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The Living Barge has really come to life since my last visit with the first load of plants. I came today to document its passage by tug from its assembly dock at Duwamish Shipyard to further upriver where it will be moored throughout April be- tween Gateway Park North and Slip 4. After giving the approximately 450 plants a last drink before their trip, Sarah, Nicole and I boarded a Western Tugboat with Todd and Pete and we were off. It was a beautiful day for a boatride past derelict docks, gawky cargo cranes, giant wrecking yards, Tetris stacks of ship containers, steel grated bridges, mammoth Boeing buildings and Brobdingnagian bargeloads of life's essentials bound for Alaska. Getting the Living Barge situated proved more challenging than anyone had anticipated and I was recruited to help haul and heave the hawsers as the boat was threaded between two dolphins (a ring of pilings lashed together to act as a single post to which a ship is tethered). I literally had to learn the ropes and what I learned was that after touching them my hands reeked of petroleum and other chemicals the ropes had absorbed from proximity to the river. |
