BFD’s fireboat Cotter is always a high point of a Buffalo visit, a Crescent Shipyard 1900 (!!) Elizabethport NJ product, aka the world’s oldest active fireboat. 

Headed west for Port Colborne, we’re treated to beauty over SteelWinds. 

As darkness looms, JW Cooper arrives to drop off a pilot.

Imagine my dismay passing MRC after dark,

and head down to Ontario level through the night.

Daybreak brings us to nearly Ontario, and we wait for Wilson T. Cooper to exit the lock W-1.

Port Weller’s shipyard a year ago was occupied by Presque Isle. 

 

We drop off our pilot and

 

enter Lake Ontario.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.