A rainy day in Phoenix (NY not AZ) – August 1

Rain stopped play today, a good internet connection and lots of time, but not a lot of action.

During yesterday evening “Frances” arrived, a big old tug out of Troy, she rumbled in quietly and moored across the canal at the big boys wharf.  I think the crew went to Sammy’s Sports Bar up the street for dinner and a few brews.

Early this morning (and I mean about 4:00am) I heard Frances depart.  Gone down through the lock I thought,

but no, she went of back upstream and came back at six with this enormous barge.

Eighteen huge culverts each too large for a road truck, maybe 500 tons total?

The lock keepers came up the wall, waking all those on boats that had strayed onto the big boys territory along the high concrete wall by the lock, down past the white tower, they all had to move out into the canal while the barge was locking down.

A little later it was clear why…

The bow of the barge is set against the wall and the tug is pushing it around to line up with the lock

With the help of one mooring rope and a tractor tire, the tug slowly swung the stern of the barge to line up with the lock.

Then pushed it ever so slowly into the lock.

Ten  minutes later the bridge was up and the barge was going down.

It was all over by 7:45am

That’s all the excitement the day produced.