The Saipem Constellation, a pipeline laying vessel, motors through the Corpus Christi Channel at Port Aransas. The ship is almost two football fields long.
Editor’s note: Greetings from eastern Kansas. We’re a few days into the national emergency intended to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 spread. We’re grateful that so far, we and our family members are OK. Here’s a story from our January stay on the Gulf Coast.
Every once in a while, riding a bicycle can make you feel like you’re a kid again. Riding my Trek Crocket 5, a cyclocross model, gives me a feeling of freedom like nothing else.
During our January stay at Port Aransas - on Mustang Island, which stretches 30 miles northeast from Corpus Christi, Texas - I enjoyed 10- to 20-mile rides on days as the weather allowed. The island is as flat as a pancake and the traffic was light.
In January the island is a little drab, but when there wasn’t a misty front moving in, the afternoon temperatures pushed up to 65 degrees. The coat of shaggy grass and brush on the dunes reminded me of the Nebraska Sandhills.
The easy riding was just the start. I enjoyed the scenery, the early blooming flowers and also coming across the ships entering or leaving the Corpus Christi Channel. Massive oil tankers passed through the ferry crossing on the Intercoastal Waterway headed for the refineries and docks on the west end of the bay. Over a couple weeks, I got used to seeing the tankers up close, but on January 24, I was west of town on the highway when I came to a full stop.
A massive ship, the Saipem Constellation, came into view. It looked like someone loaded up an amusement park and was cruising east through the east end of the bay. It had a 150-foot tower and a large spool up high that looked like a Ferris wheel. Huge cables took on the appearance of some kind of zip line structure.
I immediately took off toward the channel, hoping the ship was stopped, perhaps waiting for a clear channel. When I saw it motoring toward the ferry at a rapid clip, the challenge was on. I had to have the photograph, and it was going to get out to the gulf if I didn’t hurry.
If I had been in a car, I could have moved to several places for a photograph. There was the Port Aransas Wildlife Preserve along the bay, the ferry and maybe even Roberts Point Park. But I was on a bicycle, limited to my maximum speed of maybe 15 mph. And if I was lucky, I could catch the ship at the jetty, the last stretch of dry ground.
As I cut across town, I could see the ship towering over the beach houses and the stores and the harbor packed into the island’s east end.
I had explored the streets of Port A, from the tourist beach houses in the west to the Old Town Port Aransas closer to the channel on the east. I used my short cut, a pedestrian gate at the end of a dead end street, and emerged next to the student housing of the University of Texas Marine Institute. From there it was another quarter mile to the jetty area. Looking down one of the streets on the campus, I saw that the ship was picking up speed. My window for a photo would soon close.
I pulled off into a parking lot at the north end of the jetty to find that I was almost too close to get the ship in a frame. I had a couple minutes to back up and shoot a video and a few photographs before it got away.
The final shot was my favorite because it captured a fisherman, like a tiny stick figure, standing on the jetty in the bottom right corner of the frame. Mission accomplished. I looked around and saw other people who had the same idea and were stopping to snap a photo.
Just before sunset on the eve of my 61st birthday, I had the last golden minutes of a bright sunny day for the ship, which was a rare sight for this landlubber.
As I headed back home, I wondered what it must be like to work on one of these vessels, all the workers’ time away from home and the dangers of the ocean and deep-sea oil rigs. This sight and the numerous oil tankers I saw sparked an interest in how our oil is produced and transported to the giant refineries we had seen from the bridge in Corpus Christi.
Research on Google turned up dozens of photos of the same Constellation model. Photos can’t capture the real size of these ships. For anyone visiting the coast, I would recommend a drive past the shipyards or the channels where the boats go to sea. To my surprise, when we packed up and moved from Port Aransas to Rockport about 10 miles away, we were just a few minutes too late to the ferry to see another of the giant ships pass by.
A few of the Constellation’s specifications provided by Saipem, an Italian company.
The vessel is 178 meters long and 46 meters wide, or about the space of two football fields end to end.
It has 4,200 square meters of deck space.
Its electric power generator produces 37 megawatts, or 37,000 kilowatts.
Propulsion of the ship is done by two 5,500 kilowatt thrusters on the stern. The main hoist lifts 3,000 measurement tons with a 25 meter radius.
The ship carries a crew of 239 people.
The helideck measures 27 meters tall by 277.5 meters wide and accommodates a Sikorski S-92/2-61N.
The ship is equipped with two ROVs, or Remote Operating Vehicles, and two launch and recovery systems that go to a depth of 3,000 meters.
About Port Aransas:
Our stay at Port Aransas was in the middle of winter, when the weather can be cloudy and misty a couple of days out of the week. The beaches attract a line of campers, cars and golf cars on the sunny days. We enjoyed the slower pace with most of the beach rentals empty. It was a quiet few weeks, and we weren’t bothered too much by the sporadic rattle of nail guns rebuilding structures damaged in the August 2017 Hurricane Harvey.
When we return again, we plan to have a lot more freedom from ankle surgeries (Angie is recovering nicely) and other complications to explore the shipyards and spend some time watching the giant vessels go out to the gulf.
As I wrote this, Mustang Island was gearing up for full Spring Break mode, with its 18 miles of public beaches packed with college kids. Hard telling how the national emergency will affect the local economy which was hard hit by Hurricane Harvey in August 2017.
If you make plans to visit next January, you will find plenty of room on the beach to camp or spend the afternoon. You have plenty of space along the bay or the South Jetty to go fishing or just watch other people go fishing. You’ll find that the jetty requires some agility to navigate the giant stones, but the path will take you past the beach.
During our stay, the rebuilding of structures was still going on. Hurricane Harvey made landfall in the area and took its toll on many buildings. On my bike rides, I saw that people are not afraid to invest in the place, with new communities of beach houses, in the range of $300,000 to $500,000 on the west end of town. You’ll also see flags and signs of people hoping to keep Mustang Island wild and to slow down the housing development.
We enjoyed driving to Corpus Christi, even though it was to take care of medical stuff. So, when you want to go out for a nice meal, there are the usual chain restaurants, along with downtown gems like Price’s Chef, a diner which has been greeting customers since the 1940s in the same location.
Mustang Island is a great place to visit in the winter months. It will be even greater when all the damages from Harvey are repaired. Rent yourself a bicycle and you might feel like a kid again. Watch the ships in the channel, and bring a camera.
That’s all for now here at TQN. Remember, we’re just getting started.
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