Armstrong Marine, the aluminum-boat fabricator on U.S. Highway 101 midway between Port Angeles and Sequim, has been awarded a five-year contract by the Department of Defense to build maintenance barges for the U.S. Navy.
According to Jason Minnoch, Armstrong’s government sales manager, the barges are specifically designed to enable personnel to paint and perform maintenance on any submarine or class of surface ship within the Navy’s fleet.
Jason said the contract calls for two sizes of barges, some of which will be 42 feet long by 18 feet wide, while others will be 35 feet long by 15 feet long.
Depending upon each barge’s destination — which can be anywhere in the world that Navy vessels call home — it will be outfitted with a 45-foot, scissor-type high-lift and low-lift; a 45-foot articulating-arm high-lift platform or a 65-foot articulating-arm lift platform.
The contract, which is expected to be completed by September 2018, is valued at something north of $38 million.
Defense Solution
Platypus Marine, the full-service shipyard, yacht-repair facility and steel-boat manufacturer next door to Westport on Marine Drive in Port Angeles, hauled out Solution on Monday and stowed her in the Commander Building.
That’s where personnel painted the bottom and installed new zincs.
She was returned to the water Thursday and is back at her berth at Westport Shipyard’s float in the Port Angeles Boat Haven.
Solution was launched in the summer of 2010 and is a composite vessel that Westport built on speculation to U.S. Coast Guard guidelines.
Westport incorporated modifications to make the vessel adaptable to military and defense applications, port security and navies both domestically and internationally.
Although the vessel was built from the same molds as the company’s 40-meter yachts, she has the look of a coast guard cutter or a gunboat.
On Solution’s rear deck is a well that opens to the sea — similar to what existing Coast Guard cutters currently have on their 110- and 120-foot cutters — to allow access for a 24- foot rigid inflatable boat that can be used for vessel boarding, interdiction of nefarious activity or rescues.
Forward of the well are bitts that, among other things, can be used for the towing of disabled vessels.
The vessel’s bridge was built amidships to minimize as much as possible the effects of the vessel’s rocking on the bridge watch.
It is surrounded with heated windows affording a 360-degree view.
Three captain’s-type chairs are affixed to the deck in front of a console that has six screens.
The navigator sits on the starboard side and can scan all the screens but is primarily concerned with the screens for the ship’s onboard operating systems, the plotter and fathometer.
The captain’s post is in the port chair, where he, too, can see all the screens but concentrates on the S-Band and X-Band radar screens and the closed-circuit television screen that displays activity in the various spaces from cameras that are mounted internally, externally fore and aft, as well as from the night-vision camera mounted on the mast.
The helmsman sits between the two officers and drives the ship using joy sticks for the helm and throttle.
Solution is powered by twin commercially rated MTU 16V 4000 M 73 L diesel engines that each generates 3,850 horsepower.
Fourteen thousand gallons of fuel are onboard as are 1,500 gallons of water.
The water is constantly replenished by two water makers that each makes 1,200 gallons per day.
Three onboard Northern Lights generators more than fill all of the vessel’s operational and emergency electrical requirements.
New generator
Platypus Marine also hauled out Raven Dancer, a 50-foot commercial fishing vessel that came up from Westport.
According to Marty Marchant, director of sales and marketing for Platypus Marine, the vessel’s generator had a catastrophic failure and requires a replacement.
Once the new generator arrives, personnel will swap the bad for the good, and the vessel will get underway for crab fishing.
Power cat
At the end of last week, Our Third Love was hauled out and now sits on the hard in the yard at Platypus Marine.
Marchant said the big power-cat, which is 58 feet long with a 28-foot beam, will be at Platypus for about three weeks for some fiberglass repairs and bottom paint.
Loading up logs
Selinda, a 587-foot bulk cargo ship, has been moored to the Port of Port Angeles’ Terminal 3 for the past several days.
She has been taking on a load of logs that were harvested off private lands in Western Washington.
At midweek, there was a noticeable slowdown in the loading process as only two of the four cranes were operating.
I spoke with Joe Rinehart, the foreman for the longshoremen loading the ship, who said the bearings on the spools in the blocks of the two forward cranes failed, putting them out of commission.
He said replacement bearings are being shipped to Port Angeles but will not be here until sometime Monday.
In the interim, the two aft cranes were available for loading Thursday and Friday, and Joe said the blocks from those two cranes would be removed and installed onto the two forward cranes for Saturday’s loading.
Joe said the mechanical failure slowed the loading process down somewhat, but the longshoremen should be done loading Selinda on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Wednesday programs
After a summer hiatus, Wooden Boat Wednesday resumes at noon Wednesday, Oct. 2, in the Maritime Meeting Room of the Northwest Maritime Center in Port Townsend.
The season’s inaugural presentation will be by Capt. Daniel Evans on “Untold & Forgotten Stories of Adventuress and Those Who Loved Her.”
The Port Townsend-based schooner Adventuress, which is Washington’s ambassador tall ship and a designated National Historic Landmark, turned 100 this year.
She is operated by Sound Experience, the nonprofit educational organization, following nearly a century of different uses — and enormous changes to her rigging.
Evans will discuss the many iterations of Adventuress as well the lives of those who have graced her deck.
Wooden Boat Wednesday is free, promptly at noon and typically lasts for 90 minutes.
Seating is limited and requires advance registration by phoning the Northwest Maritime Center, 431 Water St., Port Townsend, at 360-385-3628, ext. 101.
Or send an RSVP email to chandlery@nwmaritime.org.
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David G. Sellars is a Port Angeles resident and former Navy boatswain’s mate who enjoys boats and strolling the area waterfronts.
Items and questions involving boating, port activities and the North Olympic Peninsula waterfronts are always welcome. Email dgsellars@hotmail.com or phone him at 360-808-3202.
His column, On the Waterfront, appears Sundays but will be on hiatus the next two weeks. It will return Oct. 13.
