiting for a weather window to come across the Gulf Stream and we didn’t arrive until May 10, 2001. Micah was a dock hand that year and he tied us up here at the marina. A year later Micah and I got married on the dock where we met and got the job managing the marina as a partnership, my yachting experience and Micah’s experience with the docks.” Micah grew up in northern Maine at
East Grand Lake. The previous assistant dock master, Bill McCluskey, was from Houlton. Putting the docks together is chal- lenging and Bill knew Micah was looking for work and asked if he could come and help him. Jane has an interesting past. She was
born in England, but when seven months old her family set sail in a Nicholson 54 from Southampton to Antigua. Jane said, “It was an awful crossing. Everything got
Continued on Page 21.
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