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Old 12-20-2012, 04:30 AM   #142
RickB
Scraping Paint
 
City: Fort Lauderdale
Vessel Model: CHB 48 Zodiac YL 4.2
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 3,804
Quote:
Originally Posted by xfedex View Post
Hey Rick, I understand that sometimes a tug and barge can not just pull in to a cove and anchor to wait out a storm. Have to steam in circles until the weather improves. Does that happen often?
If we got into bad weather on the outside and couldn't hide somewhere we were just stuck going slow in a sort of "heave to" heading and lengthening the tow enough to keep the wire intact but not drag on the bottom. You don't want to get sideways to "bad weather" with a barge so you just tough it out.

You ought to ask our resident tug master about how large ocean going tugs handle it. We avoided outside passages unless we knew the weather would hold but got caught often enough to know fear and learn to respect weather.

The only time we ever steamed in circles (f'ing the dog) was when we had to wait for a tide. Even that didn't happen often because we would adjust speed (over the ground) to minimize waiting or to catch a favorable tide.

Seymour Narrows was the place we spent an unusual amount of time shortened up and slow steaming or turning donuts. When the current was down enough to be safe we squirted through and let the wire out again.

As far as anchoring, on the coastal freighters we would drop the hook in some little cove or quiet spot large enough to hold us and a couple of fishing boats or a "packer" and stay there long enough (a couple of weeks sometimes if fishing was slow) to fill our holds with salmon to take south. Eric will know one of those spots - Trocadero Bay - well. A good old navy stockless did the job just fine as they do for countless ships, tugs, yachts, and other floating objects.
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