Click image for enlargement. Graphic by Mike Johnson.
If the weather cooperates, a flotilla the size of 14 football fields will begin a slow trek across Lake Mead tonight, as the floating docks and covered boat slips of Overton Beach Marina are ferried to deeper water.
The move is slated to get under way between 6 p.m. and midnight and last the better part of two days.
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Puttering along at less than 2 mph, 20 houseboats will push the marina in two large sections, one 520 feet long and 700 feet wide, the other 536 feet wide and 800 feet long.
A dozen smaller boats will be used to help steer the sections, which will be manned by as many as 50 employees from the National Park Service and private marina operator Forever Resorts.
This is the largest such relocation ever undertaken at Lake Mead. Recreation area spokeswoman Roxanne Dey said it almost certainly ranks among the biggest marinas to be moved at one time anywhere in the United States.
The two sections have a combined weight of about 2.8 million pounds, not counting all the boats that will remain tied to their slips as the marina is moved.
Forever Resorts' Randy Roundtree said all of the people renting slips at Overton Beach were given the option of moving their boats themselves in advance of this weekend's operation. About 120 of those owners decided to let their vessels be moved with the marina, which has 175 slips in all.
Roundtree said boat owners will not be allowed to ride along as the marina is moved, but it would be a pretty boring trip anyway.
"Basically, at one mile per hour, if they closed their curtains they might not notice they're moving," he said.
Overton Beach Marina is being forced from the northern end of Lake Mead by the gradual decline in the water level.
North America's largest man-made reservoir was nearly full in 1998, but years of record drought have caused its surface to drop about 85 feet.
Roundtree said time is of the essence.
According to the latest projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Lake Mead is expected to drop another 16 feet by September. At that level, parts of the marina and some of its boats could be sitting in the mud at the bottom of the lake, Roundtree said. "Then you wouldn't be able to move it."
If everything goes according to plan, the two marina sections should reach Lake Mead's Middle Point sometime Saturday afternoon. From there, one set of docks and slips will head east toward its new home at Callville Bay Marina and the other will head west to Temple Bar Marina on the Arizona side of the lake.
Crews will be waiting at the two marinas to secure the docks and slips when they arrive. Roundtree, who is general manager at Callville Bay, said each marina section will be anchored to the bottom of the lake using at least 30 concrete blocks, each weighing about 12,000 pounds.
The route was plotted out in advance using a houseboat and Global Positioning System unit. The journey is being timed so the flotilla can tackle its two trickiest stretches of water during the light of day.
On Saturday morning, both sections of marina will navigate around Ramshead Island, about two-thirds of the way down the Overton Arm.
On Sunday morning, the section destined for Callville Bay will pass through the Narrows, a roughly 5-mile stretch in Boulder Canyon that links the lake's Virgin and Boulder basins.
It could be a tight squeeze. Roundtree said there is one part of the Narrows where the marina is expected to clear the canyon walls by only about 18 feet on either side.
"We're going to crawl through the Narrows. We might be putting our hands on the walls as we go," he said with a grin.
The park service plans to close the Narrows to other boat traffic while the marina passes through.
At night, spotlights and guide boats will be used to keep the marina sections on course and out of danger.
The operation was originally scheduled to begin just after midnight Thursday, but it was postponed when organizers learned about high winds in the forecast for today.
For the past week, Forever Resorts and the park service have been getting daily briefings from meteorologists with the National Weather Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Roundtree said it would not be safe to move the marina in sustained winds of more than 12 mph. If the wind picks up unexpectedly during the trip, he said, they might have to steer toward the nearest sheltered location and ease the marina into shore, maybe even run it aground.
"The Narrows is the one spot where we're hoping for no wind. If it's blowing in there, it could be touchy," Roundtree said.
Further complicating the move was the discovery of invasive quagga mussels at Lake Mead earlier this year.
So far, the mussels have not been found outside of the Boulder Basin. To keep from inadvertently spreading quagga to other parts of the lake, the houseboats to be used during the move were taken out of the water and steam-cleaned to destroy any mollusks or mollusk larvae.
When the boats were put back into the water, they were immediately moved to Overton Beach, Dey said.
The park service plans to maintain the boat ramp, ranger station, public restrooms and fish-cleaning station at Overton Beach. Other shore-based facilities, including the convenience store and vacation trailer village, will be closed once the lake's northern-most marina is gone.
This weekend's move will be followed in mid-February with the relocation of the "C Dock" at Lake Mead Marina.
The 288-slip dock will be added to the Las Vegas Boat Harbor marina, about two miles away, leaving Lake Mead Marina with two docks and some 467 slips.
The change will create some room to maneuver in the shrinking cove where Lake Mead Marina is. The cove is just south of Saddle Island, which has been transformed by drought into a peninsula.
In 2002, low water conditions and silt buildup at the mouth of the Las Vegas Wash forced Las Vegas Bay Marina to move about 12 miles after 45 years at the same location.
