Open House at the Whaletown Dock; Renovations Needed

There were 45 people on the Whaletown dock when Cortes Currents left half way through the Open House on Monday, September 16. Some were listening to Andy Ellingsen, a Director of Harbour Authority Cortes Island (HACI), talk about the current condition of the wharf and what needs to be done. Others gathered in small groups, eating the free pizza, sharing memories or their perspectives on the matter. HACI has owned the 110-year-old structure since 2009 and now it is in need of extensive repairs. 

Jenny Hartwick, Harbourmaster for HACI, explained, “we’ve had a couple of quotes given to us by contractors and realistically, we’re looking at between $550,000 and $600,000. That number doesn’t change significantly whether we look at decommissioning a portion of the dock and rebuilding with our current plan, or if we were just to do a straight rebuild. The only difference is what it means for the community being able to maintain that dock in the future and the costs going forward.” 

Cortes Currents: How are you going to raise that funding? 

Jenny Hartwick: “We will be applying for a number of grants.   We do have a small cash reserve, which can be used for matching funds and we are in the process of looking at what our funding options are to raise what is likely going to be $500,000.”

“Over the last few years, we’ve recognized that numerous boards in the wharf head, which is the part that you walk on when you approach the Whaletown dock, are starting to fail. So we’ve been squirrelling away material here and there every time we’ve gotten our hands on some good pieces of material with the intention of replacing the entire deck.”  

“Prior to doing that, we thought it would be prudent to have the whole structure surveyed because the last thing that we wanted to do was take the decking off and discover that something underneath needed to be replaced. Given the age of the dock, we recognized that it was quite likely that we would be discovering some additional necessary repairs.”  

In preparation for the Open House, HACI stretched a pink ribbon across the surface of the decking, dividing the wharf head into two halves. 

Cortes Currents: What’s that all about?   

Jenny Hartwick: “This last spring we had an engineering company come in and do a top to bottom survey of the dock. They brought a diver in to do underwater surveys of everything from the seabed up. The outcome of that is part of the reason for the pink ribbons.”  

“Two large posters have been set up. One is the current structural survey of the dock, showing an unfortunate amount of red colouring, which are things needing to be replaced. That includes a number of the concrete footings, which are the large timber pilings that actually hold up the dock. The first half of those actually sit on concrete underneath the dock and the remaining half as we get out towards the water are called driven piles, which means that they’ve been driven into the seabed.”  

“Unfortunately a number of the concrete footings have started to fail and need to be replaced.  This isn’t the first round of repairs that it’s gone through and every time they’ve replaced piles, they’ve redone concrete work.  It literally looks like an ice cream sandwich.  At one point in time, whatever aggregate they used in their concrete mix has failed.  So there’s a layer of solid concrete  and then there’s a layer of solid concrete. In between those two layers, there’s this layer of crumbly concrete that’s just melting out the sides. That’s what those pilings are sitting on, so that necessitates pretty much this entire section being replaced.”

“Equally as unfortunate, a number of the driven piles have failed and nowadays, it’s extremely expensive to replace driven piles. The mobilization costs for a pile driving barge, so just to get the barge to come to the site, is between $80,000 and $100,000.  Then for creosote piles, we’re looking at anywhere from $10,000 to $15 000 per pile on top of the mobilization fee.” 

“One of the plans that we have put forward to the community is a combination of deconstruction and rebuilding of the facility.  The reason is that the pilings sit on concrete pads. They don’t require a pile driving crew to come and replace those in the future. They can simply be popped out and a new piling can be slid in.  So what we are proposing is that the dock is actually deconstructed up to the point that the piling switches from being driven to sitting on concrete piles.” 

“That means that when the dock is repaired at the end of this process,  not only do we have a dock that’s up to snuff and is still big enough to allow for vehicle travel. You could still get a truck down it, back it up, and do your loading and unloading.  For the community going forward, It means that any additional repairs or any pilings that fail in the future can be done very easily with a crew of one to two guys. They can be local contractors.” 

Cortes Currents: I have to go back to some terms. You said the deck is failing. The mental image that comes to mind is: Poof! You fall right through. 

Jenny Hartwick: “No, nope (laughs). So the important thing to remember is that when we’re dealing with dock materials, unlike the deck that you might have on your house which could be an inch thick, our decks are four to six inches thick of material.”

“Currently we’ve closed the dock to vehicle traffic. That is because  the weight of vehicles on the dock poses a significant risk.”  

She corrected this later in our interview. The vehicle weight may not be a problem, its how the dock reacts to swaying motions, such as may occur when a vehicle brakes. 

Jenny Hartwick: “Having people walk on the dock is absolutely fine. There is zero safety issue. In fact, if the dock were to remain foot passenger only, many of these repairs wouldn’t be necessary for at least another 15 years because the dock is rated fine for foot passengers.” 

“The challenge is that this dock is heavily used by our commercial fishermen in the area. We have two home port fish boats that use the Whaletown dock year round. The Sea Fin and the March Girl are registered commercial fish boats. Throughout the year, depending on openings, they are fishing halibut, tuna, salmon, and, for sure, prawns. They require vehicle access to and from to bring prawn traps and all sorts of stuff throughout the season. Vehicle access and access to a working crane is extremely important to them.”  

Cortes Currents: Do you happen to know how many fish boats there are on the island right now? 

Jenny Hartwick: “There’s three registered fish boats, the other one is the Stacy Rock in Cortes Bay.” 

Cortes Currents: How much traffic do you get on the dock? 

Jenny Hartwick: “Everybody knows its quiet in the wintertime. There are a number of boats that use the dock for both commercial and pleasure reasons all year round. That increases significantly in the summertime to the point that the dock is at capacity and we are actively turning people away from this dock to some of the other docks on the island for moorage.”

 Bill Shoretell has been using the dock for more than 50 years. 

“I’m here for six months of the year because I’m not a citizen.  I live near Santa Barbara, California.  We love it here. We almost feel like we’re half Canadian.”

“I’m on the water almost every day just because I love being out there and there’s so many  places to drive around.  All the remote islands and  a lot of adventures, a lot of fun and fishing. For Spring Salmon, this has probably been in the top five years. Last year was terrific, but this year was even better. I take my buddies out and I can almost guarantee the salmon every time we go out. This last month, I’ve caught a lot of fish, but I’ve released them all because I already had plenty to eat.”

Cortes Currents: So tell me about the dock. 

Bill Shoretell: “It used to be wonderful because you could drive in, take your fishing gear down or whatever, and then go park.  It’s just been the last  three years that people haven’t been able to drive on the dock.  Parking is not a problem  because there’s not that many people now that there’s not a post office down here  but anyway just a classic place.” 

“It’s just a shame that it’s deteriorated.  They brought in all these timbers and everything to redevelop the surface here.  They kept putting it off, kept putting it off and it’s due to be repaired. I just hope that they upgrade it so we can use it.”  

“I hope they make a little more area for boats down below. If they’re going to  break this back down, they could put some areas around the backside where more boats could be  handled because for two months in the year, it’s quite difficult to  tie up next to the dock. You have to usually tie up outside of some other boat.”

Jenny Hartwick: “This would be a possibility going forward. Our lease area actually extends quite a ways out and could actually be utilized. to put additional floats all the way through here. We could potentially have more moorage, but that’s so far down the road that I don’t want to include that in the calculations at this point in time.” 

Cec Robinson doesn’t want to see additional moorage: 

“I think the initial project here makes a ton of sense, we’ve got to maintain the dock.  There was mention of the potential addition of  more moorage and I’m just very anxious about that.  I don’t think that can be done without additional noise, additional parking problems, and additional spilt fuel (inevitably, no matter how careful people are). Lighting is a big thing for me. The whole bay is lit up now. Between the dock, the ferry and the ferry hill, I can read a magazine in my living room in the middle of the night without turning on the lights. Seriously, and that’s not right. It’s not healthy.” 

“There was even mention of additional moorage perhaps requiring a breakwater.  Well, right away, you change the flow of the current in the bay, and change the flow of nutrients. Speaking as somebody with an oyster farm inshore from this dock, that’s a huge concern to me. I’ve seen that kill a beach in many instances.”

There appears to have been a dock in Whaletown during 1899, when the Vancouver PROVINCE mentioned a Mr Hitchcock from Whaletown catching the Union Steamship from Cortes Island to Vancouver for medical reasons. The newspaper did not say what those medical reasons were, or what happened after that. Mr Hitchcock would have left from the small but long wharf that Moses Ireland owned. The Drinkwaters added a store and Post Office after they purchased the property in 1893. 

The current dock was built in 1914. 

Howie Roman saw it almost 60 years later. “My first memory of the wharf is watching Gary Bergman, who owned the Whaletown store,  take a hundred pound propane tank, sling it up over his shoulder, walk to the end of the wharf and put it on a boat.  A full hundred\ pound pack! I was amazed that this old guy could do that. I realized later that he would have been in his early fifties, that ‘old guy,’  but I was twenty and he looked like an old guy to me.”

Candy Woltz and her family came to Whaletown in 1989:

“We were looking for property to buy somewhere on Vancouver Island and found a place on Seavista Road. We bought it almost sight unseen and have been here ever since.” 

Cortes Currents: What are your first memories of the wharf?  

Candy Woltz: “We always used to drive up to the wharf, and drive on. The kids would jump off the dock, and have a great time. We kept our boat over in our little bay, but we’d come over here to load people. We’d always come over to the store and George would have ice cream for the kids.  It’s been a part of our life.” 

Bob Katzko joined the Board of HACI around the time they came into possession of the Whaletown Dock and is a former President of the Board.

“This used to be owned by Transport Canada. All the other docks are owned by Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), but this is where the ferry came in.  There’s no more steamships coming in here, so Transport Canada wanted to divest of all of these structures all over BC. Vern Logan, President of HACI, got wind of this and negotiated withTransport Canada. They completely rebuilt the floats down there and then they vested it to us  with a little bit of a nest egg for repairs  and  now this is owned by Cortes island basically.”

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