How I Blew up an Ocean Reef and Never Went to Jail

If for some cosmic reason, I ended up being stuck on one job for the rest of my life, forever repeating itself....like Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day"....I would choose the Gambier Island, Brigade Bay subdivision project. Why?...The people I got to work with. Pete Husband, Bill Wells, The Foreshore Technologies guys, Butch Erickson, Mike Husband, Crosby Marine Services, Bob Hopkins...and all the rest. Hard and challenging work made fun. No arguing or posturing...no power tripping....just straight forward, team oriented problem solving and an honest days work....and on occasion, doing the impossible.

 To get to work involved a boat ride from the booming grounds at Twin Creeks. Sometimes the weather got a little snotty, and the ride over was a little dramatic. But everyone involved had done all this stuff before..and we kept up the good nature chatter, while scanning out through windows...looking for giant tugboats and misplaced islands.

 In the beginning of the job, Sometimes it was just Pete and I...maybe a truck driver. I would do the drilling and blasting for the roads and driveways. Pete would do the required excavator work to push the roads through and strip the rock that was going to need blasting. Butch and Bill  came along to drive dump trucks and operate excavators as the job got bigger and there was more room to play...more material to move.
 Just above the bay where the boat was parked everyday, the owners set aside a huge rock bluff to be used as a quarry. It was going to be the source of rock for road building ( with the finer rocks ) and for construction of a breakwater ( big rocks ). I would drill for one or two days and then load a shot to keep the boys happy with a constant supply of material for whatever they were working on. There nothing around to hit with the blasts, so no need for blast mats at all...just load and blow.

 Now at some point in the early days of talking about the project...I seem to remember people going on about this reef that had to be removed at to make room for a set of boat docks to go in. I put this completely out of my mind while concentrating on the work I had right in front of me. On some days when we came in with the boat, you see a bit of a rock sticking out of the water, but we never got a good look at it. It wasn't until much later when the daytime tides were much lower that it the reef started to really show itself.

 One day, Pete came up to where I was drilling on the quarry ( with a really tired old M-4 tank-drill ) and said " Hey Mike, you might want come down and take a look at this."  The tide was very low and the reef just about totally exposed. My first thoughts and words were "How the fuck are we going to get out there and drill and shoot that thing with out some sort of disaster taking place?" You know like the drill falling in the ocean, breaking down out there with the tide coming in, not being able to reach everything and a few dozen other miscellaneous thoughts on just how fucked we were...up to and including having the Fisheries Dept crawling around the whole thing.

The partially exposed reef, the North Shore mountains....and home of my future Sea to Sky work in the background. Photos from  Foreshore Technologies ...

The barge landing site and future starting point of the breakwater construction

 Pete was the overall supervisor on the job With a nod from the guys at Foreshore, who designed the breakwater and were managing the construction, they agreed on building an offshoot road over to the reef. This gave us access  when the tide was down part way. The next step in taming the site was to flatten off the top of the reef to make it accessible to the tracked machines. I did this with a series of short holes and fairly light blasts ...I didn't want to tear it up too much, and make the deep drilling difficult.

Slightly different view...gorgeous day in Paradise

There were two factors that made the reef work ever so slightly easier to pull off. One was that Sechelt Creek Contracting supplied a new hoe-drill to the job. This gave us all kinds of advantages. Drilling speed and reach was unbeatable. We could only work when the tide was going down, low slack and then carefully and quickly when it was coming back up. The hoe-drill allowed me to sit in one place and knock off the days work in air-conditioned comfort, while listening to the stereo. The longer holes were around 33 ft deep, a few in the 40 ft range, there was no way in the world that the tired old M-4 was going to manage that kind of workload. Jay, my helper managed all the chores on deck.. ..spotting holes, cleaning up, checking the holes for obstructions and watching the alignment of the mast and drill rod.
The other factor that had things running in our favor, was my background as a working diver. This allowed me to do survey dives of the reef that was below the low tide mark.  I could see with my own two eyes, what was invisible to the other contractors who bid on the job. It was a huge asset to be the blaster and the diver. When we started drilling with the hoe-drill, I would do a dive in the morning and place colored rocks on the reef bottom. This would mark out the drill pattern for later.When I rolled the drill onto the reef, I would reach out over the water, and Jay (in a skiff ) would guide the drill rod down through 10 to 15 feet of water. This was how we got the lowest parts drilled out. There were a few exciting times, when I got the drill steel stuck and was unable to uncouple the connections. Normally not a huge deal, but a catastrophe when the tide is coming in to drown the 400,00 dollar drill rig. One of our main emergency tools was a gas powered cut-off saw. This was in the event of a worst case scenario, and the drill rod or whole bottom of the mast had to be hacked off to to rescue the rest of the rig from a salt water death.

The first load of blast rock goes in. I had never been on a job that dumped rocks into the ocean....I thought that any minute , we were all going to jail....I kept on scanning the ocean for the sight of a high speed inflatable boat with angry men and badges...that never happened. The permits were in place and kept us safe from handcuffs and fingerprinting

Pete organizing the first bit of rock, locking it into the natural crevices

Gaining ground, not a good place for a catastrophic breakdown  

That's Bill Wells at the wheel...you want to be an expert driver to do this job....oh..and the brakes on this particular truck were second best....and you had to back down a hill to get on to the breakwater...just to make it more fun

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The access trail over to the reef

things are taking shape...the trail to the reef is almost ready to  use

Finally out there, using the worn out M-4 to drill the holes that allow me to flatten off the top...the hoe-drill isn't ready yet...and every day the old clunker gets closer the end of it's useful life

 The new hoe-drill shows up, and allows us to drill 3 to 4 times faster

Pete out there at the pointy end, organizing the rock that gets delivered to him

I think that was Jimmy Smith's rock truck that was with us for a while

The barge mounted clam-shell is placing huge armour rocks on the outside of the breakwater...over on the right is my island pick-up truck that only had reverse gear left in it...which made for some pretty comical drives around the property...there is a completely separate story about how it left the island.

Lots of help to load the shots, trying to beat the tide. The last of the three shots was loaded 100% using divers and working underwater to load 3000 lbs of explosives

Video by journalist/reporter/videographer George Orr of North Vancouver            click on the arrow to play video
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Boom time...attempts at constructing a bubble curtain to reduce the underwater shock wave were expensive and pointless . It should be noted that the fish kill was very low...less than two dozen perch and shiners. One month after the last blasts, I did a dive in the area that was dug out. The rocks on the bottom and the rocks in the breakwater already had growth on them....and there were fish living in the crevices...which offered protection and breeding habitat

All the work, planning, cussing, worry and risk ends with the push of a little red button

Digging out one blast and drilling for the next

Getting closer to the finished product

The pilings go in for the docks to be secured to

Done deal....more still photos to come in the near future from other sources.....for information on how you too can have a breakwater constructed in your backyard...get in touch with.... Foreshore Technologies North Vancouver BC    604 683 3111 email fti@foreshore.ca      Pete Husband Contracting Gibsons BC 604 886 9447 cell 604 885 8327    George Orr is at george@jorjor.ca