Inbound Newtown creek

Craig Golden "Goldie" on thhe Megan Ann

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Back to work!

Dredging in Port Elizabeth, getting ready to flip a scow end for end alongside dredge Delaware Bay.
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Tools of the trade

These are a few of the tools that get a lot of use on a tugboat when the weather turns nice. On the left is a needle gun, used to remove loose paint and rust in preparation for fresh paint. the middle tool is a grinder with a wire wheel attachment for cleaning up the surface after the heavy stuff is knocked off. The next one is a grinder with a plain old grinding wheel on it, for those pesky things like old welds, remnants of brackets that have been cut off over the years, fasteners protruding through from the other side of the bulkhead ( that's what we call walls on boats), and other such imperfection that need removing.

Not long after stepping aboard a tug, one becomes intimately familiar with these tools and their use - and the mind numbing rattle of that needle gun doing its thing.

Mary Alice

When I took a little break from chipping, I came out of my corner and the Mary was alongside transferring some water to us here at Berth 5. I don't know who that is at the rail of the Mary, but that's Mark Browning in the foreground messing around with the water hose.

I'll do a post about the Mary at some point in the future, she's a great boat. I was mate on her for a while before I decided to try a career change last year.

Tug Paul Andrew

Here is the Paul Andrew standing by in Port Elizabeth N.J. The captain on board is Ed Holden, who has been working on tugs ever since he was a kid. His father was a tug captain, as were his uncles - the whole family! His brother runs a tug too I believe.

The Paul is on the small side, at 68 feet, with 1200 horsepower; Despite her small size, she's quite a work horse, and among the best kept boats I have ever seen. Because of the clean burning modern Cummins diesels, she is often used as a dredge tender, keeping the N.O.X. emissions down, which is a consideration on Army Corps of Engineer dredging contracts these days. I've been told that Donjon has a competitive edge because one of our dredges and this boat meet this environmental challenge pretty readily. When I was a mate on the Mary Alice, we had orders not to spend too much time standing by alongside the dredge Delaware Bay unless absolutely necessary because we didn't have the same low low emissions as the Paul did. She was built in 1968 as the Miss Holly by Breaux's Bay Craft of Loreauville, Louisiana. She was previously operated by S.C. Loveland Co. of Philadelphia PA. and is a very well traveled boat.

An interesting thing about Tug Boats - at least to me anyways - is how durable they are. 1968, 43 years old, and still going strong. This is not uncommon at all, with regular maintenance and up grades, these boats go on and on. My current boat, the Brian Nicholas was built in '66. Most of the boats I have worked on are about this old in fact. How many trucks on the road are that old? Not too many, that's for sure. A quick Google search reveals that the average age of a tug in the U.S. is 38 yrs. old.