Cisco
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4196
Registered: 12-30-2010
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Yes, I remember. Tugs and engines. Everywhere.
Having worked seagoing tugs for a number of years I was overjoyed to find this site.
The engines I lived with, the somewhere around 500 shp Cooper-Bessemer we had as auxiliary that we would talk nicely to while heating the cylinder
heads with multiple blowtorches; it's refusal to start after repeated attempts unless we swore at it.
We had to remember though that after starting it would run dependably for months and thousands of sea miles.
And then there were the four mains to get running. I did not even get close to those four huge 900 shp Alco's. I, being the electrical/electronic guy
could pull it off with one excuse or another but my heart was really into the engines.
http://www.tugboatenthusiastsociety.org/pages/tugs.htm
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bonanza bucko
Senior Nomad
Posts: 587
Registered: 8-31-2003
Location: San Diego
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Mood: Airport Bum
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Know what you mean. Thanks for the site.
When I was a kid with no money for college I miraculously got a job as a deckhand on a tow boat on the Mississippi River. I was the only Yankee on
The River but the Rebels there adopted me:-) and taught me marlinspike seamanship so I was a very good sailor after three years out there.
We pushed barges that drew 11 feet (Twain less one..."Mark Twain" is two fathoms or 12 feet) and weighed 2000 tons. We sometimes had 30 of them as we
went down the river. It took us 7.5 days from Minneapolis to New Orleans and 21 days North bound. We hauled grain and sometimes whisky to the South
and mostly molasses or petroleum or coal North bound.
We had Fairbanks-Morse diesels like those in a locomotive. They never shut down unless the boat was laid up for some reason.
I owe my education....both college and a sailor's....to The River and the wonderful men (no women then) who adopted me.
BB
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willardguy
Elite Nomad
Posts: 6451
Registered: 9-19-2009
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doesn't always go smoothly....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3WveEZykJ8
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Alm
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 2725
Registered: 5-10-2011
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Very general Baja discussion indeed 
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elgatoloco
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 4332
Registered: 11-19-2002
Location: Yes
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We used to sit on our front porch at Casa in Baja and watch a tug boat pull a barge full of sand from Ensenada riverbeds and head north to San Diego
to make concrete for all the new high-rises back in the day. 
MAGA
Making Attorneys Get Attorneys
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Alm
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 2725
Registered: 5-10-2011
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Container ships loaded with Chinese cr-ap is all we are getting now. Rarely see tug boats in SOC, only with engineering equipment occasionally,
building some monstrous mansion. I would "guess" there aren't too many on the Pacific side either. Times have sure changed.
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AKgringo
Elite Nomad
Posts: 6004
Registered: 9-20-2014
Location: Anchorage, AK (no mas!)
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Mood: Retireded
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In the mid 90's I was talking to a diesel mechanic that we hade hired to do some emergency field repairs on a snow groomer at the ski area I was
involved with. He was from the same area of Northern CA that I was, and I asked him what brought him up to Alaska?
He had attended a private academy diesel repair program, and on graduation, was offered a job on a sea going tug based in San Francisco. It was the
very first time he had been on a boat, and somewhere just west of the Golden Gate, he discovered that he prone to sea sickness!
They were towing a barge to Nome Alaska, and he was stuck either in, or right next to the engine room for the entire trip, with infrequent breaks for
fresh air! The noise and fumes added to the rolling of the ship just made it worse.
He jumped ship in Nome, went looking for land based employment, and wound up staying in the state.
That is the story he related, I personally have never been on a tug.
If you are not living on the edge, you are taking up too much space!
"Could do better if he tried!" Report card comments from most of my grade school teachers. Sadly, still true!
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