The violent summer storm hit Hartwell Lake in the mid 1970's while WCSC club-member Bill Ellis was anchored in the cove at S-5 in his Ranger 23, along with friends in another boat. Everyone was below, in a warm cabin playing backgammon. They paid little attention as the rain pelted and the winds howled causing both boats to circle about their anchors. After an hour or so, Bill went topside for a look about and discovered twenty-five knot winds, driving rain and the anchor rodes from both boats tightly twisted together. If the boats were to be set free and return to the club, he would be forced to cut his anchor line. Because of pitching he soon became entangled in the rope mess and his thigh was pinned beneath his own anchor line. He pulled out his sharp knife and because of confusion and urgency, cut down through the rope stretched tight across his thigh. The blade sliced, with ease, through the rope and into his thigh muscle--down to the bone. Blood went everywhere.
Back at WCSC, standing on the concrete platform of “A” dock, in the same storm, was Dr. David L. Irvine, club-member and MD from Clemson. He was watching “A” dock heave to five feet in height at the hinges, forming roof-top like gables of dock sections. Every section seemed an active volcano. (These were the old, original docks—not the new ones with encapsulated Styrofoam). The boats in slips were behaving like broncos in a rodeo as the wind whistled through rigging making that eerie noise sailors hate. Legend has it that when Ellis made it back, Dr. Dave stitched the wound right there on shore. David remembered, “Winds brought white caps and pounding waves into our unprotected harbor during these storms and our friend, Fekko Luypen’s boat actually sank.”
Such were the days of the white-capped harbor before the Breakwater at WCSC. Strong winds were one thing but the excessive wave action was crippling. During the time before the Breakwater, each member’s boat was at the mercy of the wind and waves. Every boat owner constantly dealt with severe chafe and rigging problems. Bow chocks would work loose and the gelcoat on deck gunwhales would “groove” due to line chafe from stress and the rocking of boats docked and moored in the wild and stormy harbor. Otto Peters had a Morgan Out Island 33, moored under a grandfather clause (for her length) in center harbor, beyond, and some to the right, of the present one-design dock. In one winter wind she dragged her mooring anchor seventy-five yards and ended up against boats on “A” dock.
In the late 1970’s, a young Mechanical Engineer was on the staff of then WCSC Commodore, James C. Marlow, at J.E. Sirrine. Richard D. Youtz, Jr. of Greenville—was a club member and champion C&C 29 sailor in the Cruising Fleet. Dick had been reading articles about breakwaters by a research team at the University of Rhode Island. Youtz did his homework and found that the Rhode Island research had yielded good results with floating car tires.
By late 1978 Youtz had developed a plan for the club harbor and obtained a schematic of a proposed WCSC Breakwater. He contacted the Plant Manager at a local Michelin tire plant and asked if they ever discarded defective tires. The manager told him Michelin’s policy was to not allow reject tires to get into the market and onto cars, so they slit these tires in half and took them to the land fill. Dick was pleased to hear this and soon the manager volunteered to have 5,000 discarded, tires delivered to WCSC. To prevent road use, Michelin people slit the steel bead on the inside rim of each tire to three inches into the side wall. Soon the 5,000 new tires with full tread, were dumped on the ground at the west end of the main parking lot.
Youtz learned that the RI researchers had found that the best material to band the tires together was three inch wide strips (straps) of half inch-thick rubber conveyor belting bolted together with nylon nuts and bolts, which had to be special made using carbon-black in the resin to protect them from UV rays. He started finding sources for the remaining materials. He uncovered a company in Ohio which made the rubber conveyor belting which was sold to the coal mining industry. He convinced the company to ship the waste strips to WCSC, and convinced the Board of Stewards to pay for the freight.
Past Commodore Jim Marlow recently reflected; “As Commodore, during those days in 1979, I felt like I was tiptoeing through a minefield. That project of Dick’s was a new concept for WCSC and mammoth at that. Not only were we concerned about the Corps of Engineers, our landlords who manage the lake, we were allocating money to ship the rubber banding strips to our club and we were also purchasing thousands of fasteners. We were thinking about the exposed air pockets in the new breakwater drawing poisonous snakes, snapping turtles and mosquitoes, (something which never happened). In addition, Michelin made us sign a release saying that if any tires broke loose and began floating out in open water, causing boating accidents, that we (WCSC) would not sue. Fortunately, not one tire has ever broken away from the rest and floated into the lake, however many have broken loose and sank.”
The new Fair Share program attracted members to work on the Breakwater Project. Some rolled the tires down the steeper ramp to waters edge so they could be arranged in the preliminary smaller sections of eighteen units, some measured the long conveyor banding strips, cut them and punched holes for the fasteners by hand with a die. Dick says, “That rubber conveyor belting could not be drilled with a bit. We had to punch through two layers (both ends) of the belting at the same time (double thickness) in order for the holes to line up for the fasteners.”
Other work parties at water’s edge banded the sections, bolted them and floated them. The weight of each section was 30 lbs. X 18 = 540 lbs. Teams working in boats tugged the floating sections out to the beginning breakwater and added section by section to the previous work like building with Legos. Dick’s plan began to take shape and after months of weekend work a wall of thousands of Michelin tires stretched across the harbor entrance. The Breakwater began to function and the waves were left knocking at the door outside. The docks and boats in the harbor became safer.
Youtz recently recalled, “My original plan was to place the Breakwater further out. My thought was; ‘if it was in deeper water, at low lake levels, it would not touch bottom and gain unwanted silt weight.’ However, at the time, members of the club eventually became weary of the tire work and many were even burned out and lost interest in making the wall longer for deeper water. We had to be satisfied to place the ‘short’ version closer to the harbor entrance where the terrain of the shore was a gradual slope to the water, causing tires to hit bottom at low pool. The balance of the 5,000 tires were hauled away”
After about a year, some tires began to loose their air pocket and sink inches below the surface. After two years, as more lost all air, they dragged others down with them in domino fashion and soon some were on the bottom of the lake. Silt invaded the inside of the sunken tires and anchoring them to the bottom with a long train of sections connecting the active surface tires to the bottom-stuck ones. As an experienced SCUBA diver, I was deployed to cut away the stuck, silted tires, and with a long air hose from a compressor on the work barge, inflate each submerged tire until all the attached sections floated again. This underwater work takes hours and has been performed many times since. These days (since ca. 2001), club members Ted Sauvain, Blume and Keat Pruszenski do maintenance dives on the Brealwater. Each is a certified SCUBA diver.
The Breakwater Committee learned that, although in theory, waves would keep air in the pockets of the tire crowns above the surface, Hartwell Lake waves were not high, active nor consistent enough to do a good job. Crown air was lost due to lack of consistent chop on the lake which otherwise would have constantly “squirted” air into each tire crown.
Keeping the breakwater afloat soon became a high priority at WCSC. The first and most humorous plan to “re-float” came in the form of plastic, 2-litre Coke and Pepsi bottles. A wire mesh bin was constructed near the clubhouse and a drive was started for members to save their family-sized, 2 liter drink bottles. Dr. Phil Noury, of Anderson, Tanzer 22 sailor, obtained rigid, plastic I.V. bottles from the hospital to add to the collection. The idea was to caulk and seal the containers and insert them into the crown of each breakwater tire. Think 5,000!
SCUBA diving pressure-physics tells us two things: 1) as a gas (air) cools the gas contracts which caused the bottles to collapse. 2) Increased atmospheric pressure (below the surface) on a gas will decrease its volume and compress it causing the bottles to collapse. Ignoring the laws of diving physics, hundreds of sealed plastic Coke bottles were stuffed into the tires and it wasn't too long before the crushed bottles were discovered floating out of the tires and littering the entire inner harbor. The sealed-bottle-for-floatation idea was a burden and a failure.
In retrospect, Dick Youtz had this to say about the original Breakwater; “Keeping the tires floating has always been a problem. We probably would have been better off using well-worn used tires because they would have weighed far less than the full-tread tires with steel beads which were given to us. A new fifteen-inch tire weighs thirty pounds. When we found out our lake did not have sufficient constant chop to maintain the air pocket in the crown of the tires, the excess weight of the tread rubber in the new tires worked to help them sink since tire rubber does not float. Bald, used tires would have weighed less and worked to help floatation.”
Someone later found a company near Anderson which would mold-to-fit short sections of white Styrofoam for tire flotation in the crowns. WCSC Breakwater leaders began organizing teams of Fair Share swimmers to insert the Styrofoam. This was the first flotation item which worked. However, the company later burned to the ground.
In the mid eighties, Ronnie Ashmore volunteered to Chair the Breakwater Project, and has been that Skipper ever since. Ronnie says, “The one thing we’ve learned over the years is that you don’t want any tires to touch bottom—ever. That means we have to keep them floating on the surface by whatever means…and over deep water if possible.”
With his professional Civil Engineering talents, Ronnie has made the Breakwater a WCSC monument of ingenuity and safety by re-floating tires on a regular basis. In 1999 he hit the drawing board and designed a new “adjustable” section of breakwater, which can presently be seen on the clubhouse side of the harbor entrance. These tires are banded the same but supported by frames on each end and a system to winch the entire wall in and out to adjust for water level. He also found that cut-to-fit, colorful, cylindrical swimming noodles provide the best and most economical flotation. Ronnie says; “Those noodles cost the club $5 each and one will do three tires. I am open to suggestions for a more economical floatation device.”
Dick Youtz has this to say about the importance of the Breakwater at WCSC; “The Breakwater is a tradeoff. You either maintain it… or start dramatically increasing maintenance time and money on your boats, lines and docks. If the Breakwater is properly maintained, then the dozens of members with boats in the inner harbor will be safer, endure far less maintenance, spend far less money and the docks will require significantly less maintenance and money…so, if boat owners want to get hammered, then don’t maintain the breakwater.”
At present there are approximately 300 tires embedded in sand and can be reached on dry land. They are exposed on both the north and south shore (clubhouse side). These tires can be used in the new breakwater sections which are soon to be constructed. A possible thousand have sunk, landed on the bottom, are not salvageable and have been cut loose.
Ronnie said, “The most important job at hand right now is for all members to help dig tires out of sand, stack them horizontally and to help build breakwater sections for a Southside wall similar to the wall on the clubhouse side. We have a small supply of new tires (about 150) stacked on shore under the trees for this purpose but we don’t have enough. It will take nearly 1000 tires for the south wall. Members are needed to volunteer now and help scoop the sand out of the embedded tires on shore. None of the work is strenuous, and it is somewhat dirty but it is not nasty. All it takes is removing sand from tires.”
Everyone at WCSC has a vested interest in working on the Breakwater Project. Fair Share workdays are not the only times Breakwater work will be performed. A sign-up list for work on the 2008 Breakwater Project will be maintained with names, phone numbers E-mail addresses and hours worked. Boat owners whose boats are moored or docked in the inner harbor should be the first to call.
The only tools needed are a garden trial, or sand-scooping container the size of a coffee cup and a pocket knife to cut tires loose. Club members can telephone for work assignments which may be completed on their own time, to fit personal schedules. Full Fair Share credit will be awarded for every minute worked.
The E-mail address for Ronnie Ashmore is Sailtanzer@aol.com or call 224-9872.