I spent at least an hour yesterday watching a backhoe operator on a barge in the river. He was dredging sand off the bottom of the river, and putting into a floating receptacle of some kind. The backhoe was sitting on a floating platform, a simple barge, that also had a little hut and some anchoring devices of some kind that would sink down into the bed of the river.
It was interesting to me because he was operating the backhoe so gracefully. He would use the shovel end of the backhoe to push his barge around in the water, pushing off of another barge, off the side embankment of the river, and mostly pushing around on the bottom of the river. It was like watching a child navigating an inflatable swimming-pool-toy in a shallow pool. Or maybe like watching a guy operating one of those gondolas in Venice. But it was all scaled up to involve this large machinery.
I wish I had had my video camera with me, to capture the movements, but here’s a picture of the machine, as he uses the shovel to push his barge backwards.
