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With about four feet to spare, a 16-story crane sneaked under the Columbia River bridge at Astoria Bridge on Thursday. For a few bleary-eyed onlookers, a glimmer of light atop the Chinese ship Zhen Hua 17 gave the only indication of just how close the crane came to scraping the span. Three Port of Portland engineers perched on the 185-foot crane measured just four feet of clearance. “They high-fived the beam as they went underneath it,” said Capt. Mike Tierney, one of the Columbia bar pilots who specialize in taking oceangoing ships in and out across the dangerous mouth of the river. As Tierney and colleague Gary Lewin steered the ship toward the bridge, they had to speed up to beat a wall of fog rolling in. (Source | Via gCaptain Maritime News)