PORT ANGELES — The Polar Pioneer rose from the water on the deck of a giant transport ship Tuesday, but before it was lifted, it had a massive gift for the people of Clallam County.
About 15 tons of food were offloaded last week from the oil drilling platform and distributed to food banks and food pantries across the county.
“This is huge for us. It was all hands on deck,” said Jessica Hernandez, executive director of the Port Angeles Food Bank, who accepted the donation on behalf of the Clallam County Food Bank Coalition.
“This is $40,000 of food,” she said.
The donation included large volumes of high-quality frozen meat, vegetables, cheese, pita bread, bulk dry goods, snacks and condiments.
It was enough to make a significant impact toward getting area food banks through the spring, Hernandez said.
Coalition members — Serenity House, the Port Angeles Salvation Army, Sequim Food Bank, Olympic Community Action Programs’ Senior Nutrition Program and area tribes — were able to share in the largesse.
The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe in Sequim and the Quileute tribe in LaPush each received food, and the food bank is seeking a way to transport a portion of the donation to the Makah tribe at Neah Bay, Hernandez said.
Hernandez said the supervisor of the operation from the Polar Pioneer’s crew did not ask for a tax receipt for the donation or identify what company donated the food.
The donor of the food was platform owner Transocean Ltd. of Zug, Switzerland, Shell spokesman Curtis Smith said Tuesday.
The 355-foot-tall oil platform was leased to Royal Dutch Shell, the parent company of Shell Oil, for summer drilling operations.
European destination
The Polar Pioneer was floated onto the giant MV Dockwise Vanguard, a 902-foot semi-submersible heavy-lift ship, early Tuesday and is expected to depart from Port Angeles for the North Sea on Monday.
Crew for the Polar Pioneer was reduced to the minimum needed for the trip, and the Port Angeles Food Bank got an initial call that the rig had three pallets of food to donate, said Kevin Perry, warehouse manager for the food bank.
Armed with volunteers and trucks from many of the coalition organizations, they met a boat at the Port of Port Angeles docks Thursday to collect the pallets of food.
“By the time they were done, there were 16 pallets,” Perry said, adding that some pallets of food were delivered after Thursday’s initial shipment.
On Tuesday, food bank volunteers were still weighing and sorting many of the boxes of food from the donation, he said.
The Port Angeles Food Bank kept about half the food, stored in every nook and cranny the agency could use in its Valley Street warehouse.
Hernandez said some of the meat is in such large portions, such as giant roasts, that the food bank will need to reach out to local meat processors to have the meat cut into portions small enough for average household use.
Serenity House program director Kay Walters, who took part in the distribution, said Tuesday she believed the pallets weighed about a ton each and added up to 30,000 to 40,000 pounds in total.
Much of the food accepted by Serenity House was distributed to residents of permanent housing managed by the organization, and some was kept for use in the day care and the Single Adult Center kitchens, Walters said.
“It’s going to feed a lot of people,” she said.
The Salvation Army will use much of the 1.5 pallets of food it received for the soup kitchen, said Major John Tumey, who manages the Port Angeles chapter of the church and charitable organization.
“It is food we don’t have to go buy now,” Tumey said.
Much of the food received was various meats, one of the more expensive items to purchase, he said, and in expensive forms not often served at the soup kitchen.
“The roasts are huge. We will be able to get four or five meals from one roast,” he said.
Tumey said he did not yet know how many pounds of food the Salvation Army received.
“We’re still weighing it,” he said.
Departing ships
The Dockwise Vanguard, with its cargo the Polar Pioneer, is scheduled to depart Monday, according to officials from Dockwise Shipping of the Netherlands.
Dockwise owns both heavy-lift ships that visited Port Angeles Harbor this week.
The 738-foot-long semi-submersible MV Blue Marlin submerged Thursday and the drill ship Noble Discoverer loaded Friday.
The Blue Marlin departed the harbor with its ship aboard at 5:22 p.m. Monday — a day earlier than initially scheduled by Dockwise.
It takes one day to submerge the heavy-lift ships and about three days to lift and secure the cargo. Operations can continue normally in bad weather as long as winds remain less than 15 knots, according to Dockwise officials.
Port officials have said the Noble Discoverer is headed next to the West Pacific.
The Polar Pioneer initially visited Port Angeles in April to prepare for a summer of drilling for oil in the Chukchi Sea, off Alaska, and returned to Port Angeles in late October to offload equipment.
It will be heading back to the North Sea off the European continent, where it operated for 30 years, port officials have said.
The Dockwise Vanguard is the largest ship of its type in the world and can lift more than 120,000 tons of cargo.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
