"Working Cargo"

We arrived in Anchorage Monday morning at the crack of dawn and immediately (literally as soon as the lines were tossed) started loosening turnbuckles on anything that had an Anchorage tag. We busted butt all day until the tide dropped and the barge sat on the bottom. The tides are drastic up here and the big forklifts can't drive onto the barge when it sits on the bottom. So, we would work for 5 or so hours in the morning, then come back at night and work from 9pm-1am or longer until the tides drop again. Yesterday we worked till about 3pm, the came back at 9:30 and worked until 2am, got up and did it all again. Tonight, our work should finish re-loading and lashing down the containers and we will get underway as soon as everything is done. We should be haze-grey and underway by 4am if all goes well.

Working on a barge at night in sub 30 temps, with 3 monster forklifts and containers the size of small houses is amazing and terrifying all at once. The forklift will drive onto the barge with a container, and we will attach the chains to it before he raises it to its spot, (sometimes 5 containers tall) and puts it in place. After that, we attach the chains to the deck via turnbuckles and shackles. It's a fast process, not terribly hard, but it does work the body pretty good. The long chains are probably 60+ lbs and we have to move them around across the barge 100 times/night. We make "cargo pay" for helping, so it's all worth it in the end, but draining.

Barge sitting in the mud.

Cargo crew

 

Tonight, we got off work, went for Sushi and are about to get 3-4 hours of sleep before starting up again. Once we get back out to sea, we can rest and get caught up. I definitely looking forward to some more downtime.

Off to bed.

 

Posted with Blogsy