Allie B’s Epic 2

Imagine you worked at the shipyard for 10 or more years.  You put in the strength of your best years with friends who did the same.  You were young then and eager to get out of bed in the morning to hurry to the job you loved:  building LNG tankers, huge vessels that sailed the world’s oceans and delivered fuel and  withstood the challenges of the roughest seas.  Then  the shipyard gates closed and the 300-foot-high Goliath idled and rusted.  Weeds grew up where 32,000 workers once built ships.   Today, between the fence and the tow, several acres of unsold automobiles stood parked there, awaiting buyers.

Here’s Allie B about a half hour before departure today.

And this is how a voyage of more than 4000 miles begins:  assist tugs Liberty and Vincent D. Tibbetts Jr.  ease the barge Brooklyn Bridge into the Fore River, and Allie B moves the tow seaward.

Liberty and Tibbetts guide the tow through the 3A bridge between Quincy and Weymouth and

and then you hurry to Great Hill to watch your crane disappear towards Peddocks Island,

and Hull Gut, past the other islands of Boston harbor, and then

to sea, over the horizon, to build great ships elsewhere.  And you may never see it again.  How would it feel?

See sackrabbit’s fotos here, and check back there for updates over the coming month.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.