What's the weirdest thing you've seen on the water?

Gofirstclass

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Apr 20, 2010
11,669
Tri Cities, WA
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Boatless in WA
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That looks a lot like a nuclear reactor from a sub. There's a whole pile of them on the Hanford site in a burial ground.
 
It is, but when I realized I had the photos screwed up I tried to delete them but they're still hanging around. No way I can find to get rid of some of them.

BTW, your boat looks nice. See you at the skipper's meeting Wednesday night.
 
Here's a few things I've ran across.
 

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I wish I had a good picture, but we were at Bora Bora last year and they would take a small barge out to the middle of the lagoon and six - eight guys would shovel sand onto it for the most part of the day from the bottom of the lagoon, which was appx stomach deep.
They would take it to an area and offload it, and it got sold off to the resorts.
 
So one day I'm headed down to the boat when I see this tug heading upriver. It's an unusual area for tugs to be in so I figured it was an assist vessel for the load that was coming.

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A short time later a much larger tug came upstream pushing a large barge that had a concrete-encased reactor core from a nuclear sub. The two tugs continued upstream to a point where they could anchor the barge and swap positions. The smaller tug moved to the end of the barge where the big one was and the large tug moved 90* to it. They positioned this way because it didn't take a lot of power to hold the barge against the dock but did take a lot of power to hold the small tug and barge in position against the current.
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Boating on Lake Michigan a few years ago after some particularly heavy rains and flooding, I came across what from a distance appeared to be a new buoy off a harbor mouth. It turned out to be a 50 gallon water heater bobbing vertically in the water.
 
They pushed the barge up against the loading dock with the small tug holding it tight and the larger tug holding it in position against the current.

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As you can see, the deck of the barge is several feet above the level of the dock so they simply started to fill the barge with water until it sank down to where both dock and barge deck were level.

In this next shot they are using the crane to lift a lifting strap over the top of the core. I'm not sure but I think this is to hold the core down while they are jacking it up so it doesn't flip into the river.

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As you can see in this pic they have lowered the barge so people and equipment can easily go from land to the barge.

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One of several trucks they use to haul the core to the burial site a few miles away.
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Here's the core loaded onto the crawler they use to transport it. All of this equipment is owned and operated by Pacific Transport, a division of Lampson Crane which is headquartered here in Pasco.
https://www.lampsoncrane.com/

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Here's the core moving toward the burial site. Look closely at the gravel road. Shortly before they started the move the entire road was sprayed down to eliminate any dust. The road itself is graded before they us it and IIRC there are no more than 1/2" elevation change (bumps in the road) within a 1/4 mile stretch. The truck making the tow moves at a crawl speed and they have a man at each side walking along to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Here are a few random pics of some of their equipment...

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This last pic shows 3 of their tow trucks pulling the reactor core up the slope from the river to flat land above it.
 
To give you a perspective of the scale on which Lampson operates, here is a pile of concrete blocks they use for ballast when they do a real heavy lift. This pile of ballast and the crane that lifts it is parked near the landing dock so it's readily available when they need it.

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To give you a perspective of the scale on which Lampson operates, here is a pile of concrete blocks they use for ballast when they do a real heavy lift. This pile of ballast and the crane that lifts it is parked near the landing dock so it's readily available when they need it.

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I see where you were going with this post now GFC. I should have waited till you were done editing before posting.
Lampson is a great company and definitely a heavy lifter.
Great write up in my eyes but then again I'm in the business.
 
Weirdest thing I’ve seen that comes to mind was getting flashed by a bunch of drunk soccer mom looking women.
Me and a friend were on my boat one evening when we came upon what looked like a small group booze cruise type charter. Looked like a group of 10 or 12 ladies really enjoying a night out.
There was a guy on the fly bridge motoring along at idle speed in the State Boat Channel and a bunch of women dancing around in the cockpit and salon to pretty loud music.
I tooted the horn to let the guy know I was passing him but it didn’t appear as though he could hear it.
As we passed the guy the women gave us a quick show. Looked like one started it and some of the others joined in the fun.
It happened so fast that we never got any pictures of it.
I’ll bet that skipper had some pretty good stories to tell about that particular group though.
 
Weirdest thing I’ve seen that comes to mind was getting flashed by a bunch of drunk soccer mom looking women.
Me and a friend were on my boat one evening when we came upon what looked like a small group booze cruise type charter. Looked like a group of 10 or 12 ladies really enjoying a night out.
There was a guy on the fly bridge motoring along at idle speed in the State Boat Channel and a bunch of women dancing around in the cockpit and salon to pretty loud music.
I tooted the horn to let the guy know I was passing him but it didn’t appear as though he could hear it.
As we passed the guy the women gave us a quick show. Looked like one started it and some of the others joined in the fun.
It happened so fast that we never got any pictures of it.
I’ll bet that skipper had some pretty good stories to tell about that particular group though.

I had a similar thing happen a few years ago. I was headed out to go salmon fishing just at sunrise. As I am heading out the harbor, two drunk women are on the pier calling out. They flash me. I asked them if they wanted to come fishing. They said sure. I was kidding, but for a split second..... . Then... naw. Nothing good can come of that.
 
They pushed the barge up against the loading dock with the small tug holding it tight and the larger tug holding it in position against the current.

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As you can see, the deck of the barge is several feet above the level of the dock so they simply started to fill the barge with water until it sank down to where both dock and barge deck were level.

In this next shot they are using the crane to lift a lifting strap over the top of the core. I'm not sure but I think this is to hold the core down while they are jacking it up so it doesn't flip into the river.

View attachment 77358
As you can see in this pic they have lowered the barge so people and equipment can easily go from land to the barge.

View attachment 77359 One of several trucks they use to haul the core to the burial site a few miles away.
View attachment 77360
Here's the core loaded onto the crawler they use to transport it. All of this equipment is owned and operated by Pacific Transport, a division of Lampson Crane which is headquartered here in Pasco.
https://www.lampsoncrane.com/

View attachment 77366 Here's the core moving toward the burial site. Look closely at the gravel road. Shortly before they started the move the entire road was sprayed down to eliminate any dust. The road itself is graded before they us it and IIRC there are no more than 1/2" elevation change (bumps in the road) within a 1/4 mile stretch. The truck making the tow moves at a crawl speed and they have a man at each side walking along to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Here are a few random pics of some of their equipment...

View attachment 77372 View attachment 77373 View attachment 77374 View attachment 77375
This last pic shows 3 of their tow trucks pulling the reactor core up the slope from the river to flat land above it.
Lampson?
 
Was on Rays Town Lake Pa.Helped tow a broke down ski boat back to their dock in my 19'6" Imperial. On our way back got caught by a thunderstorm and high winds. The trees were breaking and falling into the lake so we were stuck out on the lake . That's when we saw fireballs bouncing across the water from the lightning strikes they were a little bigger then basketballs. The shore line was getting lit up by lightning also it was scary as hell.I'm sure glad we weren't in a aluminium boat. Our little fiberglass boat was able to keep form being a launch point for a lightning.
 

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