1985 Leland Bowman Lock and 2021 Ava Claire Allison

(Satellite)

This is one of the eight navigation locks on the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway.

2007 USACE Presentation, p16

MarineInsight
On March 22, 2021, the Ava Claire, when entering the lock westbound, allided with the closed lock gate at the west end of the lock. "No injuries or pollution were reported, but the lock gate sustained $2.5 million in damage."

gcaptain
"On the morning of the incident, the captain awoke after 4.5 hours of sleep to assume the watch early from the vessel’s pilot. The pilot offered to take the tow through the Leland Bowman Lock, but the captain declined and took the helm about five minutes before maneuvering the tow into the lock. According to a policy contained in the vessel’s operations manual, a change of watch was not to occur during “a critical move,” such as maneuvering into a lock. The tow struck the lock gate less than 30 minutes after the captain woke up, according to the NTSB.
"Additional factors added to the captain’s challenges as he attempted to maneuver the Ava Claire tow, including a tidal current pushing the tow from astern; loss of the GPS feed to the vessel’s electronic chart system which denied the captain his primary source of speed indication; and problems with radio communications between the deckhand and the captain further impacting his ability to judge speed and distance."
The NTSB determined that the primary cause was sleep inertia. “Sleep inertia generally lasts for about 30 minutes after waking but may last longer if a person is sleep deprived. Mariners should allow time to fully recover from sleep inertia before taking a watch and performing critical duties.”

 

MaritimeCyprus

I learned about this lock because I saw a comment that the Quad Cities heavy-lift crane was used to help repair it. In fact, removing sector gates for this lock was the first lift for this crane since it was built in a shipyard in Morgan City, LA. After that first lift in Aug 2019, a few minor modifications were made at the shipyard and then the crane went to its base location in the USACE Rock Island District.

WaterwaysJournal [2 visits per month]
"The crane was designed and built by Seatrax Inc., according to specifications laid out by the Corps of Engineers’ Marine Design Center. The barge platform, which measures 300 by 68 by 12 feet,  was built by Conrad Shipyards in Morgan City, La. It is replacing an older crane also named the Quad Cities.
The new Quad Cities has a 500-ton capacity and features a gantry that folds in under three minutes to go under bridges. It incorporates 1.4 million pounds of steel and machinery and almost 2 miles of wire rope. Its 22 hydraulic motors use 700 gallons of gear oil delivered by 1 mile of hydraulic hose.
The Quad Cities has already performed its first lift. At the end of August [2019], it was used to remove sector gates at the Leland Bowman Lock in the New Orleans Engineer District."

Comments on a drone video indicate that the structure on the right side of this satellite image was the previous Leland Bowman Lock. This older lock explains the rather late construction date (1985) of the current lock. Note that the south wall of the lock appears to be an island rather than a man-made structure.

Satellite

Indeed, an island was the south wall of the lock. They removed the old dam and dug a new channel for the new lock and then they damed the original channel.

1975 Intracoastal City Quad @ 24,000

I noticed that the eastern gates are missing! I used Global Earth to determine that this image was captured Nov 2019. It is too bad that the satellite didn't pass over the lock when the Quad Cities was there.

Satellite

James Media 2:28 timelapse video heading westbound. It enters the lock around 1:07. 

James Media 2:22 timelapse video heading eastbound. It enters the lock around 0:39.

23:08 video of an eastbound tow joining another tow in the lock. (I shoved the cursor through most of this video.)