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Quotes: 'A ship that survived five kamikaze attacks is going to make it five miles downriver." - Museum president Bill White
The dignitaries, marching band, hundreds of spectators and a flotilla of tugboats were in place yesterday morning, but after 24 years of sitting at the same Hudson River pier, inertia and mud won out when the time came for the USS Intrepid to move to a new home.
The move, designed to allow the ship and its pier to undergo a $60-million refurbishing, was postponed when seven tugboats straining for more than an hour were able to shift the aircraft carrier museum only 10 to 15 feet. And, as soon as the tugs stopped pulling, the ship slid back to its original position at Pier 86.
Disappointed executives from the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and McAllister Towing and Transportation Co. immediately began to look for Plan B. But they said it was unlikely they would try to budge the ship before next month's full moon high tide.
Officials said that while more than 13,000 cubic yards of silt had been dredged between the stern...