It was a dreary first day of November, the kind that makes you want to stay in bed with the head cold that is about to over your life for a few days. But you have to get on over to Chesapeake, Ohio, because there's another tug and tow combination that's taking more pieces of that Shell chemical plant to Pennsylvania.
So you get yourself down to the river and notice that its surface is smooth and reflective. On a nicer day, you would be, too, but not today.
You get your pictures and go home.
In case you are wondering, the tank-like things on each end of the barge are labeled "iso-butane storage billet" and the big one in the middle is labeled "ethylene buffer vessel". I looked up "billet" on both dictionary.com and thesaurus.com and didn't find a satisfactory definition, so if you're still wondering exactly what a billet is, ask your family chemical engineer.
A little while later, I caught up with the two boats at Crown City, Ohio, as they were being overtaken by the M/V Larry Drummond.
I wanted to get other photos, but darkness fell before they got to my preferred shooting spot.
To quote Forrest Gump, and that's all I've got to say about that.
3 comments:
That tow passed Louisville a while back. I had never seen that kind of tug/tow combo here before. I think the cylindrical containers are "iso-butane storage bullets", not billets.
See a discussion of the merits of bullets vs. spheres.
You're right. I looked at the photos again and it's a bullet, not a billet. Or a ballet.
This morning (Dec. 3, 2018) the towboat "Bernard P" (doc. # 601937) was upbound at Louisville with a deck barge. On it were 9 large plywood crates and a large cylindrical object. The only word I could read on it was "nitrogen." It might be part of the same plant, or maybe something else.
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