CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — It kind of sounds like a setup for a joke, but what do you do when your floating cabin gets stuck in the sand and has to be removed. But it's not a joke for owners of cabins along the Laguna Madre who face fines if their cabins are not removed.
Many of you have been to the floating cabins along the Laguna Madre south of Bird Island. But high tides and hurricanes over the years have left many of the cabins aground on the backside of Padre Island National Seashore, and something had to be done.
About a dozen of the cabins ended up like this one. Well away from the water with owners facing fines of one thousand dollars per day if they are not removed.
So the cabin owners called Todd Horn, who owns Texas Repo and Consignment, and he came up with a plan.
Make giant rollers out of cable reels and cover them with plywood and use them to roll the cabins out. The power comes from a 450 horsepower winch on a work barge that is anchored with eight-foot-long augers twisted into the sand. There were some problems along the way when a boat ran aground, and the giant wheels got stuck in the mud. And there some broken axles and heat strokes in the August sun.
It kind of looks like something right out of the Flintstones, but it works, and the job is almost done. And besides, it all just looks kind of cool, right? Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.
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