3/4/2010-The End Is Near
The end of poverty that is! Just when it seemed as though we couldn't get any slower, we've secured a rather large job for the 8 which ought to keep us busy for the better part of the summer. It starts up in another few weeks, but I'm so excited I don't know if I can wait that long. I might start the 8 up and sit in my captains chair until then just to make sure I'm ready!
And as if that's not exciting enough, the last few days have been stupendously busy as well. Well Monday and Tuesday were a complete waste of time, but ever since then things have been jumping. Wednesday morning Chief Engineer Scott and myself had a load of gravel to help up the river in Everett at around 0530. That one was headed up to a place we like to call "Slick Boots", which is about as far up the Snohomish as tugboats go anymore. It's possible to go about another ten miles up with a decent size boat, I've had the 8 all the way up to the town of Snohomish once or twice, but under normal circumstances Slick Boots is the last stop on the river.
Anyhow when we help out with that run we often times wind up made up to the back end of the barge, pushing to beat hell the whole way. It's kind of relaxing to be on the back, especially when you're the smaller boat. You can't see over the gravel, so there's not a whole lot to do. Once in a while the boat on the bow will give you a rudder command to help get the barge around a corner, but for the most part you just run the throttles up and sit there.
After we'd finished with that I jumped on my motocycle and was all ready to return to town, only to discover I had a flat tire. Evidently I'd found a nail the hard way, so I had to run up into town and get one of those silly tire patching kits. I've never had much luck with those things, but this time it actually worked. I made it home without any further trouble and was in time for our afternoon job.
We had to undock a good sized NOAA boat at the yard, so that was kind of fun. The 8 and the Bandit made short work of that one, and as we were finishing up I realized that we'd had three out of our four tugboats running that day. Not just running either, but working on paying jobs. If we'd found a way to charge some money for the Blarney we'd have made a clean sweep of it, but even without that it was a pretty stupendous day.
Today we spent the entire morning moving boats around the yard. We had a big fish processor, a research boat, and a tug to shuffle from one place to another. Actually come to think of it we wound up shuffling them all into each other's berths. For whatever reason they all needed to change spots, although I didn't ask why. It'll have to remain a mystery.
I got a couple photos during our gravel run yesterday, including this one that I took right after we passed under the eastbound Highway 2 bridge. Talk to you later on, Brian
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