Summer Sail 3

Here are previous installments in the series.  Summer sail can take the form of foil-raised GP racing as will happen in the sixth boro this weekend;  it can also happen on longer courses and require stamina and endurance as happens in some races ending in Mackinac.

All the photos in this post come from Jeff Gritsavage, as he was delivering a yacht from Florida to Lake Michigan.  Some of you will recognize that this shot was taken in an Erie Canal lock.  A few of you will name the lock.  Answer at the end of this post.

I’ll help you out here; this was taken on the Oswego Canal, a spur that was developed to connect the Erie Canal and Syracuse to Lake Ontario.  Name the town?

Another town on the Oswego Canal.  Name it?

This is the same town, and the boats are exiting the same lock as seen above.  In fact, about 500′ beyond the opening mitre gates is the location I took this photo of Urger and a State Police cruiser almost exactly 5 years ago.

This is Oswego.  White Hawk has arrived on its first Great Lake.  The masts await and will be stepped because air draft issues

no longer apply.

Welland Canal is less than 30 miles long, but it’s

 

the way around Niagara Falls in 8 easy steps.

Coexistence with larger vessels is the rule on the Welland Canal.

Above and below is one of the hardest working tug/barge units on the lakes . . . Wilf Seymour and Alouette Spirit. 

And on any lucky passage through the Welland, you’ll see vessels like Fednav‘s Federal Dee,

Polsteam‘s Mamry, and

Canada Steamship Lines‘ CSL Tadoussac.

Before I give the answers to the questions above, here’s another town/Erie Canal location to identify.  Click on the photo to find its attribution AND the article that explains what’s happening with White Hawk.

So . . . the answers are lock E-23, Phoenix NY, Fulton NY, and finally above . . . .

 

that’s Rome.   Click here for a previous tugster post on the Rome to Oswego run.

Many thanks to Capt. Jeff for sharing these photos here.

And I’ll be looking for White Hawk on the Lakes this summer.

 

 

Port Weller ON to Phoenix NY

Port Weller is the north terminus of the Welland Canal, and as such, sees either a pilot boarding or debarking, which was the case here. Mrs C has an equally attractive fleet mate at Port Colbourne, the southern terminus. The vessel in the background left will appear in an upcoming post.

Some 80 miles to the east Kimberly Anne (1965) was docked in Rochester’s Charlotte port.

Walking along the beach there, I saw this historical sign of tug Oneida and schooner H. M. Ballou, at different times both owned by a George W. Ruggles.

Fifty or so miles to the NE we enter the Oswego River to find the busiest (IMHO) unit on the lakes:  in the past few years I’ve seen Wilf Seymour and Alouette Spirit at least 6 times between Lake Huron and Quebec City.   Here’s more info on Alouette’s aluminum operations, at one time and possibly now the largest aluminum producer in the Americas.

 

Click here for more info on Novelis, the client here in Oswego.

 

Anyone tell me the weight of one of these ingots?

Moving from contemporary to retrospective, the Phoenix dock was hosting schooner Lois McClure and tug Churchill as we passed.

For more close-ups, check out tug44’s take. 

Click here for a complete history of the replica schooner Lois McClure.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes you all enjoy the last day of summer 2017 today.

 

GWA5: climbing around Niagara

With digressions behind us, let’s resume the journey.  In part 4 we descended from the level of the Mohawk at Rome NY into Lake Ontario, approximately 248.’  Canadian pilot boat Mrs C meets us not far from the entrance to the Welland Canal at Port Weller, so named for the lead engineer in building of the first iteration of the Welland Canal.

Below lock W1,  Alouette Spirit tied at a dock.  The mover is Wilf Seymour, a Canadian-flagged former Moran-owned Texas-built tug I’ve met on most trips here since 2015. I’ve seen her on locations between Lake Huron and the St Lawrence just up from Quebec City.   Click here to see her being loaded with ingots.

 ITB Presque Isle  occupied the Port Weller Dry Docks.

So that you can get a sense of how ungainly this ITB looks out of the notch, I’m sharing this photo thanks to Jeff Thoreson of Erie Shipping News.  Usually she’s in the notch and considered a 1000-footer.

Exiting lock W1 was China-built  Algoma Mariner, whose bow shows the effect of operating in ice.

Notice how narrow the Welland is here, with less than 100′ between Grande Mariner and Algoma Mariner.

For more info on the Welland, click here.

I drove through Port Colborne–at the 571′ level of Lake Erie–a few years ago, but seeing the names of the shops here, I’d love to stop by and wander.  I’m not fanatical about pies, but Jay the Pie Guy sounds too tasty to pass up.  Check him out on FB.

Four months ago, I posted photos from Clayton NY on the dead ship tow of the former traversier aka ferry Camille Marcoux.  Here’s what she looks like now after the

 

skilled carving tools of the workers at Marine Recycling Corp in  Port Colborne.

See the scrapping in the upper right side of the photo, here the pilot steps off and we enter Lake Erie, turning to port for Buffalo.

After an hour-and-a-half run, the grain elevators of Buffalo welcome us. Seeing the blue G, I can already imagine the smell of the Cheerios plant.

Near the entrance to the Buffalo River, I spot NYPA’s Joncaire II tied up near the merry-go-round.  I’d love to see her at work managing the ice boom.  I don’t see Daniel on the bow, but I believe the full name is Daniel Joncaire II.  ??

Over in Silo City, two older Great Lakes tugs–Washington and Vermont— await between jobs.  Of course, they still work.  The combined age of those two tug is 195 years.  YEARS!!

Silo City may not sound all that exciting, especially for folks who know farms, but this complex made Buffalo and forged a link with another boom city . . . . the six boros of NYC.  I like the quote here that it was grain elevators and the nexus of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal that led Buffalo to surpass London, Rotterdam, and Crimea as then the #1 grain handling port in the world.  I also recently learned about the influence the grain elevator form had on modern architecture a la Gropius. 

Check out this Gropius design.

A few years ago, I’d never consider exploring Buffalo, and I have so many other photos that I might revisit the city on tugster, but for now, I suggest you go there too and

stop at Buffalo Harbor Museum, Pierce Arrow Museum, and Swannie’s, for starters.  I started from Erie Basin and walked to all of these in the same day.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Random Tugs 179

Katanni and

Sawyer I, these photos I took in September along the Saint Lawrence.

I took the next photos in October.  Evans McKeil was built in Panama in 1936!   The cement barge she’s paired with–Metis— was built as a ship in 1956 and converted to a barge in 1991.

Wilf Seymour was built in 1961 in Port Arthur TX.  I’ve always only seen her paired with Alouette Spirit.  Here she’s heading upbound into the Beauharnois Lock.   The digital readout (-0.5) indicates she’s using the Cavotec automated mooring system instead of lines and line handlers.

Moving forward to Troy NY, I don’t think the name of this tug is D. A. Collins,   

but I know these are Benjamin Elliot, Lucy H, and 8th Sea.

Miss Gill waited alongside some scows at the booming port of Coeymans.

And the big sibling Vane 5000 hp Chesapeake heads upriver with Doubleskin 509A.

And one more autumnal shot with yellows, browns, grays, and various shades of red, and a busy Doris Moran and Adelaide.

Will Van Dorp took all these photos.

 

Commercial Tugs in NYS Canals

So let’s start with June 2014 at the north end of the Oswego Canal . . . that’s Kathy Lynn way in the distance to the left.

Port of Oswego also sees its share of international tugs . . . Wilf Seymour (ex-M. Moran) here with the multifunctional barge Alouette Spirit is Canadian.

That diagonally mounted grate on the bow of the barge is a ramp to allow RORO use.

Wm. Donnelly is . . .

a D. A. Collins tug, and  . . .

also working on the Amsterdam dam (!) is an Arundel Marine tug called Sarah Leanne.

Collamore . . . I can find nothing about.

Here northbound on the Hudson while I was behind a dirty window . . . that may be HR Bass (scroll through) passing Peebles Island.

And for the last photo today, enjoy another of Margot, here housedown as she leaves Lock 19 eastbound.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s thrilled to be back where his upstate roots are.