Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
It was Easter Sunday 2024 that we first got to walk under NEW JERSEY.
We'd been waiting for this moment a long time but it was drawn out even further because of issues draining the dock. For days we'd been watching the water go down painfully slowly.
We were told, several times, not to go down into the dock without the dockmaster. It was a holiday weekend and we knew everyone wanted to be home with their families.
We got to the dock before dawn that Sunday, hoping the water would be low by the time we got there. Was it low enough? The dockmaster found us some tall rubber boots with steel toes and we finally got to descend those steps into the dock.
We didn't know what kind of shape the ship would be in. Would the corrosion be bad? Was there water coming out of the bottom? Were the anodes completely missing?
Turns out, she was beautiful. There was a decent amount of mud on the hull but the paint was still intact. Her system of coatings from 1990 had held up.
And there wasn't water coming out of the hull!
We checked the stress on all of the blocks and that none of the through hull openings were blocked. She was perfect.
We breathed a sigh of relief that everything was finally going to plan.
Now the work begins.
It was Easter Sunday 2024 that we first got to walk under NEW JERSEY.
We'd been waiting for this moment a long time but it was drawn out even further because of issues draining the dock. For days we'd been watching the water go down painfully slowly.
We were told, several times, not to go down into the dock without the dockmaster. It was a holiday weekend and we knew everyone wanted to be home with their families.
We got to the dock before dawn that Sunday, hoping the water would be low by the time we got there. Was it low enough? The dockmaster found us some tall rubber boots with steel toes and we finally got to descend those steps into the dock.
We didn't know what kind of shape the ship would be in. Would the corrosion be bad? Was there water coming out of the bottom? Were the anodes completely missing?
Turns out, she was beautiful. There was a decent amount of mud on the hull but the paint was still intact. Her system of coatings from 1990 had held up.
And there wasn't water coming out of the hull!
We checked the stress on all of the blocks and that none of the through hull openings were blocked. She was perfect.
We breathed a sigh of relief that everything was finally going to plan.
Now the work begins.
