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Hot to sweet . . . could have been a title too.
I hope obscure titles are not too off-putting, but I just realized that in late August 2019, I encountered Calusa Coast on the Cuyahoga while she was still on her contract to push liquid asphalt around the Inland Seas, aka the Great Lakes. To be liquid, asphalt needs to be over 250 degrees F, so that assist tug Cleveland here is close to some very hot liquid, safely enclosed in steel barge Delaware.
Two years ago, Calusa Coast and barge Delaware were nearing their contract.
Nine months ago, my friend Jack Ronalds caught the unit newly in salt water at the Strait of Canso. Earlier this week, I caught this unit, Calusa Coast pushing
sugar barge (technically, dry bulk barge) Jonathan up from coastal Florida to Yonkers.
That structure midships on Jonathan is a hatch crane.
As of this morning, they are still discharging at ASR, the sugar refinery. I’ve caught Jonathan and Sugar Express there on other occasions.
Come to think of it . . . Yonkers must be hot and sweet there now.
All photos, WVD.
All photos here thanks to Tim Powell. What I noticed is that these all have a tugboat and a truck; hence . . . trugster. And the last photo here has yet another mode of land transport.
Note the stepvan on the bank?
A. E. Clifford dates from 1947. Click here for previous tugster fish tug posts. Off Clifford‘s stern, that’s Forney, which you’ve seen before here. And off Forney‘s starboard is a Ford pickup. The photos above and below Tim took in Superior WI, next to Duluth.
So here’s the delivery truck for B & M Delivery, a service of B & M Boat Store. Neil N. Diehl has an esteemed namesake.
Need grub along this section of the Mississippi? Just fill out the grocery form. Since this is an inland waterway with locks, you can figure out where the best place for the delivery is. B & M is at mile marker 403 upper Mississippi River. If the delivery truck needs need info about the boat, Dick’s towboat gallery is on the same site.
And if the towboat can’t make it to shore, the truck can tow a launch.
Rigger looks like it could be a pilot boat or a small tug like Augie, but I have no further info. Note the locomotive in the background among the grain silos?
Many thanks to Tim Powell for all these photos. And if you see a tugboat juxtaposed with a truck or train, we can make a “trugster 2” post.
I’m hoping to drive out to the Mississippi River watershed a bit later this year.
By the way, I just checked, and this is tugster post 4959, which means in 40 posts or so from now, a big milestone passes. Hmm . . .
I took these photos back in early August 2019 in the village where I learned to swim . . . Sodus Point. When I asked a few people about it, I heard that it was a wreck, it was done . . . etc.
The small schooner clearly had been loved at one time.
Last week I learned the good news that the lift had loaded it onto a trailer to take it to a yard for . . .
restoration! So I finally googled it, which I’d not thought to do before, and lo and behold . . . it has pedigree! It was designed by William H. Hand, and launched in Rocky River OH in 1918. The S. S. S. means “Sea Scout Ship.” Thirty years ago, it had been trucked to Rivendell Marine, in Monument Beach MA in 1991.
All photos, WVD, and story to be continued.
Photo and discussion below can be found on FB, John Kucko Digital . . . December 21, 2020. By the way, John Kucko is a legend up in western and central NYS. Tugboat in the background is Donald Sea.
Since this post features a sailing post, let me share what I’ve been watching, based on a suggestion of a reader from South Africa.
First a trip from the Falklands to Capetown on an impressive boat this past summer.
Then I learned the name of the boat and the concept developer, Skip Novak. Here‘s more Skip Novak.
Then I learned of his latest project . . . 2020 into 2021, appropriate for these days.
Thx, Colin. This is good winter fare.
Time gets away from me quite a lot. Notwithstanding the 50-degree temperatures and bursting blooms, it certainly does not feel like it, we’re several days into spring, and I’d intended this as my last winter’s day post, following up on another post from this Great Lakes mariner . . . maybe I should say great Great Lakes mariner. No matter, since I’m social distancing from my tugster editor these days.
From Sturgeon Bay, it’s Meredith Ashton and Fischer Hayden. Meredith Ashton once worked in the sixth boro as Specialist,not Specialist II.
From Milwaukee . . . it’s Neeskay, and
from Port Huron, it’s Manitou, which also had a New York chapter.
See the white stuff above?
Anyhow, many thanks to the captain Nemo of the inland seas.
I was doing maintenance in the photo archives yesterday and took a second look at some photos from Damen and from Picton Terminals. Since I know that Sheri Lynn S (SLS) arrived in Canada in Montreal in late fall, this has to be a photo of it being loaded onto the ship in Shanghai after traveling via the Yangtze from the shipyard in Changde, Hunan in China. Given that, the tugs in the background could now be scattered all over the world.
This photo shows the boat being secured to the deck,again in Shanghai.
After the ocean voyage between the photo above, SLS arrives in a port at the end of her voyage, and that port has to be
Montreal, given the blue tugboat here, Ocean Georgie Bain.
And now for a few photos from her current habitat on the NE corner of Lake Ontario, SLS breaks ice, sometimes . . .
enabling the cement ship to dock.
In fact, this time of year, ice breaking is her main activity.
Many thanks to Damen and Picton Terminals for these photos.
A friend who works on the Great Lakes sent me these next two photos recently. When I saw Anglian Lady in the foreground, my first thought was that I’d seen her myself but she looked somehow different. More on that later.
Anglian Lady was Thornycraft built and launched in Southampton UK as Hamtun, a 132′ x 31′ steam tug that operated for the company now known as Red Funnel. From there, it was sold to interests in Belgium and then back in England before being purchased by Purvis Marine of Sault Ste. Marie.
But the tugboat I recalled was not Anglian Lady. It was another distinctive tug by Purvis Marine below.
I was thrilled back in September 2017 when I got out in front of it here. Location? Some clues are the structures beyond the bow and the stern of this tug.
Avenger IV is the tug I recalled. She’s from Cochrane 1962, a former steam tug, 120′ x 30′.
The location? This is a dozen miles east of the Mackinac Bridge.
The PML website can be found here.
Many thanks to the Great Lakes mariner for the first two photos and for getting me to have a second look at Purvis Marine.
And the G-tugs in the background of the top photo likely include Minnesota and North Dakota.
Stewart calls this “museum tugs of the Great Lakes.”
“We start in Lake Superior, specifically Two Harbors, with Edna G., built in 1896 and assisted freighters for 80 years. [You can find previous appearances of this tug on this blog here. ]
Next we go to Sturgeon Bay with John Purves. She was built in 1919 [at Beth Steel in Elizabeth NJ, I might add] and during World War 2 found herself armed with machine guns on her deck and out in Alaska protecting the shipping channels….
A short ways away in Kewaunee is our next tug, Ludington. She was also a war veteran. Originally built as LT-4 in 1943, she helped moved barges to Normandy on D-Day.
All the way down in Lake Erie, at the bow of the museum freighter Col. James M. Schoonmaker, is our next tug, Ohio. She was built in 1903 as a fireboat, and stayed this way until she was bought in 1948 by the Great Lakes Towing Company, and converted into a tug. She served this job until 2015, and in 2018 was converted and restored with the purpose of being a museum ship.
Finally, we end in Lake Ontario in Oswego New York, where yet another war veteran has retired. This tug is USAT LT-5, which is a sister ship of Ludington. [In fact, Ludington is hull# 297, and Nash is hull# 298, from Jakobson in Oyster Bay NY.] She was launched in 1943, had 50 caliber machine guns on her deck, and also helped haul barges to Normandy on D-Day. [Her dimensions are 114′ x 25′ x 14′. And on June 9, 1944, her Norwegian crew shot down a German fighter aircraft.]
Thank you for reading this post. All pictures from museumships.us, which is remembering history one ship at a time.”
Thank much, Stewart.
And I could leave well done alone, but this is an opportunity to mention one more . . . Urger. Here she is less than 10 miles from Lake Ontario, pulled over above lock O-3 by a state employee on a mission. He wanted to look the 1901 tug over and lamented his son wasn’t there to get the tour with him. Hats off, officer. The info on museumships here is, unfortunately, three years out of date.
June 2014
And why not another . . . Urger here in 2018 alongside The Chancellor.
Last two photos,WVD.
Almost exactly a year ago, I did a saltwater ice post here, and I’ve done related ones here. So since the article I wrote last year about a huge ore-carrying Great Lakes ATB is out and you can read it here, how about some photos that didn’t make it into the publication.
Above and below, ATB Clyde S Van Enkevort and Erie Trader find themselves a day and a night’s steaming north from Detroit, nearly at the north end of Lake Huron, where the cold air is creating sea smoke.
ATB Olive L. Moore and Menominee (I’d better be right or I’ll hear about it.) wait on the west side of DeTour Reef Light. Mackinac is not quite 50 miles to the west.
At Detour Passage, we depart Lake Huron and enter the St. Marys River. Sault Ste Marie and Lake Superior are 75 miles up this river. Ice forms more quickly on the shallower water.
Off the stern we look back at Lake Huron.
Crew prepare the landing gear. Landing gear, you say? Hold that question, I say.
On a turn, we meet CSL Assiniboine.
I think we are envied. Unlike the two previous years, so far this 2020 winter . . . ice is “weak.”
Near Sault Ste Marie, we meet Wilfred Sykes, and the Sugar Island ferry crosses our bow, Sykes‘ stern.
WTGB-101 Katmai Bay is busy assisting in keeping the river open.
Recall I mentioned landing gear? . . . technically it’s a landing boom, a quick way to get crew onto the lock to assist with the “locking through.” In the earlier photo, ice was being removed from boom and its line, so that the line would run free but controlled to get the crew safely down the 20 feet or so to the chamber wall.
See the crew walking alongside the barge? Out ahead, that’s a bay of Lake Superior.
As we head across that bay and ultimately into Superior, we pass Kaye E. Barker, who’s heading downstream for the Soo (or Sault) locks.
All photos by WVD, who’ll post more photos of the trip soon. And I’d give a big shout-out to the captain and crew of Clyde for their hospitality and help with the article.
I’m still looking for someone who might get a photo of that exotic ship coming into the sixth boro early this month. But I also still don’t have a firm ETA for that vessel, Decisive.
I’ll start with a photo I took in Toronto in September. I could read that it was called Coastal Titan, but I thought it was a floating dry dock confined to Toronto. Then in October I saw a photo Marc had taken in July downstream of Montreal, showing
… the same Coastal Titan, pushed by what seemed an intriguingly-named but undersized Salvage Monarch. And it’s not until today that I search the history of this unusual vessel. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it was once a US-flagged heavy lift vessel named John Henry. Click here for more of the history of this 1978 heavy lift ship and sister–Paul Bunyan–built by Peterson Builders in Sturgeon Bay WI. Coastal Titan is the survivor story here.
I believe Paul Bunyan, then James McHenry, was scrapped in 2015; for a photo, see page 8 here.
Marc also caught Eda (ex-Cedarglen) on her way to be scrapped at Aliaga, with Ocean Echo II on stern and
VB Hispania (2011 and Mangalia, Romania) on the bow.
Click here for previous photos by Marc, to whom I’m grateful for these photos that led me to the intriguing story of Coastal Titan.
Daylight hours are getting very short, reiterating summer 2019 is no more, but I’ve still got photos left from gallivants of warmer and brighter days this year, like this one of a
downbound Thunder Bay passing Rock Island Light, once legitimately tended by an erstwhile pirate William Johnston.
Later as we continued towards Lake Onrario, we followed Atlantic Huron, an ore boat we seem to have encountered frequently this season, here leaving Carleton Island to port and
Wolfe to starboard.
Soon after passing Tibbetts Point Light, we entered the NE corner of
Ontario. By the way, the hostel beds previously available at Tibbetts Light will soon be no more.
And as Atlantic Huron disappeared in the distance, we passed John D. Leitch,
passing the light at Charity Shoal, a light over an impact crater.
I love that steering pole.
Then Leitch entered the funnel, leaving Wolfe Island to port and downbound waters become the Saint Lawrence.
All photos from a few warmer months back by Will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
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