I first met Capt. Chris Common about 25 years ago when I rode out with him on the tug Coos Bay to put a pilot up on a ship. As the ship followed us back in across Oregon's Coos Bay Bar, he told me of the time when the Coast Guard saw his tug lay over on its side so far that they could see his prop. On board, water sprayed through the keyhole in an old-style wooden wheelhouse door. Common also spoke of his father, the late Jim Common, who was then a pilot in Long Beach, Calif, but had begun his career ferrying Miki tugs across the Atlantic to Europe in World War Ⅱ. I later met Jim in Los Angeles - he was retired then - but his tales of ocean towing were the stuff of a mariner's dreams.
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