Cleanup is continuing in Horseshoe Bay this week after a massive windstorm on Saturday broke apart a floating breakwater, setting boats adrift, sinking a barge and causing significant damage to Sewell’s Marina.
“It was crazy windy, the windiest I’ve ever seen it,” said Ian Grantham, station leader of the West Vancouver Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue unit based out of Horseshoe Bay.
Steve Wayvon, a commercial trucker from the Sunshine Coast, sat and watched the scene unfold in Horseshoe Bay after his ferry back to Langdale was cancelled on Saturday because of the high winds.
“The docks were just going crazy. I thought all the fingers were going to rip off. ... It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it in Horseshoe Bay,” he said. “There were whitecaps on the beach here.”
“There were guys running around but they couldn’t do anything.”
Ben Montgomery, a server and cook at Troll’s Restaurant arrived for work around 7 a.m. to a dramatic scene on Saturday morning. “It was absolute mayhem outside,” he said. “The wind was knocking everything over. The boats looked like they were going to fly out of the water.”
At the height of the storm Saturday morning, a floating breakwater that had provided protection for some of the outer marina docks broke apart. A barge that had been used to store some summer rental boats as well as a forklift and a large storage building also tipped over and sank, sending everything dramatically into the drink.
“I noticed the barge, the closest right corner to us was listing pretty far down,” said Wayvon. “I saw some guys run over there with pumps but they couldn’t pump it out, it just kept sinking.”
Wayvon said he saw rental boats and a forklift tip over into the water. “Then the whole barge went over. The whole building went down. They say it’s 70 feet down right now.”
Sewell’s has already contracted divers to assess and remove the items that sank in Horseshoe Bay, according to the Coast Guard. Some items, including the forklift and all barrels of oil and fuel that were on the barge have already been recovered, said Michelle Imbeau, spokesperson for the Coast Guard. The marina also plans to raise the sunken barge.
Aerial surveillance picked up a small area with a light sheen of pollution on the surface of water following the storm but authorities deemed it too small to be recoverable, and likely to dissipate with wind and tides, said Imbeau. The Coast Guard’s environmental response unit is monitoring the situation, said Imbeau.
Scott Young said his boats at Horseshoe Bay were OK, but a few others weren’t so lucky. “The ones that were closer in did OK. The ones that were farther out … were getting pushed by the wind and the waves into the next ones.”
“Some of them got pretty badly bashed up,” said Grantham, although no boats actually sank.
By Sunday, a huge Mercury barge had been anchored into place at the entrance to the bay to act as a breakwater.
Matt MacDonald, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, said the wind on Saturday was the result of a powerful Arctic outflow that began Friday evening and continued for 24 hours in Howe Sound.
A weather station on Pam Rocks in Howe Sound recorded gusts of more than 100 kilometres an hour for a 12-hour period from 10 p.m. Friday to 10 a.m. Saturday, he said. BC Ferries also recorded gusts of 130 km/h in Howe Sound. Under those conditions, “the waves are able to build to very high heights. That was definitely a compounding factor.”
High winds resulted in ferries to both Langdale and Bowen Island being cancelled on Saturday.
One ferry arriving in Horseshoe Bay from Nanaimo Saturday morning waited to dock for about an hour, but eventually had to turn around and head back to Nanaimo without unloading, said Deborah Marshall, spokeswoman for BC Ferries. “It was too windy to dock,” she said.
Staff at Sewell’s Marina said owners were still busy with the clean up this week and weren’t available to comment on the aftermath of Saturday’s storm.
