Living Alaska, The Dry-Dock Experience

High and Dry in Alaska

Picking Up Four Million Pounds

Photograph by Author, Dry Dock Ketchikan, Alaska

Today I pulled a 235-foot 2,186 ton ship out of the water. I did not do this by myself, we had a full ship’s crew, two tugboats and a shore crew to help. It took a couple of hours, and several hours of prep work. I learned a lot about lifting a five-story building. It is not that simple, especially when you factor in tides, current and wind speed.

Photograph by Author, Ketchikan, Alaska

A Little Help from the Crew

There are a people in this world that do this type of thing every day, or it is part of their normal job occupation. I admire them, because it is not easy, and if you make a mistake you die. I was standing on top of the bow holding a line that got hung up on the dock. We corrected the problem immediately, but had we not done so the line would have cut me in half or tore the dock off its hinges.

Some Jobs Are Dangerous

Either way it would have been bad. Things like this happen every day and it is often the professionalism of the crew around you that keeps you safe. It happened so fast and corrected immediately that no sense of…