Thursday, November 10, 2011

The Marathon on the Kanawha again

So I had to do a couple of things at work yesterday, and as I walked back to my desk, I looked out the window and saw the new towboat Marathon coming up the Kanawha River. I grabbed my camera bag and told my supervisor I would be back in 10 minutes.

"Another boat?" she asked.

I got these shots of the Marathon as it approached and tied up to a terminal across the river from where I work.







Later I looked out a window on the other side of the building and saw the Marathon faced up on a barge and pointing downriver. And a little bit after that, I saw it heading up the Kanawha pushing one barge. I checked vessel locations later and saw it locking through Marmet. And I thought of some old Ohio River boat workers I'm acquainted with who made as few trips up the Kanawha, sometimes as far as a town called Hugheston.

For a while, I pondered chasing the Marathon up the Kanawha to get some pictures of it in the Marmet pool, but by the time I got out of work, it was dark outside, and raining. In other words, not worth the time and trouble for the images I'd probably get.

As of 8 a.m. today, the Marathon is in the Winfield pool, probably near my office, but given other things I have to do on the way in to work, I probably won't see it.

I don't know why Marathon sometimes sends a big boat up the Kanawha when it has smaller ones that can make the trip, but on this day I didn't care.

I have a couple more photos from the Kanawha this week that I might post if I can get the quality right. I did minimal editing on these photos of the Marathon, but the ones I got the other day of the Iron Duke will take more work. As a former coworkers explained to me once, the camera had photographer problems. I hate it when I'm taking pictures at night and forget to reset the thing for daylight shooting.