This brings back memories. I worked as an engineer between 1980 and 1987. I sailed on the Pt Thompson briefly in the Puget Sound, but made many trips on the towing vessel, which looks like an Invader Class. Nice to see they put a better sealed engine room door on along with a window. I left during the nine month strike. Crowley wanted to reduce the crew size. We ran with a Captain, Mate, Second Mate, Engineer, two ABs, ordinary seaman and cook. This seemed pretty safe crewing level for a 130 foot tug pulling two four hundred foot barges. In this video it looks like our man with the camera was the engineer. He came out of the engineer’s room. He was doing the winch controls which use to be the second mate’s job. The seas could get so rough around Alaska and pulling into a harbor like this was such a relief! Ram
I was amazed to see this video on RU-vid. Both Pt. Oliktok and Pt. Thompson still look good after all these years. I was a welder working for Dakota Creek Ind. where they were built along with Pt. Barrow & Pt. Milne in 1982... I still have many pictures of them during construction, I even got to go out on Sea Trials. I welded a lot of steel together on all four of them. I wish my dad was still around to show him this as he worked for Dakota Creek Ind. for more than 30 years and was in charge of the hydraulic systems.
Only Crowley was constipated enough to write office rules that made it impossible to drop the tow underway and then pick it up again on the hip. Any normal tugboatman sticks a welding rod through the hole in the pin and shackle nut and bends the ends over by hand. This can be done--and undone--underweigh while shifting from the hip to the towline. Crowley insisted on doing the original hawser make-up at the dock and then using the hawser as a stern line in a sloppy on-the-hip make up until the boat and barge was out of the harbour and in deep weater. They specified using a full-sized cotter pin and splitting the ends and bending them back 'by the book.' Only way to pull that cotter pin afterwards was to cut the ends off with a cold chisel and drive it out wit a drift pin...which could not be done except while tied up to the dock. Impossible to drop the hawser on the fly and pick up the barge on the hip. Stupid. Had a Crowley single-screw tug (the old 'Daring') shit the bed (stack fire; engine dead) halfway from San Juan to Cartagena on one trip; big RoRo barge started coming down on the boat as the hawswer sank in 1000 fathoms. If the engineer hadn't got that fire extinguished and the engine running again, we'd have been crushed under the sheer 'cuz it was impossible to cut the barge loose the way it was made up. A-hole ship-captain type from the Caymans didn't have a clue how much trouble he was in till I dragged the acetylene torch set out on the towing deck so I could burn through the hawser if I had to.
Well, only tug people knew what was going on this video. nearly fell asleep watching it because no narrative came with it. Nevertheless, danger around every corner with all those massive winches and cables.
