Tug/Barge: Aid cargo goes to Africa

Not quite as fast as her name might imply, the barge Lightning was used to move food aid from the United States to West Africa earlier this year in a round voyage taking three and a half months to accomplish. Part of an articulated tug/barge (ATB) set, the 7,164dwt Lightning is a bow door-equipped ro-ro barge pushed by the 5,910hp tug Thunder. Together, the two vessels delivered 199 containers of food to the ports of Freetown, Sierra Leone; Lomé, Togo; and Douala, Cameroon. The cargo landed at Togo was destined for Bamako, Mali, 900 miles inland. Prior to her West African trip, the ATB set had received a major overhaul in Singapore after which she loaded US military equipment in the Philippines to take back to the US. JS