July 23 , 2006 - Another Unusual Solution: Do-It-Yourself Floating Jetty for All-Tide Shore Access
by Michel & Jane DeRidder

Our New Zealand base is a set of river pilings. This is where we tie Magic Dragon when we want access to our vehicle for stocking up, emptying our mail box, going camping, or leaving the boat for an extended trip. The main disadvantage of a river base is, of course, dependency on tides to go in and out of the bay, and the muddiness of getting ashore at low tides.

We've made getting ashore a bit easier by building our own jetty and mooring it at the bottom of a public right-of-way where an ancient jetty had perished. This small, tidy, inconspicuous floating pontoon, tied to shore like a boat, allows us access to deep water at low tide without disturbing the river bed with permanent poles. The pontoon jetty is located at the foot of a public right-of-way to the river, locally known as Cardiac Track or The Cattle Race. Longtime local residents say there was a landing facility on this spot throughout the 40s and perhaps before. It is one of the few protected places where the river is accessible at most tides. Apparently children used to row from further down the estuary and land here to walk to school. Concrete and steel ruins are still obvious, vestiges of an old dock.

Our floating pontoon jetty.

The pontoon itself is a bottomless wooden box structure supported by two plastic 50-gallon drums. It has wooden mooring posts to tie up to and to hang on to while clambering in and out of the dinghy. Michel designed and built the minimum structure some fifteen or more years ago, floating it into place to be tethered to its prepared location. He had already sunk three steel pegs into rock heaps. All we had to do was attach the jetty to them. One peg is to attach the walkway with its handrail by means of a slice of heavy-duty truck tire, providing a flexible hinge to accommodate tidal fluctuations. Two more steel pegs, one on either side, are to attach the pontoon to shore. We eventually replaced the first rope tethers with discarded SS 1x7 rigging wire.

Jetty at low tide.

Maintenance of the jetty so far consists of replacing the anti-skid now and then, and pumping air into the 50-gallon drums at low tide from time to time with a bicycle pump. Only once have we had to replace one of the plastic drums. To do this, we dropped a stern anchor out in the stream to hold Magic Dragon in place, then nosed in to lift the pontoon with the anchor winch, took out the squashed drum and popped in another with the help of a visiting cruising friend. (Thanks, Charley.) We keep an anchored endless line on one side of the pontoon (a couple of rocks in a deep hole) in order to pull our 14-foot shore boat off the jetty, thus leaving jetty space free for fellow piling owners to access their boats. We pay an annual fee for "seabed rental for minimum structure" and we put beach shells or builders mix on the steep bits of the track for safety's sake.