Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Force Protection Workboat


The naval Dockyard in Halifax is "fenced off" from the harbour with a floating device called a Force Protection Boom. Unauthorized craft are required to stay away from the boom, which is located in an exclusion zone. Vessels straying into the zone will be intercepted by military police and warned off, or even detained if their intentions seem threatening.
The boom itself, which looks something like an oil containment boom, has a fence on top of it, is anchored at several points and has sections that can open to allow naval craft to enter and leave the Dockyard jetties. Its purpose is to prevent terrorist atacks on naval vessels such as the one that damaged USS Cole in Aden on October 16, 2000.
To maintain the boom, its anchors, buoys and gates, Maritime Command (aka the Navy) has several small craft in its fleet. One such is this vessel, which has pushing knees on the bow, to assist in shoving the boom around. While this does not make it a tug per se, it is certainly a related craft.

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