Dreading the Dredge?

Savannah’s Port is the fastest growing port in the USA at the moment. Container ship after container ship constantly comes in and goes out of Tybee Roads. It generates over sixty five billion dollars a year in revenue……That’s right…..THIRTY FIVE BILLION!
It appears the dredge of globalization has put allot of cash in the State’s and Federal Governments pockets.

Just imagine, our comparatively small little river; the Savannah River which when General Oglethorpe and the original Georgia colonist arrived in 1733, was only nine feet deep in some places and averaged about eighteen feet, now accommodates huge container ships and LNG ships that have drafts of well over forty feet. The Savannah has of course been dredged many times; so much so, that the silt that has been pulled from it’s bottom has created allot of high ground on the South Carolina side and the State of South Carolina is now planning to use it for it’s southern most port. It is presently being used as a bird sanctuary. I guess they are just going to squeeze the birds over a little.

Savannah Harbor Expansion Project, problems with river deepening

But there seems to be a problem looming on the horizon. There is apparently, a new. even bigger container ship now plying the waters of the world that has a draft of almost fifty feet. The fear I imagine of the Port of Savannah is that these newer, faster and bigger and deeper ships will become dominant and eventually replace the ones who are using our river now and therefore the Georgia and the new South Carolina ports will loose the business to the deeper harbors of the country so they are planning to dredge the river again to at least fifty feet..

Common Ground - Conservation Partnerships - Savannah River Basin

This has generated allot of concern from environmentalist. The Savannah has the greatest number of native fish species (108) of any river draining into the Atlantic (that info taken from the above link). They say the silt that will be stirred up will do bad things to the fish in the area and I have a friend who is concerned about what it will do to the aquifer. As I understand it, the City of Savannah and surrounding area’s water needs are in large part, fulfilled by an aquifer that stretches all the way up from Florida. My parents own well pulls from it. Theirs goes down eighty feet and the land is about twelve feet above sea level. If their well goes down only eighty feet and they are only twelve or so feet above sea level and just a mile or so from the Savannah river, won’t dredging that originally nine foot river further to almost fifty feet bring us dangerously close to hitting that aquifer?

Floridan Aquifer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One could only imagine the terrible things that could happen if twenty miles of river was dredged right into an aquifer that supplied some of the drinking water needs for three states (Florida, Georgia and South Carolina)!





Also I wonder about Tybee Roads. This is the area extending several miles off shore that has to be dredged as well and kept dredged or the giant new ships will not even be able to get to the mouth of the Savannah. If you look at the above map those soundings you see are suppose to be in feet, not fathoms! How are they going to keep that area dredged and just how far out will they have to go to accommodate these new leviathans? Will they have to race through only on a certain tide?

There is also concern about the loss of beach sand from Tybee Island. Dredging may worsen this problem.

DrBeach.Org

Well, I’m sure that bigger minds than mine are considering this problem so perhaps I should just go back to sleep. Yawn….

So here are some more sailing links.

Good Sailing,
Rocko

Here's a way to look up some of the Maersk shipping going and coming from a harbor that you might be leaving or entering. Could this possibly come in handy? Especially since these ships are now booming along at twenty plus knots nowadays it might be a good idea to get an idea of what's coming your way just out of radar range.
Maersk Line shipping containers worldwide

I like their idea of a virtual ship:
The Marine Society & Sea Cadets


Yikes! another broken keel:
Hooligan V - full report.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Salvatore has created another website for his Tiger. I think he loves his Tiger as much as I do mine:
westerly.tiger - Westerly Tiger - Dudùdue

Looks like fun....wish I had the bucks:
MAXI YACHT ROLEX CUP 2007

Download the manual for your Tohatsu!
Tohatsu Outboard Technical Information

Looks like unsinkable boats have been around for a long time!
Abora 3 - Sind Sie dabei?

YouTube - Franck Desboyaux tracté par un trimaran

Now this is interesting! Imagine the possibilities for yacht designers. They will be able to put the power plants anywhere in the boat they like and possibly sink that electric motor and prop deeper than any old engine attached to a prop shaft. No more props spinning wildly when the boat comes out of the water in the rough?
Diesel-electric marine propulsion systems and accessories.Diesel-electric marine propulsion systems and accessories.

Ahh! the wonderful and interesting things we like to drop in our own bathtubs:
The Tybee Bomb---Is it a real danger or is the Tybee Island Nuclear Bomb a figment of our government's imagination?