New pilings for the pilot dock

It appears that the rest of the old wooden pilings at the end of 12th Street where the pilot boat docks are being replaced by metal ones. Work is done using a couple of small skiffs and a crane barge. Yesterday I saw these boats along with the towboat going up and down the river. Today I saw where they were working. I also learned something. If you look back at the barge in yesterday's post (3rd photo down), you can see two tall poles with red at the top. I didn't realize until I saw the barge at work today that the poles are dropped into the mud to stabilize the barge while the huge crane does its work. I hadn't seen this arrangement before; the smaller crane barge I watched this summer didn't seem to have them. It seems like a nifty way not to tip over.

We had another mostly-clear day today, but I have to tell you, it was cold. There's a good reason this guy is wearing a jacket.

Working boats on the Columbia River

After a week or so of almost continual rain, we had blue skies yesterday. The weather also turned cold and the wind whipped up whitecaps on the Columbia River. Several times, this interesting combination of boats came past my office. Tomorrow I'll tell you where it's working along the waterfront, but here you can see the crane barge carrying metal pilings, attended by two silvery skiffs. On this pass, it was going downriver, to the left.

I zoomed in on the skiffs because I wanted to see what they were doing. I'm still not sure, but I imagine they could have been helping to push or maneuver the barge. They seemed to be butted up behind it.

A couple of hours later, the barge passed again, going upriver This time I got the towboat in the picture (left) and the two skiffs are alongside. You can see the two tall poles (the function of which you'll see tomorrow), and other poles lying on the deck sticking out over the rear of the barge.

Here's the towboat, pushing, and one of the skiffs.

Here the skiff is going ahead of the barge. I missed the larger wave that leapt up as the skiff cut through the water, but you can see the river was not completely calm. The railing in the foreground of these photos is from the catwalk leading from our building's deck to the radio tower.

The Olaf J

The Olaf J is another push tug, but of a different style than the Lewiston, shown in a recent post. It looks like the Olaf J is a smaller, more open boat, used mainly for work in the local area on the river, rather than an ocean-going vessel. I see it often pushing this crane barge around the waterfront. In this photo you can clearly see the two bumpers in the front. One was visible in the Lewiston photo, but it was hard to see. I took the photo in June, when work was being done on the dock of the Pilot House.

A note on yesterday's post: there were no stairs stolen after all! For the update, please see the bottom of the post.

The bright red crane gives me an excuse to submit this photo for Ruby Tuesday. For more pix featuring RED, follow the link to Ruby Tuesday.

Tug and barge

Sometimes it seems picturesque, and sometimes it seems irritating, but a lot of my river photos are taken through the base of the radio tower, because it's right outside my office window. And no, I'm not complaining! I feel very fortunate. I sometimes feel, though, that I should vary the foreground, especially for posting. However, since I spend so much time in my office, some of the most interesting river scenes and the widest variety of ships are the ones I notice during the course of an average day. On Monday, this interesting arrangement presented itself.

The tug (the Henry Brusco) is the small black and white boat on the right, and the barge it's towing is all the way on the left. In between there is quite a long distance, as you can see the complete gray-hulled Tasman ID in the background. If anyone can explain to me why there is such a long distance between the tug and the barge, I'd like to know. (I'm going to post this tonight, but I'll call Brusco Tug and Barge, the owner of these boats, in the morning and ask them about it, so if you're interested, please check back!)

[Update: As I sit here waiting for a callback from the tugboat company, Anonymous says, "Why the long towline? The clue is in the background--the ship on the hook with the bow pointed seward means the tide is really flooding hard-since barges dont have brakes, power or steering it is actually getting towed and pushed hard by the current at the same time-in case the tug had to stop, slow down suddenly, or make any other navigation adjustment, the current would keep pushing the barge-its a safety thing. Also, the ship is several hundred yards away from the towboat so the distance between tug and barge looks greater than it actually is because of the persepective."] I say, of course perspective plays a part, but the ship is not THAT much further out than the tug. It is a long towline - not longer than usual, they are usually this long. Thanks for the explanation.

Further, from Anonymous: "Any craft, whether it pushes or pulls a barge or other vessel w/out power is a tug boat--even though that is a big tug in the pic, that tow probably originated at the sawmill on the Skippanon and is hauling a load of sawdust upriver to Wauna."

We've been having truly beautiful days on the river - usually overcast early on, with picture-book clouds and sunshine by later in the morning. I always love the way the light brings out the gold color of the wood chips, but I haven't yet been able to capture the true color of its glow.

If you'd like to see some really cool photos of mountains in Central Oregon, check out Lee's Bend, Oregon, Daily Photo today for pix he took on his colossal hike yesterday.

Say it again

The Thursday Challenge is "communication," and I only hope I can describe the layers of it going on here. I took the photo last Saturday, and the objective is to raise the light plane from the river bottom, where it settled on Friday night after it crashed. What you see is the deck of a Coast Guard ship in the foreground, the plane being lifted out of the water in the center, and a barge with a crane on it behind the plane. About fifty people had gathered in the rain to watch the plane come up or were here in an official capacity. We can't see them in this photo, but there were two TV cameras to my right, and people all over the place with still cameras, cell phones and camera phones, and of course, they are all talking to each other, too. Lee was carrying on a long conversation with someone he hadn't seen in awhile. I don't know what everyone else was doing with their cell phones, but I was texting Laurel to let her know the plane was coming up, and I was also getting e-mail and a bunch of blog and news alerts I'd activated the other day through Google (crazy, huh?).

Just behind where I'm standing on the dock is a truck that travelled two hours from Portland. The company's name is Northwest Underwater Construction, LLC, and they'd brought a diver used to working with heavy objects under water, along with their communications technicians. You'll probably have to click on the photo to enlarge it. The bound red and green cables running into the picture from the foreground and coiling at the edge of the deck are the diver's communication to the truck, including his air line, camera feed, light, and voice communication. Inside the truck are the air tanks, some dial-type monitors for the diver, and a video monitor receiving a picture from under water. They communicated from the truck to the ships with walkie-talkies, and you can see one guy using his hand-held on the right of the photo. Those of us near the truck could hear them talking. I remember the diver saying the plane was on its back and they'd have to flip it before they brought it up, an operation that took some coordinating. There was also a guy in the truck with a clipboard recording notes on a chart.

The guy in the white hard-hat just in front of the crane is giving hand signals to the crane operator, and has been doing that since the lines first went down to secure the plane. Men on both decks are, of course talking about how best to make everything work. On the periphery, there's a Sheriff's boat and probably a small Coast Guard boat hovering near with radios.

There's some interesting non-human visual communication, too. The black and yellow stripes are saying, "This is the edge of the ship - you know what will happen if you get too close!" And the men's hard-hats and bright vests are telling the onlookers, "This is a danger area. Keep out." The buoys in the river tell ships where the shipping lane ends.

By the way, the man in the dark blue clothing and white hat in the center is the pilot who crashed. His mother and brother are on one of the high lookout points of the ship, and another relative is standing in the diver's truck to keep tabs on the action. Throughout the salvage, the pilot is talking to everyone and gesturing to his family.

Just because we need a little more communication here, when the plane was lifted out of the water, my zoom lens revealed that two headsets for the plane were dangling out of the door, attached together and to the plane by wires. They were dripping wet, and were probably the only communication devices that were not busy today.