Lucy Foss

Offshore Service Vessel LUCY FOSS assisting CHEVRON oil tankers at the port of El Segundo, California. Transparent, opaque watercolor and acrylic... more

by James Williamson

Buy the Original Painting

Price

$2,400

Dimensions

27.000 x 18.000 inches

Title

Lucy Foss

Artist

James Williamson

Medium

Painting - Watercolor

Description

Offshore Service Vessel LUCY FOSS assisting CHEVRON oil tankers at the port of El Segundo, California. Transparent, opaque watercolor and acrylic painting by artist James Williamson.

Artist James Williamson, ASMA
Signature Member of the American Society of Marine Artists

Offshore Service Vessel
Length 65 feet, Breadth 24 feet, BHP 1,200, Utility Mooring Assist Vessel
Equipped with hydraulic spill boom reel and segregated line storage winches, 60 HP bow thruster, Fuel 5,500 gal.

On Board the Lucy Foss at El Segundo Moorings;
Line Boat Improves Efficiency, Service for Chevron

On a misty morning on Santa Monica Bay, the Lucy Foss navigates the waters near CHEVRON tankers CYGNUS VOYAGER and WASHINGTON VOYAGER. The vessels are delivering oil to Chevrons El Segundo Refinery.

The 65-foot Lucys bridge is equipped with buttons and dials of a remote control to turn huge spools feeding mooring line from the Lucy to the tankers. Deckhands guide the line through a chock on the Lucys bow as tanker crewmembers hauled it aboard their ship.

The Lucy would pay out four of the 300-foot pennants to the tankers, which would use them to supplement six of its own, for a total of 10 lines, plus the ships two anchors, needed to secure it in the berth at Chevrons El Segundo Moorings.

The tractor tug Brynn Foss assisted the tankers into the horseshoe-shaped system of buoys a mile and a half off the El Segundo beach, and then held the ships into position while the Lucy Foss ferried the lines one-by-one to the buoys.
Once secure, the tankers begin pumping their cargo through a pipeline along the ocean bottom, as the Lucy stands by.
And so it goes for the newest vessel in the Foss fleet. The Lucy was built at Foss Rainier Shipyard in Oregon to Chevrons requirements. It was launched on the Columbia River in early May 2009 and christened in late June in Long Beach.
The boat is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, the Keith K. The old line boat as they are called, was not capable of carrying spare mooring lines, so they had to be ferried to the tankers in big buckets. The Lucy also carries 1,000 feet of containment boom, has state of the art navigation systems and was built with comfortable accommodations for the crew.
In addition to being Foss newest boat, it is the latest product of a longstanding relationship known as the Chevron Alliance, through which Foss and the oil company collaborate on operational requirements, equipment needs and safety. Foss services Chevron Shipping in Southern California and in the Bay Area and also operates the West Coasts largest fleet of double-hull bunkering barges, used to fuel cargo ships for Chevron.

Chevrons relationship with Foss is important here, because we are running a critical and safe operation and the idea is to have someone working with us who has the same values with regard to safety and environmental responsibility that we do, said Subir Bector, Southwest region operations manager for Chevron Shipping.
Foss has great people and expertise in their areas and the businesses they are running, Bector continued, and we have an opportunity here to utilize that expertise and to help safely moor the ships in the El Segundo Moorings.
He said the Lucy Foss is an example of how the alliance enables both Chevron and Foss to provide input on operational requirements, which can then be passed to Foss engineers and naval architects to develop a boat.

Paul Hendricks, superintendent of lightering operations for Foss, said the Lucys line-handling system and crew accommodations improve both safety and the level of service Foss provides to Chevron.
Storing the lines on reels means theyre always ready to go and improves safety because dispensing the lines requires less physical work than it formerly did. The Lucys bunks and galley mean the line crews, which must stand by during the oil transfers, no longer have to climb sometimes tricky ladders to board the tanker to sleep and eat. And keeping them on board means the Lucy is always ready to go if the lines need tending.

Having a live-aboard boat is a huge advantage, Hendricks said.

Offloading the oil from each vessel would take about 40 hours, so the crew would spend more than a day and a half at the moorings on this job.

I like the way everythings laid out on this boat, both in the wheelhouse and in the engine room, a crew member stated, We have good equipment here.

Elements of this story have been selected from the FOSS publication Towbits.
September, 2009 ALWAYS SAFE Foss Tow Bitts

Uploaded

August 12th, 2012