Musical Slip Assignments at Vigor Shipyard

On May 10, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency's Sea-Based X-Band Radar vessel (SBX-1) crept slowly across Elliott Bay and into Vigor Shipyard on Harbor Island. See our May 11 post at http://thisisseattletraffic.blogspot.com/2011/05/sbx-1-arrives-in-elliott-bay.html. Today, the SBX-1 crept ever so slowly out of the shipyard toward a temporary moorage at Duwamish Head, off West Seattle, to make room for a new tenant at Vigor.

The purpose of this short trip was to accommodate the Arctic-class drilling rig Kulluk, owned by Shell Oil, which arrived today in Elliott Bay after a two-week voyage from Dutch Harbor, Alaska. According to a report in Fuel Fix, Shell is moving the rig to Vigor Shipyard, where SBX-1 is currently based, for ongoing maintenance and planned, technical upgrades. Once Kulluk is berthed at Vigor, SBX-1 will return to its previous location for completion of the $27 million upgrade project that began in May.

The Kulluk was accompanied on its two-week journey from Dutch Harbor by Nanuq, a 300-foot oil spill response vessel that can store 12,000 barrels of recovered oil and has tools on board to collect crude from water. See http://www.akforum.com/eProceedings/oilspillresponse.pdf.

There was a veritable beehive of activity this afternoon, with radar platforms, drilling rigs, an oil spill recovery vessel, USCG patrol boats, and numerous tugs scattered around Elliott Bay -- not to mention the occasional Washington State ferry and even a wayward sailing vessel of indeterminate origin.