In the Wheelhouse

I've been in this business for 25 seasons now, but handling big, expensive yachts in close quarters still gives me the willies. Last week, we got a call to move a 76' Lazzara motor yacht from West Wind Marina in Newport to the Hinckley yard in Portsmouth for repairs. One of the Lazzara's wheels had broken free from her shaft while she was docking at West Wind, so she needed to get to Hinckley for haul-out and a shaft replacement.

We set up the job for last monday morning and sent myself and Capt. Andy in our two 35', 740hp twin waterjet towboats the Safe/Sea Newport and Safe/Sea Salvor. My initial thought when I saw the scene below was, "Well, this oughta be interesting."

My trepidation about wiggling the Lazzara out of the hole she was in was quickly assuaged after talking with the casualty's crew and the dock staff at West Wind, whom were all consummate professionals. Here's a view of the exit route from the inside of the basin.

Believe me, no one wants to pay for a scratch put into any of these boats. This is when I'm very happy that my towboats are essentially motorized fenders! To extract the Lazzara, we attached Capt. Andy, in the Safe/Sea Newport to the bow of the casualty, and he held a slack hawser as the dock crew of West Wind hand-over-handed the Lazzara out of her slip and got her pointed out of the narrow entrance of the basin. I was in the Safe/Sea Salvor, standing guard duty on the north side of the exit to prevent the Lazzara from being set down onto a megayacht tied up next door at Casey's Marina.

Once she was pointed out the basin exit, Andy provided a gentle tug of forward momentum, and she slid nicely into the spacious waters of Newport Harbor. Well, they certainly seemed spacious at the time! Below is the Lazzara under tow headed out of the harbor past Goat Island.

While Capt. Andy did the towing toward Hinckley, I shot up there to scout out what we had to deal with when we got there. They want her on their big face dock, which was fine, but to get there we had to go through the narrowest part of the marina, which is about 70' wide between a graite pier and steel pilings. The Lazzara is about 25' wide, and with my towboat on the hip, she'd be about 37' feet wide, leaving us about 15' of clearance on either side. However, about 10' of that space was being taken up by the bowsprit of a huge sailing yacht, as you can see in the picture below. So, my plan became to keep the Safe/Sea Newport towing the casualty astern on a hawser, put myself in the Safe/Sea Salvor on the hip, and take her straight past the narrows into the turning basin, where we would have plenty of room (relatively) to turn her and put her against the dock. The Hinckley crew got theur small outboard yard boat underway to help as well.

The plan went off without a hitch, as we ghosted by the sailing yacht and granite pier at about 1.3 knots of forward speed, Capt. Andy proceeded straight to the dock, secured himself and used his hawser as a bow spring that we could work against the bring the Lazzara broadside to the wind and against the dock. Below is the view on our way out of the Hinckley Yard for home, with the Lazzara clearly in view against the dock.

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The past week was really a routine week, jobs-wise. Nothing really extraordinary or interesting, just your basic meat-n-potatoes, run-of-the-mill engine failures, minor groundings and the like. Below are some photos.

The Trphy below went home quickly from Beavertail.

This Larson went back to the Fort Adams ramp from the south end of Prudence. Seems like the Ft. Adams Ramp is getting more popular, as I've been in there 4 times already this year. It's usually a once or twice per season kinda place.

I volunteered to be the Pt. Judith Captain on Saturday, as both my kids were playing in the Goals 4 Rams 6v6 soccer tournament at URI that day, and I hoped it would be quiet enough that I could take in a couple of their games. Last year, I tried the same thing and didn't see minute 1 of them playing; this year was totally different, and the schedule was in my favor. As it turned out, each kid played 4 games, and I managed to see 6 of the 8. One was missed due to a tow job, and one was missed because both kids were playing simultaneously. Both kids' teams won all their games, everyone had a blast, and dad got to watch most of it, which is a rarity for a towboat driver in high season.

Below is a member lightly in the mud just off his slip at Billington Cove Marina in PJ Pond. I nosed up to his port quarter, attached one of my bow lines, and slowly back him into deeper water.

As soon as I was done with him, I went further up the pond, just above The Narrows, to get this little Stingray and take him and his family back to the PJ Yacht Club.

Sunday morning started grey and a little choppy, but that didn't slow down another (!) tow into the aforementioned Fort Adam Ramp. Go figure.

This Old Town was over by Zeke's Creek, on the Dutch Harbor side of Conanicut. He went back to a private mooring on the Jamestown shore.

There was an interesting job on Monday that will get it's own post by the end of the week. It involves a 76' motoryacht. Stay tuned!

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Here's a captioned photo review of some of my jobs of last week.

These guys were fairly pleased to see me on a sloppy day several miles south of Point Judith. What you don't see are their female companions suffering from seasickness with their heads over the transom. Everyone felt better once we got moving toward Fall River.

This 21' Whaler wrecked a lower unit approaching the beach inside T-wharf at the south end of Prudence. We went back to Barrington.

It was this member's birthday on the day he broke down. Kind of a bummer, but it's always nice to meet a guy who takes pride in his boat. This older Chris Craft is spotless.

More zoom-zoom. A beautiful day to get customers home in a hurry.

All set, back at the dock at Oyster House, right by the Washington Bridge in East Providence.

Let's Party! This deck boat was broken down at the top of Pt. Judith Pond. She went back to a private dock on Harbor Island.

I'll have another post before week's end that will get me completely up to date, job-wise. Then it'll be time to update the jobs map, which is getting more cluttered as the weeks go by.

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The towing gods have been keeping me busy this week, and I still haven't posted up my pics from last weekend! So, I'm going the photo-blog route until I get to a job that deserves some explanation. Following is what I was up to on July 4th Weekend...

I started out with a repeat customer, almost in the same spot I retrieved him a week previous, off Conanicut Marina, back to a mooring at Clark's Boat Yard.

Next, up this cruiser just south of the Tiverton Basin, going back to Borden Light Marina.

This Monterey needed a jumpstart off Greene Island.

First job of Saturday, off Potter's Cove to the Bold Point Ramp.

This member went from Barrington Beach to Lavin's.

I serviced this folks last year as well. They needed a jumpstart.

Headed home after 2 more quick jobs around Newport.

By the 5th, I was getting tired of taking pictures. I did 5 jobs that day, here's what I've got left....

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High speed towing. Safe/Sea has pioneered the concept and application of modern propulsion technology over the past several years to provide this major innovation in the quick response marine assistance industry. Here's an example of a member whom I was able to keep out of a major thunderstorm due to the Safe/Sea Newport's high speed towing capability.

Here's the view out my wheelhouse windshield coming into Bristol Harbor. Hog Island is the landmass to starboard. It's looking to get ugly shortly.

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As just about every boater in Rhode Island knows, last weekend was air show weekend off Quonset. Normally, that mean lots of sunshine, southerly breezes and towing. However, the awful weather we've been having continues to put a damper on the onset of summer.

Last Friday was started off pretty well, as I got the job in the first picture at right around 1300. Willie was hanging around, so he hopped on the boat with me for a trip to Oakland Beach. We had to hurry a bit, as the customer had cut away his anchor to head in (as it was fouled) and then found himself broken down with a hook. Murphy demonstrates his law again! We got there with a few minutes to spare before the 23' Penn Yan was going to hit the beach. Later in the evening, I was sent back toward Greenwich Bay, but the customer restarted before I arrived.

Saturday turned out to be a pretty normal airshow day. Capt. Phil was on the Safe/Sea Titan with the Rhode Island Disaster Medical Assistance Team paramedics onboard, patrolling the spectator fleet to provide any needed emergency medical services, so he was out of the towing scene for the day. I went to Point Judith and was soon brought north to the bay for the 23' North Coast in the second picture at right, disabled just south of the Newport Bridge, going back to Clark Boat Yard.

Soon after I finished up at Clark, I was sent to the north side of the Air Show spectator fleet for the disabled 27' Bayliner in the third picture. She was headed back to Warwick Cove Marina. Before I could even finish that job, I had the 38' Chris Craft in the fourth picture waiting for me. He had broken his steering, which, as you can tell from the way he's towing behind me, was stuck a bit to starboard. He was just outside the entrance to Greenwich Cove, going back to Warwick Cove. After completing these two jobs, I was headed back to Point Judith to put away the Safe/Sea Point Judith for the night.

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This week marked my first pre-dawn wakeup call of the season. When the weather is not ideal and the phone rings at 0245 on a Wednesday morning, you know it going to be bad, and it was. All I had to go on from our dispatcher, Nick LeBlanc, was a USCG report of a vessel hitting a nav aid somewhere off Quonset Point and sinking.

Capt. Phil and I got underway as quickly as we could and were on scene at the Electric Boat gantry crane and dock by around 0310 or so. As you can see from the first photo, the scene was pretty ugly.

When a high speed boat comes to a screeching halt, bodies fly and have collisions of their own, as you can see from the blood-spattered console and seats. Thankfully, there appears to have been no permanent damage to the occupants.

As you can see, the same can't be said for the boat, which was heavily damaged. The buoy in question, the red #6 directly off Quonset held up better that the boat, but still showed some signs of the force of the collision. Notice in particular, the 'X' shaped steel angle iron that is bowed inward from the impact, and the pronounced cant of the electronics box in the center of the buoy.

Judging from the damage discovered after the casualty was hauled out, the boat hit the buoy very squarely and then went over the top of it, as there was fiberglass damage along the full length of the bottom, and the port outboard was missing its skeg.

I'll leave the details of the operation to Capt. Phil, whose salvage blog will be starting up next week. Everything went as planned and we had the casualty hauled out at Pleasant Street Wharf around 0915 Wednesday morning.

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