Some of my more avid readers (do I have any?) know by now that I do contract work for Melrose Pyrotechnics and a couple of other Professional Fireworks Companies (melrose is by far one of the best). I handle the Friday Night Fireworks for the Atlanta Braves games and shoot some other shows for them when they need me too. Usually the 4th of July is a busy time for me and this year was no different. Except that, since the Braves were out of town this year, I was asked to take my Crew down to shoot a barge show at Daytona Beach.
Under the best possible circumstances, this would not have been an issue. Even under some of the possible circumstances, this wouldn’t be any worse than a normal 4th of July show, and it was looking like that was going to be the case again this year, until I lock the keys in the truck.
Let me explain. I drove down to Coco Beach on Monday, July 2nd (after a half day of work) and got to the hotel at about 10pm. Met Corey there and checked in, went to sleep. Woke up around 7am to drive an hour (one way) to pick up our equipment truck. We get the truck, stop by lowes to pick up 25 bags of playground sand, and head to the port (which, by the way, is a royal pain in the ass to get in to). finally get to the barge around 11:30am.
We pull up and are greeted by something that resembles a rusting pile of metal floating on salt water. The barge was 120′x45′x7′. Compared to the other barge in port (that was for the Coco Beach show less than two miles from port) ours was tiny. It would be like comparing an H2 to a Mini Cooper (with our barge being the Cooper). Needless to say, we probably should not have been out at sea on the barge we were on.
Set up went ok on Tuesday, the rain held off and we had everything set by 4pm (which is good for a show of this size). I get a call that because we have to leave so early in the morning, they want to drop the product off that evening so it is already in port when we get there in the morning. Thats cool, so Jason, Joey and Corey head back to the hotel to clean up, while I catch some Z’s in the truck waiting on Marty to drop off the product. He comes and goes and just after him and I move all the product to my truck, the Three Amigos come back (except that Joey couldn’t get in to port because he had an unauthorized passenger with him…).
I get the keys to the truck from Corey (along with my car keys), move the truck to a parking space and write a note for the dash with my contact info. Mind you, I lay the keys down on the seat of the truck before i slip the note on the dash, turn and lock the truck door and close it. Before it clicked shut, I realized that the keys were inside. By this point, my face looks like Brad Pitts in Ocean’s 12 when he realizes that Catherine Zeta-jones took his cell phone.
So, we call Ryder Customer Support (who are very helpful by the way) and they dispatch someone to come unlock the truck. An hour later, he shows up (after a huge hassle at the gate to the port) and tries for the next two hours (in a pouring rain) to unlock the truck. After trying unsuccessfully with the fat slim jim he has, he calls in his buddy thomas (which is another hassle) with a smaller slim jim and has it open in three tries. Get the keys, head to the hotel to shower, grab a bite at waho (waffle house), and hit the walmart to stock up for Wednesday.
After a brief sleep (6 hours) we head back to the port, load our product on the barge, find out we have to have the fire chief of Port Canaveral inspect the barge and the permits (even though we’re shooting the show in daytona…) and we’re finally underway.
Mind you, moving 7 miles an hour, for 77 miles, is an 11 hour trip (one way). Captain Brian, the tug captain, was surprised that we were going to be on the barge and not the tug, and he warned us that if things got rough, he might not be able to help us much…
Out side of rough seas (4 foot maybe) on the trip up (I was sick several times) preventing us from working a steady pace, the weather on the trip up was fairly good. It wasn’t until we were finishing up as we sat held off the pier at Daytona Beach that things got rough. about 20 minutes before the show, a fairly good size wave (10 to 12 feet) came up over the front of the barge, destroyed the shelter we were supposed to use to shoot from and wiped out half the display. At that point I called the show, and the next day, news reports would report it as everything from the product was ruined to the display was washed in to the sea.
Captain Brian tried his best to get us off the barge, however, as it was not a “rescue” the Coast Guard would not come out and the tug could not get close enough to the barge to get us off safely, so we had to ride back to Port Canaveral on the barge, with nothing but clear plastic tarps to protect us from the wind and rain. It was a long night.
We get close to port about 8am and the port authority is weary about letting us in to port with the mortars still loaded, until we impress upon them that they’re safer loaded than having the product laying out on the deck. We finally pull in to port around 10:30 am. Twenty Six hours after we left, with out having fired a single shot. We still have to unload the show, which, other than the lightning storms around us, is fairly routine.
The crew worked hard and I’m proud of the way we handled the whole process, it could have been a whole lot worse (of course, it could have been tons better). Had we been on the bigger barge, we might have had a show…
More Photos from the 4th
Related External Links
Generated by LinkCurl
Popularity: 1% [?]
Needless to say this past 
Unfortunately for us, the product (fireworks) were not allowed on site until 2pm, so I had to send the delivery truck away for an hour or so. We managed to get the product on site a little earlier when the Marietta Fire Department sent over a truck so we could load the shells.
We were setup and ready by 9pm (considering we lost one of our guys on an equipment run for 3 hours, that’s not bad) and when the show started at 9:30pm (on the nose) the first flip sent up an amazing shot of a Red, a white and a blue five inch shell (three shells) just after Ed Harris told Houston that we were go for main engine launch.
Loading ...
