Community

Monday’s fog forced tug pulling two barges to put on the proverbial brakes

A little maritime drama with a happy ending played out Monday morning when, in bright sunshine at the west end of Gig Harbor, an historic tug pulled out towing two barges.

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The larger ferried a towering crane, the smaller hauled a jumbled pile of old dock debris. The barges dwarfed the tug “Cayou,” a 73-year-old 50-footer owned by Port Orchard-based Thompson Pile Driver Company. About 9:30 a.m., the linked trio started slowly toward the narrow harbor entrance, having completed in about three days their job of removing an old dock and creosoted pilings and leaving a new dock in their place.

The short trip to the sandspit channel seemed perfectly timed to take advantage of a high and slightly ebbing tide. Even at their snail’s pace, they would be out of the harbor and headed toward Colvos Passage and their homeport in less than half an hour.  In fact, it was after 11  when they left the sandpit in their wakes.

What happened? A Thompson company official remembers the tug skipper’s explanation as: “There was no fog. Then there was fog.”

The tug Cayou, pulling two barges, coasting to a stop as it enters a fog bank on Monday, Oct. 7. Photo by Chapin Day

As local residents can attest, particularly in the fall, a few wisps of fog can explosively blossom into an impenetrable wall of gray, clinging tightly to the harbor’s waters.

Facing the wall and knowing the momentum of the tug and its load, skipper Jan Carlson had little choice but to bring his rig to a stop. That’s typically a slow process that might have left the massive watercraft adrift, blanketed in gray in mid-harbor just slightly east of Skansie Park and a marina full of highly crushable yachts.

“There’s an awful lot of plastic down there,” Carlson later told Gig Harbor Now, using a generic and slightly derisive term for fiberglass boats.

He knew he had to keep tide, current and any breeze from taking control of his idled tug and barges.  The solution was at hand on the large barge: spuds, those two tall poles at bow and stern.

“We lowered the spuds,” Carlson explained, effectively pinning his whole parade to the harbor bottom.

As Doug Fritts, a project manager for Thompson, reminded Gig Harbor Now, our harbor is a place often busy with small craft and paddle boarders. Moving in such a fog would have been risky for everyone involved. The tug and tows sat for almost an hour, themselves an unexpected hazard to navigation for any unwary boaters.

The tug Cayou, towing two barges, waits out the fog off Skansie Brothers Park. Photo by Chapin Day

Then, almost as fast and miraculously as it had appeared, the fog lifted. With the spuds retrieved, “Cayou,” energized by its 400 horsepower diesel, came back to life.

By the time skipper Carlson guided “Cayou” out past the sandspit light, there was no trace of fog in the harbor and even the Sound and Narrows were clearing up.

The Cayou and its barges passes the Gig Harbor lighthouse on Monday, Oct. 7. Photo by Chapin Day

The drama was over, happily.