The Spirit Of St. Joseph

On March 22nd of 2001 I received a call from the owner of the Spirit of St. Joseph riverboat. He explained to me that they were returning from Kansas City after having the boat repaired the previous evening when they had motor failure and had to dry dock the boat at Leavenworth Kansas. They had stayed the evening in Leavenworth before floating back downriver to Kansas City to once again have it repaired. Some time during the night while the boat was dry-docked in Leavenworth the river level dropped significantly over the course of the evening. While the boat was dry docked on the bank and tied off to a tree the level began to drop causing the side of the boat facing the river to start taking on water.

We were asked to supply a 4" Tsurumi gas driven centifugal pump to Environmental Specialist Inc. who had been called in to help. Environmental Specialist Inc. came in and picked up the pump and took it to the site along with some of their own gas driven units. It was also indicated that the city had a pump they would let them use.

The next day the foreman for Environmental Specialist and the owner of the riverboat called indicating they did not have enough pumping capacity to get the water out as fast as it was coming in. At that point we mobilized one 6" Godwin Dri-Prime Model CD150M to finish the job.Once we got the pump up there, set it up and got pumping we realized that even still we were not keeping up with the amount of water that was coming in. By 5:00 that evening we had 4 - 6" Godwin Dri Prime Model CD150M's on the project pumping at full capacity.

The following day was a Saturday and I was going up there in the morning to take pictures in the daylight. When I arrived the boat still lay exactly where I had seen it the previous evening. All four pumps had run continuously through the night and still had not managed to get enough water out to float the boat. After talking with the Foreman we determined there had to be a hole in that side of the boat somewhere allowing more water in than we could get out. Utility Diving Services were called in and it was found that the full size glass door on that side of the boat had been struck by a large log and broken. This was allowing more water than the 4 - 6" Godwins could handle. Once the hole was boarded up the riverboat was floated back up and ready to head back to Kansas City for even more repairs the next day.