Sarita:
The Sarita was a barge that I never got to work. She was never actually a J. Ray McDermott barge, but she had been owned by Brown & Root and later Offshore Pipelines, Inc, or OPI, which McDermott bought during my time there. She was an interesting barge in several ways. The most obvious of which is that her crane was mounted on her bow. She was self-powered, but not DP equipped. She featured a good sized crane for her day, similar in capacity to contemporary barges that I did work such as the JRM DB22 and B&R/OPI Ocean Builder 1. She featured around a 1600 ton revolving crane. She worked for a time in Alaska where I hear she suffered a boom failure, possibly attributed to structural failure due to the cold. She ended up being sold to a succession of operators and was renamed several times as follows: Sarita, BAR 437, OHI 5000, Grande Trade and Wealthy Globe. She was upgraded at some point with a much larger 5000 ton crane which appeared way out of proportion on her hull. Very shortly after her upgrading, possibly even prior to her first job, she was pushed onto the rocks during severe weather while tied up in port causing significant hull damage from which she was never to recover. If you worked on her, have additional information or photos, I would be glad to hear from you.
On another note, during her upgrading, her original 1600 ton gantry crane was removed for the all-new crane. As a condition of the J Ray McDermott/OPI merger, the crane was transported to Morgan City, LA onboard the hull of another derrick barge and fitted to the hull by McDermott. This "new" derrick barge (Global Hercules) went to work for a competitor of McDermott. For some period of time, McDermott was allowed to bid this barge out for work. I was able to work one of these projects which was quite interesting.
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Sarita Photos:
Global Hercules (former Sarita gantry)
Sarita links:
Minishipart Scale Models FB page
