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This Page was created
Feb 10th, 2,oo1
Eye witness account of the above.
Last time you posted that pic of the Vertol towing the barge, I was going
to write - this time I'm doing it ! I was up in Prudhoe Bay
that particular winter (was up there several times in '80 - '83).
The barge was a HOVER-barge and it skimmed over the ice, but needed the
pull from a helicopter or icebreaker ship to move across the frozen sea
(Beaufort sea, to be exact). It was owned by VECO Oil field Services at
the time and may still be owned by them. Last time I heard anything
about the hover barge was back in '88, when VECO tried to use it to free
some trapped whales from the ice offshore of Point Barrow, Alaska.
As it turned out, it couldn't make the over-ice trip from Barrow to Prudhoe
Bay. The Alaska Air National Guard used one of their
Chinooks to drop a tethered concrete block onto the ice in an attempt to
create an
open-water path for the whales, but it didn't work fast enough and
the clearings refroze. You may have seen the coverage of this event
back in October of '88. It happened at about the same time as that little
girl was trapped in a well shaft in Texas - remember that ? I was up there
on the whale rescue to offer the services of an unusual amphibious ice
tractor that was owned
by my company, Acrtec Offshore Corp., but operated by VECO. It
turned out that the Russians were able to clear a huge path for the whales
using one of their icebreaker ships. Some of my buddies traded belt buckles,
etc. with the crewmen.
How's that for a bit of trivia ??
Mike Bell
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