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Since you requested it, Glen has sent along some shots of Point Adams, the MLB. Below the helm and instruments.
This Detroit 471 came from another MLB. That MLB, as was the case with 200 of 232 MLB 36′ boats, was burned, deliberately destroyed.
Here’s more of the engine room.
The “survivors cabin” has been living quarters for weeks or, as was the case spring and summer 2018, months on end. Some creature comforts are provided by benches and a table for fine dining list by the Coleman. Home sweet boat!
Again, many thanks Glen and Naomi.
A challenge in documenting your own travel is getting photos of yourself. On land, you can of course use the time delay feature and position your camera and yourself for a shot. On the water that’s not so easy. Drones make those shots available, but drones have not yet been adopted so widely. I’ve been toying with getting a drone for a while and often wonder when I can’t get the shots possible only with a drone, but I’ve not yet made the purchase of what could take a plunge and be lost. I know Lake Huron myself as a big lake with not that many safe havens, although I’d love to travel there with a small boat to prove to myself how many interesting havens there might be.
Here’s 36391 in Port Huron, the US port on the north end of the St Clair River, reminding me I’ve got photos for another post from my trip through in September.
Lake St Clair is a great place to encounter traffic, concentrated in the narrow channel through the Lake. Could that be Oberstar?
And we’re ending this post somewhat abruptly with this shot from Lorain, OH. Glen and Naomi undertook an ambitious summer voyage, and by the time they got to Lorain, the physical strain was taking a toll; MLBs were not designed as yachts for long-distance jaunts. So they made arrangements for winter storage there and hope to continue the voyage from there next summer.
All photos of the feat by Glen and Naomi, who might be heartened by your encouragement. You can do so either here or on their FB page, which you can find by a FB search for The Point Adams – 36391.
Personally I’d like to offer a Great Lakes-size tip of the hat to Glen and Naomi for restoring the boat, making the trip, documenting it, and agreeing to share their account here. If they need a support team for part of next summer, I’d step up right now.
More of Glen and Naomi’s journey . . . . These photos
are mostly on Lake Michigan, although St Ignace above and the east side of the Mackinac Bridge are in Lake Huron. This bridge has the third longest span in the US, and the 20th in the world.
Continuing to stop at USCG stations as well as public docks, the crew brought 36391 into Sturgeon Bay. Click here (and scroll) for another view of those lighthouses at the east end of the Ship Canal.
Sheboygan was a stop. Here’s a fish tug photo I took in Sheboygan last year.
Milwaukee. Note Lake Express disappearing off the upper left side of the photo?
Kenosha and 36391 stand ready, always.
In Wilmette, 36391 had the Bahá’í temple in the background. The temple is so prominent a landmark that I had to visit it upclose last summer.
Here’s one of the best of my photos of the temple.
After that, it’s the unmistakeable Chicago skyline. That 36391 really got around!
Around the southern corner of the Lake and headed east, it’s Calumet station.
Northbound on the east side of the Lake, MLB 36460, a movie star, leads the way to the Michigan Maritime Museum.
Glen and Naomi made other stops, but let’s conclude this post in Charlevoix, another spot on my yet-to-visit list.
Many thanks to Glen and Naomi for use of these photos to celebrate this story. If you do FB, check out The Point Adams – MLB 36391
Here’s an article about the folks who restored MLB 36460.
I first mentioned this boat here, and included photos taken from it on the Columbia River here.
The following story and photos are a real treat. They come from Glen Cathers, whose retirement projects include restoring the 36′ motor lifeboat you see below. This article from an October 2016 issue of the Dalles Chronicle tells you all about the boat and a bit about Glen. But let me sketch out a bit more, especially about his sixth boro connections: his father was a surfman-1936-1940 at Point Adams, where Glen was born. Glen spent four years in the USCG, 3 on icebreaker Westwind, and one running a 40′ boat in the sixth boro. After three years piloting commercial hydrofoils and two more on B&O RR tugboats, he then worked on the Staten Island ferry for 28 years, retiring in 1996.
In 2006, Glen and his wife Naomi bought MLB 36391 and began a six-year restoration process. And what would you do once you have a perfectly restored motor lifeboat? Take it on the road . . . er, the waters, of course. And after a few years on the Columbia River system and over the bar and along the Oregon and Washington coasts, navigating waters these boats were designed for and visiting active USCG stations, he put it on a Duluth-bound flatbed in spring 2018. So if you saw this unit while driving northern highways back in May, here’s some of the rest of the story.
The truck had just pulled into a marina yard in Duluth.
This was Glen and Naomi’s planned itinerary.
Once ready, the 36391 Point Adams points toward the Aerial Lift Bridge to head toward the Duluth Ship Canal, the way into the west end of Lake Superior.
Here Glen, to the extreme right, poses with the boat and some USCG crew at Station North Superior, near Grand Marais. Look that up on the map here, if you don’t offhand know the location.
From Grand Marais, they head across a glassy and clear Lake Superior to Bayfield, a trip you want to do when you trust you boat, your skills, your health, and have a good weather window. This blog was in Bayfield just a few weeks before 36391 was there.
Here’s the placid lake as they leave from Ontonagon for Houghton-Hancock.
These rails beside the dock–on an island NW of Marquette–were built to accommodate MLBs like this.
Here’s a disused small boat station near Munising,
jumping-off point for Pictured Rocks.
Besides stopping at USCG stations, Glen and Naomi stopped at public docks to show the restoration off to more folks. Here there’re showing their restored vessel off at the Soo on the best day of the year, Engineers Day, when the locks are open to the public.
I’m grateful to Glen and Naomi for these photos and this story. This is post one of three. Two more to come. If you do FB, search for The Point Adams – 36391, and get ahead of this blog.
Check out this article by my friend Peter Marsh in the October 2017 Northwest Yachting starting on pp. 78-79, with great watercolor illustrations by Cory Mendenhall.
For another article on Glen and 36391, read this one in Spring 2014 issue of Freshwater News by my Peter, starting on p. 13.
I would be remiss if I didn’t say MLB 36391 is one of only three (?) fully restored vessels of the type. One is 36340, which accompanied 36391 for some time this past summer and is based at the Michigan Maritime Museum. The other is 36500, a newer boat but famous for the 1952 Pendleton rescue, acclaimed in book and movie entitled The Finest Hours. There may be others we don’t know about.
Check out these shots of Cheyenne –a former staple in the sixth boro–recently in her new ecosystem.
Cheyenne recently assisted this unit getting out of a waterway in Detroit.
Powering the barge to a port on another Lake is Evans McKeil, built in Balboa, Panama, in 1936! In comparison, Cheyenne (1965, Brooklyn) is a youngster.
The lights from steelmaking in Detroit are truly unique.
Niagara Spirit is a large barge . . . 340′ x 78′ with a carrying capacity of almost 8000 metric tons. In this case, the cargo is just over 6000 tons of coke . . . . That’s not Coke.
And when the job is done, Cheyenne returns to her berth along the Detroit river, resting up for the next job.
All photos by an anonymous mariner.
All these photos come from Christine Douglas, who frequents areas along the Calumet River.
Pere Marquette 41 and Undaunted . . . I’ve seen in the distance several times each of the past two years. This is why I was excited when I saw Christine’s photos of the unit close up in the Calumet river.
Remember the Joseph H Thompson and Joseph H Thompson Jr. story here (scroll)? What makes Pere Marquette 41 so interesting is that it too was once a Manitowoc 1943-built self-propelled ship. She looked a lot like Badger.
And Undaunted, started her life in 1943 as an ATR Navy tug, worked the Pacific, and has had many lives since then.
Many thanks to Christine for use of this photo. I’m eager to see them close up and Undaunted out of the notch soon.
What I noticed first about Johanna G is
the cranes.
Never have I seen cranes that stripped of recent paint. Maybe rust-busting is happening as we speak, but
new coating of paint –IMHO– should be applied soon. See a photo of her possibly new and with blue/gray cranes here.
As of this posting,
she’s already headed into the Atlantic . . . Gibraltar bound I believe.
The zoom lens foreshortens the distances here; there was adequate time between Johanna G clearing the bridge and the lowering of the span. There’s no room for a repeat of the Windoc incident.
This photo clearly shows what “seawaymax” means.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who noticed that the other photographer working in proximity to me was stopped shooting for a while to wave the Portuguese flag, not the Madeiran.
This is a reminder also of the NYS Canal Conference happening on Staten Island next week. I will show Graves of Arthur Kill and speak on a panel about the hidden places of the sixth boro.
I’d first assume this was a small tanker, but I was wrong.
Here’s the answer to cargo: dry bulk cement. In previous lifetimes, it had carried grain as well.
A hint of ghostwriting midships and to the right of “SPIRIT” shows another name or several names—Gagliarda and Ardita—were there earlier.
Arriving soon after Mckeil Spirit, was this vessel that I’d seen in Buffalo earlier this summer, wedged in alongside the Lafarge dock.
All this up-high piping suggests cement carrier as well, reminding me of English River, less than a mile away waiting for the scrappers’ torches.
Covered over with paint is the Arklow fleet logo. I never have been able to learn if there’s a technical term for a vessel logo situated on the bow, almost like a harkening back to a figurehead, not unlike the one of the barque Peking.
Now I understand: this is not saying a “new [division] of Algoma; it’s a joint venture between Algoma and Nova, the latter a company from Luxembourg.
Here’s the rest of the fleet. For a photo/article of NACC Argonaut in Oswego, click here.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
At this point in my life, I have a solid list of projects yet to undertake. One of those is scratch-building a ship or boat model. Nothing screams “build me” more than this classic laker style. Enjoy a lot of photos here, curvaceous details to render in a model.
Like the dead ship Paul H. Townsend to the far left, Michipicoten was built in salt water, i.e., Sparrows Point, MD.
If you’re wondering how to pronounce Michipicoten, it’s five syllables with emphasis on PI.
That spar mounted on the bow of “house-forward” lakers is called a steering pole, a guide for the helmsman.
Note the crewman watching the camera from the port light above the “M”?
Half the Lower Lakes Towing fleet has the traditional “house-forward” design: Cuyahoga, Mississagi, Saginaw, Ojibway, and Manitoba.
Note the many large windows on the lee side of the forward superstructure.
The base machinery of the self-unloaders intrigues me.
Note the rounded stern and exposed top of the rudder.
The curves on these boats never quit.
Into Welland lock 8 she goes.
Yup . . . this winter I need to play around with scratch-building a model, and I’ll see if I can make it eight feet long.
All photos and sentiments by Will Van Dorp, who wants to remind you of the NYS Canal Conference happening on Staten Island next week. I will show Graves of Arthur Kill and speak on a panel about the hidden places of the sixth boro.
Port Colborne is the location of MRC, the clean-up business, and right now they’ve a few years–my guess–of projects.
JW Cooper goes in and out several times a day.
But what I wanted to watch was the traffic, up and down bound, like Algoma Buffalo. The previous two times —here and here–I’d seen this vessel predated her sale to Algoma.
Port Colborne is very quiet on a rainy early fall Sunday,
so quiet I could hear the engine room crew commenting about the town’s stillness,
although I’m guessing they spoke louder than otherwise because they had on ear protection.
Algoma Buffalo headed to a turn-off on the Welland and self-unloaded some of her cargo. The 24,300-ton-capacity vessel started her cargo-carrying life late in 1978, i.e., just over 40 years ago.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
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