DSD Uses Underwater Chainsaw to Rebuild
One of Hilton Head Island’s most posh marinas – Windmill Harbour Marina – hired one of our favorite clients, STEADFAST MARINE, 
to rebuild their harbor’s entranceway recently, and DEEP SOUTH DIVERS was subcontracted to make the job a success!
The twin piers bordering the famous lock system into their protected harbor were aging and due for an upgrade.STEADFAST did a beautiful job making it happen by removing the pierhead roofs, the railing, the decking, the stringers and the headers… Which left only the pier pilings in place.
These served as a perfect guide for driving new pilings near the old while increasing the size of the new piers and adding a current-blocking jetty to each pier.
Once they were driven in, the old ones had to come out; that’s where we came in.
Using DEEP SOUTH DIVERS’ hydraulically-powered underwater chainsaw, SeaJay and his team cleaned each piling and then cut them down, “felling” each piling as if it were a tree in a vast, linear, dark, underwater forest.
The team consisted of a crane operator (to remove the felled pilings), two guides for removing and setting the pilings in a pile on a barge, a topside “tender” (diver support and hydraulic power pack controller),
and a chainsaw chain sharpener, who worked full-time to sharpen chainsaw blades by hand as they dulled from cutting each of the old creosote pilings.
In all, 202 pilings were removed in this manner over a period of about three weeks… Spread out over a period of two months. This required a tremendous amount of coordination with the
dock construction crew, the barge and crane system, and over 30 topside personnel. Each pier was around 300 feet long – and there were two of them. Water temperatures hovered around 40 degrees Fahrenheit the entire time, and visibility was near zero; yet DEEP SOUTH DIVERS was able to accomplish the job safely and without incident.
When asked about the job, SeaJay said, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten fingers still attached!” At least he never lost his sense of humor.