Large gravel ship docking

After a busy day doing housework, Campinspecter, the dogs and I went out to watch a large gravel ship being docked at the gravel facility near Port McNeill.



She is called the Balchen and is probably picking up gravel for California. The loading facility was put into place about 5 years ago.



The two big main tugs are doing the docking and the smaller one helps with the tie up lines.





She has to make an 180 turn and then into wind and current for the docking.



Once she is up to the dock, the two big tugs push her up tight to the dock and the line tug then hauls the lines to the tie-up buoys.



This part gets pretty exciting when the westerly is really blowing. That's when you don't want to be on the line tug trying to get a line on the buoy.

 

Every one was fascinated by the ship docking.
Here is Cricket.



Rascal is quite concerned.



Shadow just follows everyone else and asks "What's up?"

 

Guessing when the ship is loaded with gravel, she sits low to that paint line? Cool pics.

 

Great photos WW! I would have never thought it economical to ship gravel ........................ around here there are "sand/gravel" places everywhere. The only place it gets shipped is to your property! California is that devoid of remaining gravel deposits?

 

Nice pictures.

Here is some info on it:

http://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/BALCHEN-IMO-9640944-MMSI-538005113

 

http://www.polarmin.com/operations-projects/orca-quarry/

This is the company that is operating the quarry. From what I understand, it is the quality of gravel that makes it worth it to ship.

yes, she will be down to the water line marks and will leave on a rising tide straight out from the dock to open water. It is a bit of a tight channel for that size of ship.

Below is an old Google Earth map. Within the oval is where the quarry now is and the loading dock. There is a conveyor that crosses under the highway and logging road that takes the gravel to the loading dock. I am not the greatest at drawing but I hope you get the idea.

 

She doesn't look quite as nice as the picture in the info.

 

OMG !
They are hauling away your island ?



1st the trees,
now the land

LOL

 

At least the trees grow back!! It will be quite a different landscape when they get finished with it. I don't know if I will still be here though. there is lots of gravel in that area.

 

Great pictures .
I tied up & loaded oil tankers for many years , big boats !

 

That's an impressive operation! Thanks for the sharing the pics. Dog's looked like they had fun too!

 

I'll bet that conveyor is sumthin else. Any idea how many yards or tons of gravel makes up a load… and how long does it take to typically load the ship? Always have loved stuff like this. Monster huge contraptions…

 

Must be some expensive gravel by the time it gets to Cali.

Quite a set up though.

 

That link said they can load up to 80,000 ton ships at 5,000 tons/hour. 16 hours and it is full.

 

Wonder what their market is... If they sell a product to the box stores something like this http://www.homedepot.com/p/Vigoro-0-5-cu-ft-Gray-River-Pebbles-54250V/100558618 then an 80000 ton ship is carrying $17 million of retail product assuming that one yard equals approximately one ton..

 

Major markets are California, Vancouver, BC and Hawaii with a couple ships sent up to Alaska.

Here are some pictures of the conveyor system that Campinspecter went out and took pictures of this afternoon. This one is looking from the highway down to the ship. The conveyor goes under the logging road as well as the highway.



You can just see the ship at the end of the conveyor



The other side of the highway looking at the conveyor coming from the quarry. Unfortunately there are no viewpoints of the quarry itself.



The ship is down to her waterline so she will be leaving soon. She arrived at 4:30 PM yesterday and the docking tugs left the marina in Port McNeill about 5:00 PM today. You can see the gravel still coming off the conveyor into the ship.



Here is the line tug tied up to a mooring buoy before the docking tugs arrive.



In the background is a lighthouse station called Pulteney Point.

https://marinas.com/view/lighthouse/1609_Pulteney_Point_Lighthouse_Port_McNeil_BC_Canada

a bit of history to go with it the link above.

http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=1190

 

That is awesome! That conveyor must be moving right along too. Looks as tho it has a rubber membrane that carries the gravel, riding on bazzillions of rollers. An amazing and huge piece of engineering. I want one to take splits from the woods up to the woodshed… Thanks you two… again… Very interesting!

 

The month of April was a record production month 10 ships were loaded with an average capacity of 75,000 tons !

I would also like to have a conveyor!

 

Now yer talkin' …

 

I bet that the head engineer at that plant has some serious pressure on him to keep that place maintained and running. The cost of the conveyor breaking down while they are loading must be astronomical.