November 18, 2005:
Picking girders during the day
Steven SettiDucati emailed last night wondering whether I had a photo
of the new 7550 what showed everything. Together we looked but nothing
met his needs. This morning, I took a quick ride to
East Bay to
see the progress - and discovered an East Bay Stonehenge.
Returning a couple of hours later, it seems I almost missed the action. Here
is the worksite - with the final cuts being made by Jed and Tod
Here is Jed starting his diagonal cut on the far side
and at the other end, Tod also makes a little burning action
Chris is operating the 7550 and this is what he sees and on the right, what
I see
Jed is nearing the end of cutting through the main girder
while Chris smiles
Tod is burning through an intermediate beam
Meanwhile, Jed is nearly finshed with his final diagonal cut on the near side
edge girder
and here makes the final cut
Tod is about at the same place with his final cut. In the background you
can see the open cut of the outside girder
With Jed and Tod safely down - Chris starts lifting the Grace skeleton.
I've stitched together some more frames to make a short
1 Mb mpg video
rotates it to the left
lowers it over the fence
and starts the final descent
lower
and to its resting place
Here they have started disasembly of the support pier
with Tod and Jed doing their burning
And at the same time, work continues to retrive the Pearman bones the dropped
on Tuesday. Here is something new - a climbing barge that elevates itself by
ratcheting itself up the vertical black (yellow tips) poles. A crane can be
placed on the platform - and my speculation is that this will be used
to remove the cantilever region overhanging the port. We'll have to
wait and see.
Here is the assembly under the platform - the ratchet poles and directional
propellers.
The Pearman bones
The Hampton Roads pulled into the port area a few days ago and Jack Meyers
and his team are busy dredging the channels and port areas
This was just a nice view of the Ravenel