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View Full Version : Hey look! Free tugboat propellors!


rbgarr
05-24-2007, 09:38 PM
THUMP!! THUMP!!

The nearby hospital is adding a wing so we've been hearing ledge being dynamited for the last few weeks, but usually the blasts come one at a time. When I heard the double thump it was unusual and came from a different direction, so I looked up from painting the boat but didn't think too much about it.

A while later, three police cars roared by our house with sirens screaming. The speed limit is 15 mph on the hilly curves but that didn't faze them as they slid to a stop down the street blocking the road. I could see their lights flashing behind the rose bushes at the edge of the cove, so I walked over to see what was going on.

It turned out that a scrap metal dealer from a nearby county decided that two eight foot, four blade bronze wheels ($20,000 each) that belonged to a local tug company were available for the taking. He winched them out of their storage yard onto a tilting flatbed truck and took off... but failed to secure them, and as he took the turn at the intersection down the street the wheels slid off the bed and cartwheeled across an absent neighbor's yard. Talk about unwanted landscaping! Rototiller maximus. The dealer was frantically trying to winch them back on the truck when the cops showed up.

It turned out the flatbed truck was 'borrowed' too.

Ah, small town life! I just wish I'd actually seen the props churning their way across the lawn. :D

kc8pql
05-24-2007, 09:44 PM
:D:D:D

The Bigfella
05-24-2007, 09:49 PM
Photos mate - we want photos

Figment
05-24-2007, 10:00 PM
I am continually amazed by what people think is acceptable as an unsecured load.

Desperation and stupidity aren't strangers, I suppose.

The Bigfella
05-24-2007, 10:15 PM
I hope he gets time to contemplate his actions whilst bent over in the shower.

rbgarr
05-24-2007, 11:18 PM
You want photos of that, too?? ;)

The Bigfella
05-24-2007, 11:42 PM
You want photos of that, too?? ;)


Most definitely NOT

py
05-24-2007, 11:44 PM
There's a lot of theft of copper water pipe and even wiring from building sites going on in Oz these days due to scrap metal value. I wonder how long before enterprising crooks start diving under boats and taking props off them? Wouldn't be all that hard would it, undo the nut and knock it off the shaft? Not copper I know, but valuable. Hope it doesn't happen.

The Bigfella
05-25-2007, 12:33 AM
Strewth - I have a hard enough time getting mine off on the slip - let alone tring to do it with 34' of briny underneath me. That said, someone did knock off the props off the twin outboards on the houseboat next to me.

Andrew Craig-Bennett
05-25-2007, 03:49 AM
I once sold a 4,200 anchor handling tug supply vessel, two years old, for five dollars, to a guy who wanted the props.

Whilst this story does date from the 1980's,a time of shipping recession, I should explain that she was 200 feet under water - sunk in an oilfield accident.

We did not want the liability for wreck removal.

A couple of years later I was selling big bronze props for the metal content; the shipyard where I was working had 22 spare propellers stored for various shipowners and some of them had no known owner - we needed the space (this was Hong Kong, where land is valuable...)

Rum_Pirate
05-25-2007, 07:33 AM
I once sold a 4,200 anchor handling tug supply vessel . . . . That is a lot of anchors to handle.;)

Andrew Craig-Bennett
05-25-2007, 06:30 PM
That is a lot of anchors to handle.;)


OK, OK, 4,200 horsepower...

Figment
05-29-2007, 05:59 PM
I can't imagine it's cheap to rebalance an 8' wheel.

rbgarr
05-29-2007, 10:24 PM
The owner is planning to use them in a display or memorial or sculpture of some kind.

rbgarr
06-05-2007, 09:44 AM
Speaking of scrap metal, Michigan has raised the deposit on beer kegs to $30 from $10. Seems folks had been selling empties to scrap dealers for a good deal more than the deposit.

WindHawk
06-05-2007, 02:48 PM
Another fella' in Michigan decided a couple days ago that the copper in a power-grid transformer would yield some cash, and he ended up reestablishing the death penalty in the State (it was banned in the original constitution of 1837, I believe).

Plumbers rarely drown, and splniters have proven less than deadly for carpenters, but electricians glow bright red.

On-edit: Hey! That is post #999!

rbgarr
07-02-2007, 06:29 AM
See post #17.