Elisabeth Turecamo

Plenty of action this day with the John Turecamo leaving the dry dock with Elisabeth Turecamo up on the blocks. The dry dock is quite an interesting peice of engineering in that its a stand alone vessel made of concrete. Built in 38 and servicing the ships damaged in pearl harbor, she was relocated to Jacksonville. To get boats on and off, the ballast tanks below are floated and the dock goes down. The day i sketch this, the Elisabeth Turacamo was carefully position over her blocks with the help of the Wee Lady December, a sweet blue tug and resident of the North Florida Shipyard. The John Turecamo was guided out and is not shown here. Once over the blocks, the pumps kicked in, slowly at first, to insure the boat is precisely on her supports. There's plenty to do on board for the deck hands. Included here are some quick figurative sketches i did during the procedure. The morning sun blazing in, the figures made for some interesting study. however, there was a problem with one of the generators so we had a few deckhands relaxing. The figure on the right is the person positioned centrally on the stern, at the rubrail to help position the tug on the center line. Captain Steve, directing the operation from Lady December.