By Danika Brown, Maritime High School Student Blogger

At 8:30 am, my fellow Maritime High School students and I got our foul-weather gear packed up in our bags and got our boots and hard hats ready to go to our local Manson Construction site, where we got a personal walking tour.

When we were at Manson Construction, we needed to wear hard hats, rubber boots, safety glasses, life jackets, and gloves at necessary times. When we first arrived, we went into a room in a classroom setting to talk about safety and how to maintain each student’s wellbeing. We then began to walk around the site and learn about the different elements of a construction site and how marine construction sites are unique compared to average construction sites.

One of the many highlights of this fieldwork experience day was when we got to go up into a crane and look around at the control panel. Another highlight was watching a tug boat throw the lines around the cleat while we were on the dock. We also got a chance to throw a rope around a cleat, but the lines were not attached to a boat. One thing we did towards the end of our trip was to look into the Mason Construction control room. It was an intriguing experience to see all of the controls—very intriguing!

After we completed lunch, we tied different knots like the bowline knot. We tried to knot it one-handed; only a couple of people could do this. Overall we all had a remarkable trip to the Manson Construction site. We hope that future students get the same knowledge that we did.