Forest Service gives shipyards another week to bid on its Tongass floating barracks

The U.S. Forest Service on Thursday gave small businesses another week to bid on hauling out and repainting the Misty, a floating barracks the Tongass National Forest keeps in Southeast Alaska.

Bids are now due at noon Nov. 6 instead of Oct. 30, so the agency can answer contractors' questions, the amendment says.

The Misty, built in 1979, is a liveaboard house barge: a two-story, wood-framed barracks on a 61-by-26-foot steel hull. Below deck are fuel tanks, generators and systems to treat drinking water and wastewater. The barge weighs about 90 tons and needs hull work every five years, according to the agency's work statement.

In June it was anchored in a bay on Winstanley Island in Behm Canal, when the Forest Service sought a contractor to tow it to the Shelter Cove dock in Carroll Inlet, on Revillagigedo Island near Ketchikan. That's where the work statement says it is now.

The agency will tow it to the nearest harbor the winning contractor designates. The contractor needs a dry dock, marine railway or travel lift that can handle a 90-ton barge.

The job includes pressure-washing and painting the hull and deck, sandblasting rust spots in the bilge, cleaning three 500-gallon water tanks and two 500-gallon fuel tanks, and replacing eight zinc anodes. The contractor will also take its five anchors off the deck to clean and inspect them, and build a new stand for the two biggest, 1,000 pounds each.

Work would now run Nov. 13 through April 30, 2027, instead of Nov. 10 through April 1. The contract is set aside for small businesses, and the notices don't list an estimated value.