No, not us.
It started out cool this morning, but turned into a spectacular day. Coming up towards the causeway, we came across a tug pushing two barges who was hard aground... very close to the causeway. In the area of the causeway where it had been hit by a barge in 2001, and knocked down a section. Bad situation.
We would have been like a fly on an elephant - nothing we could to to help. We heard the tug captain call the dredge operation in the ship channel to see if they could spare a couple tugs to help pull him off. They seemed somewhat willing until they heard what he was carrying in the barges... naptha. Naptha is highly flamable, used to make lighter fluid and in many solvents.
We toured along South Padre Island and heard our one local tug contact the stuck tug... asked if there was anything he could do. The stuck tug captain was looking for any help he could get... he didn't know the local tug, Sting, was pretty small compared to the stuck tug. We made our way back to this area to see what they were going to do.
The two tugs pulled for the better part of an hour, and didn't budge the stuck barges. They eventually unhooked the barges and were able to move them to deeper water... after a LOT of pulling. At one point, the small local tug was holding one of those big barges to keep it off the causeway supports. He radioed the other tug that he was using full power just to hold it in place.
On the other side of this activity, we watched a sailboat race... and it was a perfect day for it.
We didn't go far today, but had ring-side seats for plenty of activity.
1 comment:
Wish I had known you were over there. I went up to the bridge from my side and saw the two barges and tugs and looked like they were real busy going nowhere but trying very hard. I decided they did not need me in the way. Some great pictures by the way.
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