One day years ago, we were hanging out in front of Caterpillar Island in our Bayliner 2452 Arecales watching the world go by. We saw Maverick pushing a quartet of barges upstream towards Portland, then mysteriously he seemed to release them and just drive away from them!

We had seen other tugs do this (in the fog no less) in order to swap loads (you take these barges, I'll take yours) but there were no other tugs in the area. We were stunned! Just letting go of these barges meant they would drift into shore if he didn't try to get back to them quickly. What the heck is he up to?

Even though we were anchored, we thought we could offer assistance, so we hailed him on the VHF and asked if we could help out somehow, still wondering, what the heck is he up to?

The pilot replied that he had plucked a jet skier out of the water, his jet ski was adrift. We suggested that we could come pick up the jet skier and reunite him with his jet ski. The pilot thought that sounded like a good idea. We set a float on our anchor line and unhooked from it (I had designed it so we could do that). Then April, being a very steady pilot came along side Maverick while he was re-connecting to his barges. We took on their unexpected guest and left Maverick to continue on with his load. We took the jet skier back to his jet ski, but he had lost the key, so we took it in tow and dragged it to the boat ramp for him.

We got nothing for it, save one really cool thing, the crew aboard Maverick had tried to tie a line onto the jet ski, but lost it, at the end of the line, still attached to the jet ski was a monkey fist. This is a weighted knot used for tossing a line to a distant person. Of course April got a great sense of satisfaction, having docked with a moving tug during his own docking operation with his still drifting load. Very impressive lady!