Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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I once met the captain of a small US-registered oil exploration boat in Malaga, Spain. He told of bringing the boat from Texas to the Mediterranean. Crossing the Atlantic on autopilot at ten knots had been such a long and tedious journey that, at some point off the Azores, he had assembled [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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As I climbed up into the wheelhouse that night to introduce myself to Captain Mike Cahill, he turned to me and said, “I have only one question for you: “Why?”
It was a reasonable question. I had just climbed over a frozen barge in the darkness of the Juneau waterfront. The crew was [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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For most Southeast Alaskan towns the schedule container barge services are the only means other than airfreight, getting goods from the southern forty-eight. On a recent late September run Western Towboat’s Pacific Titan towed a deck barge loaded with 560 TEUs of containers. The trip of about 500 miles up through Canada [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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When the last scheduled Alaska-bound passenger ship, the Denali, set sail from the Seattle waterfront in 1954, D.E. Skinner, president of the Alaska Steamship Company, said, “This is the end of an era. The days of leisurely passenger ships are gone – the airlines are here to stay. Most Alaskans can’t waste [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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Nearly 40 years ago, I spent a winter on a herring seiner out of Port Edward on Porpoise Harbour, just south of Prince Rupert B.C. The reduction plant was accessed through a narrow channel with ranges, but it never seemed much of a challenge from the deck of a 77-foot fish boat. [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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In October 2001 I went briefly back to the grounds where I seined salmon from 1960 to 1973. I fished with my old skipper’s sons as I had in the old days on a boat that was built before any of us were born. In the years since I last fished with [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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Valdez on Google Earth
The laden tanker Exxon Valdez grounded on Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989 spilling eleven million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. The resulting damages sounded a significant sea change for the maritime community. Much of this has been codified in the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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“How fast can you stop a loaded 900-foot tanker with a 10,000 hp tug?” Put simply, that was the question being examined in full-scale tests carried out on February 14, 2000 Valentines Day, in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. I was aboard Crowley Maritime’s new 140-foot rescue tug Alert. The, non-official [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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One of the hand-holds on the main computer and navigation console on the bridge of the new double-hulled tanker Polar Endeavour has been given a traditional twine lashing like that which sailors traditionally put on the mid-ship spoke of a wooden ship’s wheel. It is a fitting testament to the maritime history [...]
Alan Haig-Brown | August 25, 2008
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Bristol Bay on Google Earth
From British Columbia north through Southeast Alaska and on in a northwesterly direction to the Aleutian Islands, the Pacific coast is framed with precipitous mountains broken only by an occasional inlet. A voyager passing through False Pass into the Bering Sea would note a remarkably different shore. Here [...]
