From the Line Locker 14

Here were 11, which clarifies the title . ..  I hope.

I’ve had these fotos from Seth Tane for quite some time.  I looked at them today while culling fotos from my library.  Foto shows Foss tugs moving the Sauvie Island Bridge span into position near Portland, Oregon.  Foss tugs visible are (I believe)  the larger PJ Brix and Jim Moore.

This foto also shows Daniel Foss. The bridge move happened in late December 2007;  see page 6 of this Foss publication.  Looking up info on the Sauvie Island Bridge, I stumbled on the clever Flickr assemblage of fotos with the string “island bridge” in the name.  Try playing with it to see bridges with those two words juxtaposed from everywhere.

Like I said, I was scrolling through and culling my 2008 fotos.  Joan McAllister . . .  haven’t seen it in a long time.

Ditto Crow.  Has she been scrapped?

Here’s a summer 2008 treat, tandem pushing Aegean Sea and Caribbean Sea, although still on Roehrig colors.  The K-Sea colors on both have yet to come and by now both have been repainted.

Later in summer 2008 I took this, M/T Great Gull . . . now operating near the Panama Canal.

And  . . . last one for today, Odin passing the stern of ITB Groton, also sold foreign. ITBs like Groton, obsolete now, were technically catamaran tugs.  Just forward of where the stream of water is exiting the hull is the “bow” of the tug;  look above it and you’ll see the “seam” where tug and barge conjoin.   I posted about ITBs here back in late November 2007, and since

I’ve been enhancing my fotos on this blogs, let me add a few to that post here.  Here I’m looking between the “hulls” of the catamaran and toward the stern.  Note the portside prop.  For scale, note the size of the “lift basket” and yard worker.  The aftmost portside portion of the “barge” fits into the groove.

Here’s the aftmost port starboard side of the barge.  These two fotos were taken in the Brooklyn Navy Yard GMD November 2007.

Thanks much to Seth for starting this 2007/08 flashback.  I feel like a veritable John Titor after this glance back at how much the harbor has changed in five years.  All fotos except otherwise attributed, are mine.

And totally unrelated . . . prepare to laugh yerself buttless  bad lip reading the NFL.   This one is a guaranteed laugh-producer too . . . what they really said in the first debate.

ITB 3

If something seems familiar about the profile and color combination of the vessel below, well, you saw it here and here in the graving dock some months back. I had thought by now it’d be at sea, but . . .

 

it clings to the dock just west of Robbins Reef. Newark Bay Bridge is visible in background portside.

 

in ballast

 

and assembled. Awaiting spring like the rest of us?

Photos, WVD.

ITB 2

Let us go then, you and I,
With the dock cranes spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table, and ITB blocked in the graving dock….

My apologies to T. S. Eliot, but let’s continue our anatomical study of this vessel. Refresh your memory of the first post here. While examining the components, guess what cargo might be in its future.

The view below shows more of the inboard port pontoon. Notice the tapering groove.

 

That groove corresponds to this tapered “stern” of the barge. This stern is called a tongue. Tongue in groove. In cheek?

 

Here’s a closer up of the starboard arm on the tug, which locks into a groove on the barge. This arm and its mate are just visible at the top edge of the first foto above.

 

On stern of barge, notice the top of the tongue and the slots into which the arms fit and lock. The yellow railed gangway belongs shoreside and provides access to the barge only in drydock.

Look along the length of the vessel now toward the twin stacks 700 feet back.

 

Of course, there needs to be a gratuitous bulbous bow shot, or as coyote would say, la proue à bulbe.

 

So, cargo . . . would you believe post-oil this ITB enters the trans-Atlantic grain trade. After a thorough cleaning of the holds, that it’ll be.

See this link for aerial foto of Philadelphia underway. Also here of sister vessels.

Totally unrelated . . . beaver dams are back in the Bronx. See Goingcoastal here. Use my search window to find what I’ve said about beaver in the past 310 posts.

Photos, WVD.

ITB

as in “integrated tug-barge,” as distinguished from “articulated tug-barge,” now in greater favor. Here’s the tug portion of ITB Philadelphia uncoupled in GMD drydock from its intimate partner barge. Yes, that’s a tug.

 

For a sense of scale, watch the self-propelled crane aka “man basket” at floor of dry dock.

 

Yes, there is a dock worker in the man basket.

 

For a company diagram of this vessel to see tug integrated with its barge, click here.Top down view fascinates me.

 

ITB Philadelphia has an LOA of almost 700 feet, with the intergrated barge!

More on this vessel later.

Photos, WVD.