Rebecca Ann, shown here just above E28A, has served as Donjon’s Erie Canal tug recently. Nearby is Witte 1407, which she delivered, and [Daniel] Joncaire, formerly of the Niagara River.
My question was . . . what will this “reef run” on the Canal pick up for the reef? Here’s the background on this reef business.
This question is especially acute since the dry dock is fairly empty. Although the large rectangular openings make it clear that this barge in the foreground will go, currently between that barge and Rebecca Ann is the venerable [and vulnerable] Grouper.
While I was at the lock, these canoeists appeared from the direction of lock E28B, and when the lock master opened the gate, I concluded I might witness my first time seeing canoes lock through.
Without fanfare,
valves allow about two million gallons of water move downstream and lower the water level for these paddlers.
Happy trails!
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Many thanks to Bob Stopper for the heads up.
tugster: a waterblog 
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August 7, 2019 at 1:16 pm
Lee Rust
Grouper… venerable and vulnerable…
Back in April, the Canal Corporation arranged for the tug’s bilges to be cleaned of toxics by an environmental disposal service. Their next logical step would be to slice off the topsides, remove the machinery, cut holes in the hull and barge the remains down to Long Island Sound for burial at sea.
For many of us here, that would be the worst-case scenario.
One possible best-case scenario would involve the laborious and expensive extraction of the deep-draft tugboat from the shallow-draft Canal, a thousand-mile tow through the Great Lakes to her old homeport of Green Bay, several years of restoration, and an ongoing program of maintenance, operation and display.
To make this happen, a dedicated non-profit organization would have to be formed to coordinate countless hours of volunteer effort and raise many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The folks in Wisconsin who have been hoping to rescue Grouper in this manner have not made much progress and the Canal Corporation is getting impatient, so Occam’s Razor would likely slice the old vessel’s fate into the first and worst scenario.