The first trip was a "fill in" job for another company that Mark's boss put him in touch with. This is a construction company that bought a tug in Seattle and has hired two more to do an airport project for a community up near Nome. Canada has some severe restrictions required of the deck officers transiting her waters while towing. Not many mates have that clearance. Luckily Mark did, so we got some much needed revenue. Of course he barely got back to Sitka and his boss called him back to work two days later. "When it rains it pours". Not sure how long this job is for as it requires several side trips. So he may be gone for over a month.
The last job proved to have some excitement, as the tug had pretty much been moth balled before purchase and with only a week to get her ready there were some teething problems during such a big trip. Probably the biggest and most exciting was almost losing the rudder. We noticed that the rudder required a huge offset to steer straight just before leaving Canada. When we were going through Ketchikan we had arranged to have some spare parts delivered. As we arrived too early we went out and turned circles. The problem got worse so we booked a spot to tie up and got some assistance. After checking the top sides of all four rudders and they seemed in order we ordered a diver to inspect the bottom. During his inspection he found one of the main rudders was held to its coupling by only one bolt. So we quick ordered some bolts and arranged to be towed over to a drying out beach to fix the rudder. Amazingly this went together like clockwork and we only lost one day.
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| This was the part that came unbolted and was twisting at off angles and making the other rudder try to compensate. We aligned it with divers and they got prelim bolts in before tide dropped. Those bolts are inch and 3/8ths diameter. We also did some back up welding on both rudders |
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| Tug High and Dry |
