The rebuilt Sandwich Boardwalk is on schedule to open before the summer season.
All of the pilings and framing have been installed. By Tuesday of this week, decking made of ipê hardwood from Brazil had been laid from the Town Neck Beach side of the boardwalk nearly to the Mill Creek bridge.
Likewise, the side railings — not including top handrails — were done from the beach nearly to the bridge.
Todd Kochan, supervisor with contractor ACK Marine, said all the materials are built to last: Steel piles are driven 35 feet into the ground and encased with wood and grout. Heavy 4x4 posts support the railings, which will be topped with ipê handrails. And the stainless steel mesh in the railings has 6-inch openings to avoid blocking the view across the marsh.
The largest beams were lifted into place with a helicopter; the rest of the timber had to be carried.
“Except for the helicopter, all these timbers were hand-carried out here in the mud,” Kochan said.
Asked about memorable moments from the project, members of the crew said they sometimes sank deep into the mud — knee deep and higher — while carrying that weight.
And while the winter in Sandwich brought little to no snow, workers had to withstand the cold wind and rain.
The new bridge at Mill Creek will use the wooden piles from the old bridge, with extensions to add height. The rest are steel, with corkscrew-shaped bottoms to dig into the earth.
On Tuesday, a crew near the bridge was using grout to fill the wooden casings around each pile.
At the opposite end of the boardwalk, two other workers were fastening timber pieces to the railing to hold the stainless steel mesh.
Assistant Town Engineer Sam Jensen said the greater deck height of the new boardwalk is already helping; recent high tides that reached the parking lot at Boardwalk Road didn’t touch the decking.
And the new handrails make the boardwalk safer for anyone who needs extra stability, especially in the wind, he said.
“Words can't really do justice to the value that the structure brings to the community,” he said. “It's a gorgeous landscape setting, it’s got historical significance, and I think that the design and the structure that's been built here are just excellent, and just a real service to the community.”
Most of the remaining work consists of installing decking and railings on and near the Mill Creek bridge, along with the top handrails on most of the boardwalk.
No date has been set for the official opening.
