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Archive Podcasts:
The secret life of tugs and barges
Apr 04, 2023Lots of bustling commerce happens on the river here that many of us don’t see. We can thank two amazing workhorses of the maritime world: the tug and barge.
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Terrible Tilly gets new life
Apr 03, 2023Today we take a look at Terrible Tilly, the former site of a lighthouse on a rock in the Pacific Ocean off Ecola State Park. The old lighthouse site is getting new life as the current owner attempts to refurbish the weather-beaten structure. The rock has been taken over for years by sea lions, seals and sea birds, and is still just about as hard to get to as she always was. We’ll talk about how Tilly came to be, a bit about her history, and what her future might hold.
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Some poetry to start your weekend, and more ship details
Mar 31, 2023Today we take a closer look at a couple of arriving ships, and we’ll also hear a poem written by Irish poet David Whyte, who lives in the Pacific Northwest.
The poem is titled, “Light Over Water,” and it’s about what I like to call the “beautiful ordinary,” those lovely things that happen right under our noses, things we often miss.
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Are all ships in the river required to have pilots on board?
Mar 30, 2023Today we’ll talk about the rules about when a pilot is required to be aboard a ship in the river, and why most do, whether they are required to or not.
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Rules of the road on the water
Mar 29, 2023Just like there are rules of how we behave on the road in our cars, there are rules about how to behave when you are in a boat. Today we talk about how to handle if it you meet another vessel when you are traveling on the water.
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A look at the staggering amount of ocean plastic, and a new treaty that may help
Mar 28, 2023Our oceans are accumulating a staggering amount of plastic, at a pace that shows no signs of slowing. Now a new UN treaty aims to address this growing problem, for the health and welfare of all nations.
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Cruise ship heads to Portland drydock
Mar 27, 2023Today we’ll see a cruise ship in the river, but she’s not carrying passengers. This time this ship is headed for the shipyard. We’ll talk about what shipyards do, and why Portland’s Swan Island yard is specially equipped to handle big ships like this one.
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
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Today’s ships, and a bit about the things we don’t see
Mar 24, 2023We’ll take a look at who’s arriving and departing on the river today, and talk a little about the upriver portion of the chain of commerce that folks on the lower river don’t always see.
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Cars on the Columbia
Mar 23, 2023Today we’ll talk about those odd-looking car ships we see on the river, and about new brands of cars coming into the Port of Portland.
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The odd and sometimes humorous history of the Beaufort Wind Scale
Mar 22, 2023The Beaufort Wind Scale is that table of wind speeds which gives us assessments of wind intensity based on a scale from 0-12, according to what we see happening around us on land and sea. It was created in the early 1800s, and is still used today. It evolved from earlier, vaguer scales that weren’t defined clearly. Today we take a look at the evolution of the Beaufort Scale. Some of its iterations were really helpful to mariners, and some were just, well, charmingly silly.
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