Bahamas scrap and repair job
Its Sunday morning and everyone is asleep so I have time to upload pics to photobucket. Sirscrapalot mentioned he would be interested in seeing some photos of a scrap/repair job that I did in the Bahamas in 09. I have not had good luck in the past posting photos or links,so I will post where to find them and maybe someone can edit this post or post the albums for me. On hmburners photobucket account: Bahama scrap job. On Bill Souther facebook account:photos and on hmburners you tube account: videos. The scrap business has been very good to me over the years,so you will find pics and videos of scrap jobs and my yearly pilgramage to Jamaica for Christmas.
In 09 my job of 14 years at Metal Supply and Transport came to and end because someone else needed my job more than I did. So off on a job search I went. I go see my buddy Shalom (Jeff to his goy friends) and tell him I am looking for work. And interesting thing about Jeff is he buys and sells scrap ships all over the world,he has a yard in India and has his finger in a whole lot of other pies around the globe. He has a yard here in Port,but has not been active since 1975 when his 100 or so employees unionized and he sent them all home without a job. You will see pics in my facebook acount of me hauling two huge cleveland engines out of his yard. Jeff offers me a choice: go to Brownsville Texas to cut shipside or go to the Bahamas to finish cutting the Goulet(formerly the Telesis),do some repairs on a jackup barge called the Gibson and do a rudder change on the tug Ocean King. Bahama oil owns all three ships that Jeff sold them and Im sure he has and interest in this somewhere. There was a hurricane in 04 and the Goulet broke her moorings and dissapeared,It was thought that she drifted out to deep water and sank but she appeared three months later on a reef off Green Turtle Cay. A Bahamian salvage company was hired to refloat or cut her up. They set her on fire,salvaged all the copper and said oxygen was too expensive to continue the salvage.A US senator owns and island 6 miles away and is raising heck with the Bahamian prime minister because our wreck is in his sunset. Job #1. Our jackup barge the Gibson is sitting off Walkers Cay and has been jacked up since 02 waiting for oil drilling permits. Walkers Cay is now up for sale(only 26 million) and the Florida realtors say its not selling because of our ugly barge and it needs to be moved elsewhere. Salt water does a lot of damage to 3/16 plate over the years and she is now full of holes and cant be jacked down and moved till its repaired and made watertight Job #2. The Ocean King broke her moorings in the same hurricane and bent her rudder and damaged the steering engine which needs to be repaired Job#3.
They fly me from Buffalo NY to West Palm Beach where we continue in Kermitt Waters little airplane to Walkers so I can start work on the Gibson. Look up Kermitt on the net.....he is a real trip. The welder blows up the first day on the Gibson so we go for a nine hour boat ride to Marsh Harbour to start on the Goulet in our government surplus PU boat which we also use as a work boat to haul oxygen out to the wreck. We have to have K tanks of oxy shipped from Nassau and only 20 at a time which gives me about 10 hours burning time and then we wait a week for the next order to come in. The elements have really taken their toll on the wreck and it was the most dangerous job I have ever worked on. I finish that and go back to Walkers. We had to fly in steel,my new welder and grocerys in Kermitts little airlplane (I call it the flying Vega) and he could fly me in 7 K tanks at a time from Nassau. There are two people who live on Walkers : the customs agent and the chief of police who sits in his boat fishing all day and makes a phone call if he sees a high speed boat go by (they all run at night when he is asleep) I live on the Gibson with two guys from Nicaragua who would rather converse in spanish than english,so I had lots of free time to wander the island taking pics. It has also been abandoned since 04 and the locals have totaled the place. The cheif ,Sgt Gibson convinces me that I work too hard and he takes me to the island next door(Grand Cay) on Sundays as and excuse for him to go to the bar. Since I dont drink I wander around Grand taking pics . I finished the Gibson and she is now jacked up off Grand Cay,I never got to the Ocean King since she sank (we think it was thieves after the huge bronze firepump that sank her) and I gat a very large paycheck in US funds.
At some point I will need to go back and raise the Ocean king to be sent to Florida for scrap and I have dealings with the owners of the island reps to clean up all the scrap and remove the submerged boats at the docks. I can get by Bahamian officials with my seabook by telling them im going to pick up a ship,but working on the island requires 3000 a month working dues. Things move real slow down there......they hired a guy to mow the grass in 09 and I see it was just done this year. Enough of my long winded conversation this morning,time for more coffee
