A barge nearly ran aground in Vancouver’s English Bay on Sunday (Nov. 19), almost two years to the day after a separate barge went viral for doing just that.
The Canadian Coast Guard said it received word of a blue barge on the loose shortly after noon on Sunday. The ship had broken free from its mooring buoy and was moving toward Sunset Beach. Video taken by onlookers show the barge came within a few tens of feet of the shore.
The coast guard sent two ship and crews from its Kitsilano base, one of which tied onto the barge and tried to hold it back from the shore, and the second of which pushed against its stern. They kept at this for about 30 minutes until a Seaspan tugboat arrived and was able to pull the barge back to its mooring buoy.
The coast guard said the barge is usually used for transporting gravel, but was empty at the time it went loose.
The close call came just over two years after a separate barge ran aground at Sunset Beach on Nov. 15, 2021. The beached ship became a temporary landmark in Vancouver for more than a year, before it was broken down into parts and taken away.
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