Anchorage, Nikiski and more

Well, it’s been a good trip so far.  We towed a fairly light barge, yet lightly loaded, up to Anchorage, offloaded its contents and then popped over to Nikiski, about 50 miles away, to pick up a random load that consisted of a drilling rig that had been broken down into about 60 pieces.  Because the tides in Cook Inlet are so drastic, we had to break tow and send the boat away for about 6 hours, leaving 2 of us on the barge to help load cargo through the night in freezing temps.  We started cargo ops around 9pm and quite around 7am.  The next day, we returned to finish up the load, but had to break away again for tides.  All in all, we got it all done an were out of there by the end of the 2nd day.  Between Anchorage and Nikiski, I logged about 38 hours of cargo, which is a pretty good amount. My body ached, mostly from from the cold, and I couldn’t stop eating for a few days.

After we left Nikiski, we had to pop into Kachemak Bay to hide out from the winds and logged another 5 hours of cargo time on the barge, double lashing and fixing a few things that were rushed in Nikiski.  After about 24 hours there, we popped out into the Gulf and headed over towards Prince William sound where we are now, waiting for the weather to die down.  Winds in the Gulf tonight are supposed to be in the 40 knot range, so our captain thought it be best if we sit tight out of sight.

So, we’ve been comparing music, watching movies, reading, playing guitar, etc.  until it’s go-time.  I’m just about to go on watch (midnight), and nothing really new to report.  We’ll probably run out of bottled water due to the detention and round turns, but there’s plenty of rust colored tap water to tap into.  yumm  We have a desalinator, yet for some reason, the water the fresh water goes into an old tank and picks up some nice color, so we drink bottled water.  We plan to fill our bottles directly from the desalinator once we officially run out.  Hopefully that goes well.