Re: American Tug
I don't know about a pleasure tug. When in high school, I spent my summers working as a deckhand and cook on a couple of different boats. We moved barges from south Texas to Vicksburg, MS. I really enjoyed the experience as I liked machinery, and boats and the tug took care of that. I liked the comradeship of the crew, going different places moving barges about and all. Some of the oil we picked up was only accessible via a small winding river requiring us to work the barges like an accordion.....tie one side tight, other side loose, make the turn, and swap places for the opposite direction in the next turn.
I got used to the smell of diesel and some kind of engine running all the time, be it the main or the APU. Learned how to "chip and paint" Ha!
We'd go down the Intercoastal Canal in south Louisiana and the boat and barges had so much displacement that we'd suck the water down about 2', exposing the mud bank and when we passed, there would be this 2' surge of water that ran out into the marsh then back into the canal.
At night we had a carbon arc spotlight that would shine about a mile. Bugs would line up in the beam and "wait" for us to pick em up. Grin. They have some really big bugs down there.
Enjoy,
Mark
