Bellingham Marine said it supplied the floating docks for a new boathouse under the Hawthorne Bridge on the Willamette River in Portland, Ore., that houses two emergency response boats for Portland Fire and Rescue.
Bellingham supplied the docks from its plant in Ferndale, Wash., and supervised the installation. The floating structure is composed of two main sections. The section that supports the 4,200-square-foot fully enclosed boathouse is a post-tensioned unit that provides two 60-foot berths with a 5-foot-wide walkway around the boats inside the building. There is also a 15-foot wide platform at the back of the building for the staging of equipment.
Outside the boathouse is a triangular shaped “deflector” float.
“The primary purpose of the deflector float is to keep floating debris from getting lodged under the boathouse floats,” Bellingham project manager Derrick Ames said in a statement. “That’s why the float is shaped the way it is and has such a low freeboard. “
The post-tensioned platform and finger piers that serve as the base for the boathouse were assembled in the water at Advanced American’s yard on the Willamette River and towed to the site. A unique underwater truss system was added to provide rigidity to the floating foundation and tie the three finger piers together.
“The truss system helps stabilize the floats and create a solid foundation for the building,” Ames said. “The center finger is not post-tensioned, so the truss helps tie the middle finger pier into the post-tensioned floats.”
Portland Fire and Rescue responds to emergency incidents along 149 miles of navigable waterways of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.
