Closing shop for the season is pretty straightforward: You haul the motors off to be winterized, tidy up a bit, batten down whatever hatches happen to be unsecured. Oh, and you disassemble the entire 40-foot-long JetFloat dock, hauling it section by waterlogged section from the water, heaving those onto dry land, and piling them in an out-of-the-way corner of the park.
This is something of a chore. Though the interlocking one-foot-square plastic cubes appear light and buoyant, many were cracked and had taken on water. Then there is the inevitable patina of goose poop smeared across their top surface; a slimy lacquer of algae along their edges; and a bristling of barnacles on the bottom to contend with.
We came prepared, wearing work gloves and bundled in waterproof gear. Good thing, as it was perhaps the coldest, windiest day yet this fall. We’re talking serious frigid gusts, people. Coffee was not merely keeping us awake, it was keeping the blood in our fingers from freezing.
Using a special T-bar tool to “unlock” chunks of dock in rafts two cubes by three cubes big, we floated the sections over to the ramp, hefted them up, and carried them to the edge of the baseball field. It took four or five people to haul one section. Brackish water and muck slicked our hands, arms, bellies, and legs. We started singing that song about Sal the mule and the Erie Canal. That stopped when someone fell in.Oh yes, you heard me—someone went swimming. He, who shall go unnamed, stepped on a loosened cube and took the plunge into the 50 degree water. He was quickly rescued by our own stalwart rower, Al. Moments later, said swimmer was sitting on terra firma, pouring water out of his shoes. He left for his car soon after (and reported later that day that he was just fine).
We toiled on without him. A couple of rowers from the Fordham crew came down to help. James S., from ESRA, was in charge of draining waterlogged cubes. Spirits were high as we wrapped up before noon—a satisfying few hours of work.
Lest you think we’re crazy, keep in mind the sorry state of the dock this year—the popped pegs that stubbed our toes, the unsecured cubes that sank precariously when stepped on—and imagine what a few good winter squalls would do to it. As we’d like to have a dock come spring, taking it off the water was the only solution.
Which leads one to the obvious conclusion: We’re going to have to put it back if we want to row again. But you can be sure that we’ll not only have more donuts on hand, we’ll wait for a blissfully warm, sunny day on which to do so. And we’ll bring extra clothes in case anyone goes swimming again.
