I was gone for 5 days last week and came home Sunday evening. When I woke up Monday morning and looked out the window to be greeted by...an oil rig?! I was startled, to say the least. Was I really that tired when I got home Sunday night that I missed it? Did I miss something--how could an oil rig get parked in Homer's front yard without my knowing it was coming? Panic and a sick, icky feeling descended. A flurry of online searches and phone calls to friends unearthed the situation: it is a jack-up oil rig headed to the Nikiski area. It left the Gulf of Mexico this spring and has been hauled around the tip of South America all the way up to Alaska, detained at one point in Canada because it was being hauled by a foreign shipper. It is gone now, with only a 3-day visit, much to my relief. Apparently the last oil rig to enter Kachemak Bay was in the 1970's, and it got stuck there for a year. Having an oil rig in our front yard definitely shook up my complacency, though whether it did so enough to make me an environmental activist is another story!
For additional stories about the jack-up rig, check out the Homer News' article at http://www.homernews.com/stories/081011/news_jurhuc.shtml and the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society's article at http://www.kbayconservation.org/news/view/166546/?topic=67160.
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