This post will depart from our usual “travelogue” format and instead focus on an unusual event in Tyrrel Bay, Carriacou, Grenada, West Indies.

When we arrived at Tyrrel Bay on May 18, we found a large tug anchored in the entrance, tied to a strange-looking barge.  Bay gossip soon provided an explanation.  While in Barbados, the cargo on the barge had shifted – presumably because the workers had not attended to the notion of stability while unloading the cargo, and the barge had overturned.   Carriacou entrepreneur Jerry Stewart put in a successful bid for salvage rights and had it brought to Tyrrel Bay by two tandem tugs – laboriously pulling it upside down the whole way against an incredible amount of drag.  Now, the barge was sitting at the entrance to the Bay and workers were trying to get it turned upright.  The first attempts were not successful.   Several lines were attached to the west side of the barge and run east under the barge and somehow moored.  Then lines were attached to the east side of the barge and run west over the barge out to Troll, which was anchored.  The plan was to use the powerful winch on Troll to pull on the west-running lines and produce a rolling force.  But Troll could not get a secure grip on the bottom with her anchor and so she slipped back east when the winch was engaged.

A few days later a second tug appeared, and it seemed familiar.  Closer examination revealed why; it was “Flying Buzzard”, the tug that had improbably served as the committee boat at the Antigua Classic Yacht Regatta in April, 2014.

On May 25 we watched as a small float hosting two men and some kind of motor hovered near the barge.  Gossip said that they were pumping water into the barge in an effort to lower the center of gravity in order to make it easier to flip upright, but it was not clear whether the engine on the float was a pump, a generator, or a welder, or some combination of two or more of the three.   We took a few pictures from our dinghy and then retired to TusenTakk II.  Later that day we noticed that the Flying Buzzard had hauled her anchor and was positioning out west beyond Troll, so we grabbed the camera and hurried back out to watch and document the flip.

Nope, not that day either.   A long cable was run from the rear of Flying Buzzard to the front of Troll.   Troll was again anchored, and Flying Buzzard was powering to the west, attempting to hold Troll in place.  We could see that the cable was taut, as was the cable that ran from Troll to the barge.   We could see that the barge rotated a bit, but not enough to flip the barge.  We saw Flying Buzzard pause and alter the angle of their pull, but to no avail.   We returned to our vessel.

And then Bay gossip said that another much larger ship had been contracted to stop by for 6 hours on their way past the island.   On May 30 the ship Sydney Marie appeared, and they replaced Flying Buzzard as the west-most vessel in the tug-of-war.  By the time we got out to the site in our dinghy, the barge had been partially flipped, but progress was stalled.  A taut cable ran east from the top of a pole on the (true) top of the barge and that was preventing the completion of the roll.  We waited and waited and waited, but it appeared that the various members of the crew were doing the same, including a man perched on the now west-leaning bottom.  Two men, who appeared to be retrieving large timbers from the sea floor, laboriously pulling them up and into their small boat, provided the only action.  We finally returned to Tusen Takk II, and only much later noticed that the flip had been completed.

On June 2 we returned to the site in order to document the upright barge.   Several pumps were busy sucking water out of the barge, and several workers were on the deck putting things aright.   Much of the sidewalls on the deck had been restored, and we could now see that the timbers we had seen earlier were the material used for the walls.

(On subsequent days I noticed a large pirogue transporting workers to and from the barge.  So the project has been good for the local economy.)

We love Tyrrel Bay, Carriacou, and like spending time here even when nothing extraordinary is happening.  Watching the flip of a barge made our stay even more enjoyable.  For an account of our more conventional activities on the island, look for our other Carriacou posts.