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This is a variation on a post from two years ago.
But I will identify nevertheless . . . at the end of this post. Excuse the misleading title.
Name the location of this serious sea smoke, aka sea fog.
This is an easy location to guess . . . and the two photos that follow were taken in roughly the same place, same time by a mariner not ready to come in from the cold and identify him or herself.
And finally . . . I took this last year from a commercial airline flight. It’s an area I know well. I’ve slept down there many night.
And the answers are as follows:
1. Lake Michigan along the north coast of Chicago at -20 F.
2. The next three along the Hudson near Kingston.
3. And the last one of Waterford NY. Starting from the lower left of the photo, that’s Crescent Lake leading to the right to the hydrodam at Cohoes, and straight up, the Waterford Flight, 6 through 2. Midphoto is the Hudson leading to Troy . . . I took the photo on my return from the ice canoe races in Quebec City.
There’s nothing new that I know about Twin Tube, but she cuts a unique image as she works year round. She came off the ways in 1951, and just moves along doing essential and almost invisible work. Here’s a post I did on her four years ago telling about her previous incarnations. Here are many others with photos, with or without (as here) her boom.
What’s interesting to me is that the port of Philadelphia has (I’m not sure it’s still there.) a similar Blount-built vessel called Sailor, launched in 1977. It appears to have the same basic plan but with the orientation reversed, as you can see here.
Here’s something to research: Sailor had previously been El Paso Sailor. Where did it work in that iteration? Surely, it didn’t work here.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Click here for the 43 previous posts if you don’t understand the title. If your thoughts on being the image below were of high heels sans the rest of the impractical shoe, mine were the same. Of course, you can read Weeks 526 clear as day, so . . . whatzit?
Here’s a bit more context. That’s the Hudson River, old pilings for old Pier 55, I believe, just north of old Pier 54.
Piers of Manhattan once welcomed ships and ferries, cargo and passengers transitioned between land and water there. Then people patterns changed and these piers little by little have transformed.
So what is it?!@#@!!
Come back in a few years and hang out at new Pier 55, the on–then off–then on again park idea funded for $250 million by Barry Diller. The project reminds me of the vessel, another Heatherwick Studio creation.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, with a cell phone. I’ve been losing a grip on patterns these days myself.
Before I started blogging, Pier 54 hosted the Nomadic Museum, for a half year or so. I loved it.
Birk certainly got this one better than I did, which you can see here.
Kirby has a new tug out, Cape Henry, and this is my first time to see it. Is it pushing its first load out? What barge is it pushing?
I calculated the two shots above wrong, but I love these next two of Kirby Moran and
Margaret Moran.
All photos since daybreak today by Will Van Dorp, who missed his deadline. Please keep this secret out of the Tower, or understand this is an early post on Central Time.
I’ll take a different tack here. From a design perspective, Kaye E. Barker illustrates what I understand as the unique lines of the classic laker, sometimes called a longboat. She was launched the same year I was born. Combing through the records of her various owners, it might be possible to calculate the tonnage of payload she has transported and the profits generated, these days at 25,900 tons per load although previously less than that.
Click here for a slideshow of this vessel under the name Barker as well as her previous names: Greene and Ford. She’s the only AAA-class laker with a triple level house forward.
What became of one of her sister vessels–J. L. Mauthe–can be read about here. I previously posted photos here of the sister boat that now barge Pathfinder.
Edwin H. Gott is one of the 13 “footers” aka “thousand-footers.” Great Lakes Fleet–a CN company– has the best paint scheme, in my opinion. Here’s an article on CN’s acquisition of GLF.
Cason J. Callaway is another GLF boat, but she has a cargo capacity of 25,300 tons versus 74,100 tons for Gott.
Although part of a different fleet than Barker above, Callaway embodies the same design referred to as AAA boats.
From this angle, you can see the long “skinny” hull.
In different light, time of day and a different lake, here’s Michipicoten on her last run of the season. She’s currently in winter layup at DonJon Shipbuilding in Erie PA.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. I’m back in the sixth boro and Tugster-Tower-tied for a spell.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Because of a cold brisk wind, I shot some of these through glass, which is never a good idea. But looking at this set, taken between Belle Isle and Sarnia, illustrate the variety of lakers, all in a context of not a single recreational vessel, something you’d never see in summer.
Select info from the excellent boatnerd site says this: launched in 1943! from American Shipbuilding in Lorain OH, Cuyahoga was sold to Canadian interests in 1995, cargo capacity of 15, 675 tons, 620′ x 60′ and converted from steam to diesel between the 1999 and 2000 seasons. She’s the second oldest Canadian vessel on the Lakes, younger only by a month than Mississagi.
Note the house forward and boom pointing aft.
Tecumseh (641′ x 78′) is also a Lower Lakes Towing Ltd. boat, also built in the US . . . in Seattle at Lockheed Shipbuilding in 1972. Because she has no self-unloader, she discharges her maximum 29,510 tons of cargo using shore gear. For more info, click here at boatyard. [Autocorrect always wants to replace my “boatnerd” with “boatyard.”]
Robert S. Pierson is the last Lower Lakes boat in this post. It too was built in Lorain OH, in 1973 and was sold and registered Canadian in 2008. At 630′ x 68′ she has a capacity of 19,650 tons. Of course,by now you’ve noticed her house is aft with her self-unloader pointing forward. Much more detail can be found here.
Hon. James L. Oberstar was launched in 1959. At 710′ loa, only a handful of boats on the Lakes were longer, including the Edmund Fitzgerald at 729.’ She was lengthened to 806′ between the 1970-71 seasons. A self-unloader was added between the 1980-81 seasons. In 2008, she was repowered, replacing a steam turbine with a diesel. Her cargo capacity is 31,000. Again, much more info can be found here. Notice that in contrast with Cuyahoga above, Oberstar has house forward and self-unloader boom pointing forward.
The white steam is evidence of the emissions scrubbers pioneered on Oberstar in 2016, and now visible on other Interlake Steamship boats like Paul R. Tregurtha and James R. Barker.
CSL Tadoussac, already in winter layup and light here, has the same basic configuration as Oberstar, but is less curvaceous. She was launched in 1969 in Collingwood ON but extensively rebuilt before the 2001 season. Currently she is 730 x 77′ and has cargo capacity of 30,151 tons. Her namesake is an early settlement dating from before Jaques Cartier on the St. Lawrence downstream from Quebec City. Boatnerd has her complex her here. Alice Oldendorff is part of the very diverse CSL fleet.
To round out this post, let me add a tanker. Truth be told, I include this photo here partly because of the dramatic difference in scale between the ship and the tanker truck alongside. I’m not sure what product the trailer tank is there to deliver or receive.
Algoma Hansa was built in Mobile AL in 1998. She entered Canadian waters for the first time in 2013, and for the past few years has worked mainly in Algoma’s domestic fleet. Is it correct to assume the Canadian fleet relies more on tankers for what in the US is transported by large ATBs?
Let’s leave it here. I hope you’ve enjoyed these comparisons as much as I have.
All photos and information interpretation by Will Van Dorp, who is solely responsible for any errors.
Oh, and if the Tugster Tower internet wizards sent you a puzzling 404 error message in lieu of yesterday’s URL, try this: https://tugster.wordpress.com/2019/01/25/late-season-lakers-1/
Ice causes major disruptions, like the ones in Troy NY this morning.
Most of my previous posts featuring lakers were ice-free. Even ones from a road trip I took specifically to see ice were ice-free. Alpena had just lost her icy jacket.
Yet, I’m fascinated by navigation through the ice. These photos give a sense of two weeks ago; not it’s worse although most of the navigation has ceased here for winter hiatus. I caught photos of CSL Assiniboine about 50 miles from here last September. I love the curve she makes here in the icy St Marys River.
The classic Wilfred Sykes makes the turn down bound out of the Soo, where wind turbines catch power on the ridge. I’ve seen her before, but these are the first good photos I’ve gotten.
You can hear Sykes here in this video from almost two years ago, as she becomes the last laker to depart Escanaba with a load of ore.
And finally, for this installment, these shots of Ojibway in the Poe Lock show
what locks in winter look like.
As she heads down bound, she passes USCGC Katmai Bay WTGB-101, the first of the 140′ ice breaker class,
a 40-year-old vessel based in the Soo.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Long before Marvel comics and their several versions of rebirth, a crop of folk heroes existed, with stories that originated in the oral tradition, at least so it seems to me. And was the Paul Bunyan legend based on Saginaw Joe Fournier?
No matter. Here’s the first workboat I can recall aptly named for one. The paint may be scuffed,
the name boards in need of rehab, but
she looks ready to break out of the ice and lift some gates. By Great Lakes standards, she’s not even that old, it seems, launched in Muskegon in 1944. Has she been repowered? She’s a barge, so the power would be only for the derrick machinery.
With the Soo Locks closed now and drained, it’s possible she’s hard at work lifting gates as needed. Click here for another another and photos about the January 2019 closure of the locks.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
In an icy corner of the Soo, it’s Indiana, launched in 1926 and still on the roster.
Over at the Algoma Steel plant, it’s Leonard M, and
nearby, it’s Sharon M I.
This isn’t a great photo, but it shows both McKeil Marine tugs at the steel plant.
Farther around the lake in Two Harbors, it’s Nels J and
Edna G, a survivor from 1896. Oh, the stories she could tell.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I started this series using a title that was a play on words here.
The only clue that Olive L. Moore and self-unloading barge Menominee–formerly a ship built in Maryland–are in winter waters is the sea smoke rising from the water. Actually, it appears the ATB itself has risen from the water and is floating
on air past the Detour Reef Light.
Complementing that pair, here are two photos of USCGC WLBB-30 Mackinaw
tied up on Lime Island. Her crew was recently involved in an icy rescue.
A pair of 47′ MLBs awaits springtime, and a
duo of hardy deer demonstrate their sure-footedness on ice.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
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