Well, a DHC-2 Beaver is not a jet although it’s a fantastic aerial platform.  Here a John Deere moves the aircraft into the water,

where it becomes a boat, complete with a set of paddles.  Welcome to Beaver Air Tours.  Call me floatster.

When we get the green light, we taxi out towards the LaFarge dock . . .

where J. A. W. Iglehart (launched 1936!!) serves as floating storage.  More on Iglehart later in the flight. If I’d been here a few days later, I’d have seen the elusive (for me) Alpena (1942).

We turn into the wind and prepare to take off, with SS Meteor (1896) to starboard.

Once aloft into the southeasterly breezes, we pass American Victory (1942), launched in Baltimore as a saltwater tanker.  For her diverse life, read the info at the link in the previous sentence.  I hope you read the links on Meteor and Alpena as well . . .

The day before, driving in from Wisconsin, we took these photos of American Victory from US highway 53.

 

That’s American Victory down there.

A little farther south, we pass the ore docks in Allouez Bay,

where CSL Laurentian (1977) is loading.  Can you tell we’re downriver from the iron range?

Here we circle back over American Victory,

SS Meteor, 

and Iglehart.

 

More tomorrow from Duluth MN!  Now as to those tugboats below, I know at least three of them as Heritage Marine boats.  I believe the red one is either the boat I saw as Taurus or Fort Point in Belfast Maine a few years back. Here’s the story of the Maine boats’ arrival at the top of the Great Lakes.  The two orange ones may be Nels J or Edward H. but we didn’t get close enough to determine. And the blue tug, i’m not even going to guess.

More of this aerial fling –a flatter post–tomorrow.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.