Coast Guard Swaps Buoys on the Hudson, a Sure Sign of Spring

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By Corey Kilgannon

The Katherine Walker, a hulking Coast Guard workboat, was set to grapple a hefty buoy on the Hudson River when an approaching oil barge radioed in, asking, "You guys switching the winter buoys out?"

"Roger, that's our plan," responded the Katherine Walker's commanding officer, Lt. Justin Erdman. "I guess spring is here."

Lieutenant Erdman commands the Coast Guard's aids-to-navigation team, based in Bayonne, N.J., which maintains over 300 floating aids to navigation, or buoys, in the waterways in and around New York City.

Landlubbers know them as quaint red or green floats that dot the waterways like oversize fishing bobbers. Up close, they are formidable steel structures that extend deep below the surface and can reach 26 feet in height.

To maintain them, the Coast Guard uses the Katherine Walker, a 175-foot long buoy tender.

Since buoys can be damaged by ice floes and dragged out of position, the unit hauls buoys out before winter and replaces them with stripped-down steel markers with no light mechanism. These smaller, torpedo-shaped buoys are less vulnerable to damage.

Swapping the winter buoys for the regular ones is a rite of spring for Lieutenant Erdman's unit, which drops nearly 40 large navigation aids into the water.

Now in its busy season, the unit began a recent weekday with a half dozen buoys chained to the Katherine Walker's steel deck: big, barnacled steel barrels, seven feet in diameter and 17 feet tall. Each supported a metal tower with a solar-powered light and a radar sensor.

Some buoys are considered too vital to be replaced by winter ones because of their location, so their condition and position have to be checked and, if needed, fixed. This is common, even though the buoys are secured to the river's bottom by thick chains shackled to massive concrete block moorings as heavy as nine tons. The previous day, the unit had to reposition a large bell buoy, nine feet in diameter, near the Statue of Liberty that had been bashed by a barge and dragged south over half a mile.

Since much of the Hudson was iced over this winter, many buoys were damaged, Lieutenant Erdman said, as the Katherine Walker pulled out of its Bayonne berth and passed Robbins Reef Light in the Lower New York Bay. The vessel is named for the woman who tended the light for decades and is said to have saved 50 sailors from shipwrecks before she retired in 1919.

On the bridge, Lieutenant Erdman looked at an array of screens and control panels, an assortment of navigational equipment that, in some form, most larger vessels have these days and that helps mariners find channels and channel markers. Still, he said, buoys remain crucial to the many barges, tankers, freighters and recreational boaters on the crowded local waterways.

"Even though we have all this technology, most people are still just looking for a buoy," Lieutenant Erdman said.

The Kate Walker, as it is known, was plowing through New York Harbor toward the Battery, steering clear of the many ferries that zipped back and forth — rush hour on the river.

Lieutenant Erdman said he grew up in Wisconsin surrounded by dairy farms. "I joined the Coast Guard after high school because I wanted something different," he said. "Well, this is different."

The unit, whose coverage area runs from Sandy Hook, N.J., up the Hudson to Albany, and along the East River and Long Island Sound to New Haven, traveled under the George Washington Bridge and then the Tappan Zee. It pulled up to buoys No. 13 and No. 15, near Sing Sing prison in Ossining, N.Y., which mark a channel up to 40 feet deep along the eastern side of the river.

The Kate Walker is essentially built to maneuver like a helicopter. Instead of a standard propeller and rudder, it has two mechanical drives astern that can independently rotate 360 degrees and two thruster propulsion units toward the bow. They work in tandem with a computerized navigational system and global positioning technology so that the vessel can hover precisely over a set point, even in rough conditions.

It is certainly easier than positioning by use of sextants and land coordinates, as was done years ago, Lieutenant Erdman said.

"It almost feels like cheating, leaving the steering to joysticks and buttons, but most of the stuff on deck is the same as it was in the 1940s," he said.

The manual work hardly seems like cheating. For each winter buoy they approached, deck workers hooked it with the crane's cable and hauled it on deck. Six crew members were needed to push the buoys, each of which weighs about 1,200 pounds, across the wet steel deck for stowing.

The links of the heavy chain that holds buoys in are twice as big as an average New York City bagel. The riggers use sledgehammers and heavy steel hooks to move the chain around the deck. Even with temperatures near 30 degrees, some crew members had stripped to short sleeves after switching several buoys.

The mooring chain was held fast by clamping into a slot in an area of the boat called the "hot box," a spot where the crew has to be careful for fear that the chain might pop out and suddenly be ripped across the deck.

"You’re dealing with quite a big amount of weight that at any moment could become quite violent, so you have to make sure you’re not between the load and a hard point," said Chief Troy Krotz, a boatswain's mate.

The crew is outfitted in hard hats, life jackets, filthy work overalls, steel-tipped boots and gloves.

One tradition onboard is to bestow nicknames on new crew members, or "break-ins." On deck was Thor, named for an embarrassing hammer-dropping episode, as well as Nuttie, a play on her last name. On the bridge was a boatswain's mate, Bonnie Gonzalez, whose nickname is Tiny because of her short stature, and Lieutenant Erdman, known as Bones for his lanky build.

But now as a 7,800-pound buoy, which was going in the water, swayed around the deck like a drunken sailor, all kidding was replaced by the urgent shouting of orders.

"The buoy is considered live now," Lieutenant Erdman said, as the buoy deck supervisor barked commands over a radio, relaying the lieutenant's orders from the bridge.

Even a veteran hand like Chief Krotz, who has seen his share of dangerous situations with the Coast Guard, including search-and-rescue assignments along the Eastern Seaboard and chasing drug runners in the Caribbean, respects the danger.

"When that live chain starts running and you’re between 10,000 pounds of concrete and steel, you’ll lose that fight every time," he said.

The buoy was ready for placement and the crew waited for word from the captain.

"Set it," Lieutenant Erdman ordered, and the crane lowered the buoy into the water. It bobbed into place as the lines were released and the Katherine Walker moved on to the next one.

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