Folks gather for send-off of Golden Ray remnants

Oct. 25—With the tugboat Kurt Crosby pushing and the Crosby Star pulling, a dry dock barge carrying the last big chunk of the shipwrecked Golden Ray slid past a crowd gathered early Monday afternoon at the end of the St. Simons Pier.

Stretching to more than 130 feet above the barge's deck, the 4,000-metric-ton Section 4 of the shipwreck slipped past the crowd to muffled cheers that the Curt Crosby's captain answered with a horn toot.

"It's been a long time coming," said Carol Shermerhorn, a St. Simons Islander who joined about 100 or so folks on the pier for this final spectacle in the Golden Ray salvage saga. "It wasn't a pretty sight. I'm excited to see it leave. I'm happy."

And so the last visible vestige of the Golden Ray disappeared from the St. Simons Sound sometime after 1 p.m. Monday, more than two years after the 656-foot-long vessel overturned in the waters between Jekyll and St. Simons islands.

Even Gregory "Crab Man" Roberts put down his cast net and left his traps untended long enough to come see the hulking chunk of steel depart for the East River in Brunswick. Crab Man was there too in the dark morning hours of Sept. 8, 2019, when the Golden Ray capsized on its port side while heading out to sea with a cargo of 4,161 vehicles. (A federal investigation would later reveal that the Golden Ray was top heavy with cargo and light on ballast, causing it to overturn after a routine starboard turn from the Brunswick River into the St. Simons Sound.)

"Might as well take a look," Crab Man said, leaning against the railing as the dry dock barge and its huge cargo briefly eclipsed the view of Jekyll Island on the opposite side of the sound. "The first time I saw it, it was heading out. I'm glad it's gone. I saw it when it went down and now it's going away."

Guided by the tugboats, the barge carrying Section 4 chugged up the Brunswick River, beneath the Sidney Lanier Bridge (clearance, 186 feet) and into the East River to its berth at a dismantling site off of Bay Street in the city. The end came 11 months after Texas-based T&T Salvage commenced with its plan to employ the towering VB 10,000 crane vessel to power a cutting chain that tore the Golden Ray's steel carcass into eight sections for removal from the sound.

Back at the pier, Rhonda and Steve Howell wondered at the view between the islands sans a gargantuan half-submerged scrap heap. The couple retired to St. Simons Island from Atlanta in 2020, by which time the shipwreck of the Golden Ray had become a fixture hereabouts.

"Since we've been here, it's always been here," Rhonda Howell quipped. "I haven't seen the sound without it."

Steve Howell could not resist.

"I can see clearly now the (Golden) Ray is gone," he chimed in, commandeering the Johnny Nash hit about rainless days. "But, yeah, we're ready for a new view."

Not so fast. The scene on the waters of the sound is anything but pristine in the absence of any view of shipwreck remnants. The salvage site is still surrounded by a 1-mile-perimeter environmental protection barrier (EPB). And the golden arches of the 255-foot-tall Golden Ray still reach into the skyline overhead.

Also, salvors still have plenty of work do to inside these waters. On the sea floor inside the EPB's mesh netting sits an untold amount of vehicles — dozens? hundreds? — and other large steel ship pieces that shook loose during the cutting and lifting of the sections. Cranes and crews will have to fish all these chunks of junk from inside the EPB and load them into container barges to be hauled away. Only then will still larger cranes move in and concentrate on removing the EPB itself. The mesh netting and oil retention boom on the surface of the EPB are supported by 80 piles, each 140 feet long driven in pairs halfway into the seabed.

But the VB 10,000's work is done here, said U.S. Coast Guardsman Michael Himes, spokesman for Unified Command. The workhorse of the salvage operation, the multipurpose crane vessel has powered the cutting chain that separated the sections, hoisted severed sections of several thousand metric tons each and placed them onto barges for removal from the sound. Built for dismantling unproductive oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, the VB 10,000 will soon return to its home port in Sabine Pass, Texas, Himes said.

Unified Command's oil pollution and debris cleanup teams will maintain patrols of the water and shorelines for the indefinite future, Himes said.

"The next stage is to remove debris that has accumulated inside the EPB," Himes said. "The VB 10,000 will depart before we begin those operations. We will maintain our pollution response resources around the barrier and along the shoreline throughout the debris removal."

Meanwhile, visions of the Golden Ray will be around for a while longer.

Section 4 and its immediate predecessor, Section 5, will now command an imposing presence on the East River in Brunswick. The two sections comprised the Golden Ray's midship and bore the brunt of impact when the Golden Ray capsized into the sandbar beside the shipping channel. Both sections lost most of the hull plating on the sunken port side. This extensive damage required reinforcement work on the steel-girded cradle built into the deck of each dry dock barge to better secure the sections for transport.

Likewise, engineers determined the damage to both Section 5 and Section 4 was too great to risk transporting the sections whole to the Modern American Recycling Services (MARS) facility in Gibson, La.

The six previous sections of the shipwreck all have been transported whole via barge to MARS. Section 6 and Section 3 both departed Wednesday on a 10-day journey to MARS aboard the 400-foot-long barge Julie B.

Section 4 and Section 5 both will be dismantled into chunks of several hundred tons each at MARS's temporary setup at 615 Bay St. on the East River in Brunswick. The more manageable smaller chunks will be transported in container barges to Louisiana.

The VB 10,000 lifted Section 4 in a slow and steady process last week, lightening the load by plucking cars from the cargo hold with cranes as it progressed. Salvage masters aboard the VB 10,000 hoped to reduce the weight of overhead stress as the damaged sunken side slowly rose out of the water.

With a newly outfitted cradle to handle the section's damage, the barge entered the EPB Sunday and slid between the twin hulls of the VB 10,000. Holding Section 4 suspended by formidable polymer straps in its arching rafters, the crane vessel lowered the massive chunk of steel into the cradle on the deck of the dry dock barge. Welders boarded the dry dock barge and worked through the night Sunday securing the section into the steel-girded cradle.

The Kurt Crosby pulled the barge back out of the EPB's east gate starting around 12:30 p.m. Monday. The Crosby Star moved in and gave the barge's left front corner a gentle push, leading it into a slow turn away from the EPB. Moments later the Crosby Star tugged a tow rope attached to the bow of the barge while the Kurt Crosby pushed from behind. Half a dozen crew members milled about the rear of the deck, looking like so many ants beside the hulking figure of Section 4.

Karl Degaris of Fernandina Beach, Fla., and his girlfriend Leslie Rodgers of Brunswick took a quick selfie from the pier railing with the salvage wrap-up efforts as backdrop. It was not unlike the selfie Degaris got with his adult daughter two years ago, when the entire length of wreckage filled the background.

"It doesn't even look like a ship anymore," Degaris said to Rodgers.

Moments later, it looked even less so.

"It was definitely an eyesore," Rodgers said. "And now it's gratefully gone."