Since this is a boat thread might as well advertise International Talk Like A Pirate Day that is coming up 19SEP2016!
http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Talk_Like_a_Pirate_Day
The US states of Michigan[16] and California[citation needed] have officially recognized the occasion.
Krispy Kreme gives out free doughnuts to people who talk and/or dress like pirates on September 19.[17] Long John Silver’s has a similar promotion.
Here are some pirate jokes for ya.
http://www.piratejokes.net/jokes/top20?pg=1
The fire look very bad, but here is a very wet, boat/ bridge event.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080504230717/http://koti.mbnet.fi/~soldier/towboat.htm
The river current was so very treacherous that we were forced to drop down to the bridge in the slack(er) water on the left descending bank and when we got down to the bridge, we uncoupled the boat from the barges and let the barges drift down under the bridge. The bottom of the bridge would “shave” the coal stacked in the barges off to a level surface. The next step was to back the vessel upriver and then go over to the far West side and traverse the bridge’s channel span with the boat, and run down and catch the barges. It was just too dangerous to try to bring the barges through the bridge span in the current.
Anyway, Jimmie dropped down properly and with the entire rest of the crew standing on the barges for safety, he began to reverse his engines to back away. His stern would have to be kept directly pointed into the current or the boat would travel sideways like a kite without it’s tail. Captain Jim was a fine pilot, but he made a small mistake and his stern was caught in the current, twisted sideways and the river smashed him into the bridge sideways. Notice that the boat re-surfaced right side up on the down stream side. What luck you say? Nope, WGN ballasted all their vessels with three to four feet of cement in the bottom. The boat was like a little yellow rubber duckie, and came back up like a duckie oughta do. The boat suffered major cosmetic damages, but little flooding because of water tight doors, except in the pilothouse. Notice the picture where the boat is not quite righted and you can see water pouring out of the wheelhouse door. The chair washes out, and Jimmie told me he was holding on to the controls with all his might to keep from going out the drain and into the river.
He was very shook up and you can see him approach the tow of barges downriver. Well he didn’t get it together quite soon enough and he smashed into the barges, causing further damage.
I next saw Jimmie about a month after this and we had a cup of coffee together and talked about the incident. He was smoking a Camel Non-filter but didn’t even need an ashtray beacuse his hands were still shaking too much for the ash to build up to any degree.
How do I know all this? I was on the boat that went through the bridge immediately before the Cahaba. The Motor Vessel James E. Philpott made the bridge and was headed south at close to 15 MPH. For all you who don’t understand, that is very fast on a commercial towboat with that much tonnage.
Glad to pass this on to everybody...
Captain Michael L. Smith
http://gryder.com/istories/towboat/story/