PORT ANGELES — Smoke rolling off the W.C. Park Responder, which was making slow progress Thursday in the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Port Angeles and Sequim, was part of a training cycle and not an emergency, said Jim Hauger, response supervisor for Marine Spill Response Corp.
Visitors to City Pier in Port Angeles noticed the oil-containment ship smoking Thursday morning. It drew a small crowd of people who watched the ship’s slow progress.
‘Trawling clutch’
The smoke was a result of the ship’s use of a “trawling clutch,” which allows the ship to dramatically slow its propeller during boom and skimmer operations, Hauger said.
Hauger explained that the clutch causes the ship’s diesel engines to run at high revolutions per minute, creating more than the usual engine exhaust.
“We normally don’t run in slow mode,” he said.
The W.C. Park Responder is a Port Angeles-based response ship, designed and built specifically to recover spilled oil.
The ship, built in 1992, is approximately 210 feet long, has temporary storage for 4,000 barrels of recovered oil and has the ability to separate oil and water aboard ship using two oil-water separation systems.
Two of the Park Responder’s sister-ships, the Pacific Responder and the California Responder, took part in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill cleanup in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
________
Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
