LL2 Up and Down the Soo

Let’s start with Sugar Islander II moving school kids and commuters across from the Island to the US Soo.

The 1951 Empire State was tied up near those kayaks.

Not far away was Superior Pilot. 

Maybe someone can help out with more info on Soo Marine Supply’s 60′.

Iowa and Wyoming wait for the next job.  Between them, they have 202 years of work, with Iowa dating from 1915.

Stephan M. Asher has worked since 1954.

Owen M. Frederick and Cheraw are USACE boats.

Into the McArthur lock we go. 

In the distance Federal Yukina discharged some dry bulk material, ore maybe. 

discharge a dry bulk material.

Queen of the lakes Paul has started the climb into Lake Superior.

Norgoma is still in limbo. 

The 1943 Mississagi is disappearing piece by piece. She last appeared intact on this blog here. 

This is my first time to post a photo of the 1976 Block.

Buckthorn heads up into Superior.

 

It’s active season on the Lakes, and Edgar B. Speer and all the others shuttle their contribution to the millions of tons of cargo per year.

Is she the only laker with this design of self-unloader?

Nokomis takes sightseers through the McArthur. 

And someone’s taking a break from the galley of Walter J, 

as they head for Superior.

All photos, any errors, WVD.

 

Labor Days Past

Yesterday, Labor Day, I took no photos, except one of a wood sign carving project in progress.

It turns out . . .  Labor Day 2020 I took no photos either;  these were sent to me though by Josh Watts, and embarrassingly, I’ve not posted them until now.  Sometimes I get into a groove and lose track of things. These are two new generation NYS Canals tugs and a floating gradall, maintaining canal depth.  It’s a great shot.

Here’s anorther from that date and that area of the west-of-Rochester portion of the canal, Adams Basin. The vantage point is a house barge from Erie Canal Adventures.

Labor Day 2019 I had the good fortune to be laboring, and taking photos, and doing that in Cleveland.  Self-unloading freighter Algoma Buffalo was winding its way down the Cuyahoga

with assistance from  two tugs, Cleveland and Iowa, launched 2017 and 1915 respectively!! You caught that 102-year difference in age, right!  Also, that waterway used simultaneously for commerce and recreation . . . that’s the Cuyahoga, you know, the one that caught fire a number of times a half century ago.  That is a story of concerted problem-solving, concerted means people with different ideas solving problems together.

Labor Day 2018 I was exploring Chicago and saw this massive Muddy Waters mural.

Just beyond this navigation aid, you turn to port and enter the federal lock that leads to the Chicago River.

Labor Day 2017 I was in Manitowoc.  Then and many other times I’ve seen and wondered about Halten, a 1966 Swedish Coast Guard vessel (maybe not since painted-over raised letters on the stern say Oslo)  that appears to be a yacht that might not move much.  Maybe it just moves when I’ve not been paying attention.

Avenger IV passed us on Lake Michigan, where lots of fishing was happening from small boats.

Labor Day 2016 I had just left Ogdensburg downbound, and was passing the Canadian port of Johnstown, where the 1943 freighter Mississagi

was discharging cargo,

and a half hour later, we were still looking back at Johnstown in the beauty of the morning colors.

I could go farther back but won’t now.  I’ve no idea why I’ve not taken any photos the past two Labor Days.  September 5, 2022,  I need to get back to work. Thanks to Josh for the first two photos;  all others, WVD.

Looking ahead, just a reminder that after the TugBoat RoundUp, I’ll be road foto tripping a lot, and that might be no posts some days.

2020 Calendar September

If you ordered a calendar last year, you might recall that I promised that I’d “extend” the photo set each month.  Well, here’s September, following all the other months.  Call this . . . “how Cleveland turned a toxic industrial sewer into a recreation area, while maintaining industrial activity.”  Recall while looking at these photos that THIS is the Cuyahoga, the object of shame back when I was a teenager, the river on all East Coast folks’ minds when the first Earth Day protest happened.  WestCoasters had the Santa Barbara oil spill uppermost in mind.  It took vision and –see the article– ongoing effort.

If you’ve never visited Cleveland, you’ll thank yourself for doing so.  If you’ve never looked at Cleveland from the perspective of the Cuyahoga, you can do it right here thanks to the miracle of Google maps . . .  it winds and winds and a few miles up, there’s still a lot of industry, so bulk carriers like Algoma Buffalo need to get up there, and getting there requires the assistance of tugs to negotiate all the turns.

Note all the recreation in boats happening all around this Algoma Buffalo, a 1978 Sturgeon Bay WI build, 24,300 tons cargo capacity (convert that to dump trucks), 634′ x 68′ and powered by 7200 hp.  It was flagged US until the 2018 season.  Note the “whitewater” from the portside emanating from the thruster tunnel.

People are enjoying the summer sun, oblivious some of them to the ship.

Kayakers and SUPers carry on.

Now what’s happening amidst all these folks enjoying the beautiful Cuyahoga is that Algoma  Buffalo will exit the river as far as that lift bridge and then be assisted moving astern into the old Cuyahoga.

Also, keep in mind that tug Cleveland was launched in 2017, and Iowa in 1915.  Yes . . . the two tugs assisting the laker are 102 years apart in age!  The captain of Cleveland might be the great-grandson of the original captain of Iowa.  Also, both tugs were built right on this river.  Deckhands appear calm here while directing the swarm away from danger.

And . . . I said swarm!

Here’s the point where forward motion stops, and Iowa assumes the lead, tugging the ship into the Old River.

Also, if you’re thinking to take a drive to Cleveland, keep in mind that I took all these photos from land, not from a boat.  People along the waterway there can have a beer or lunch or tea while enjoying a front row seat to all this  . . . drama. Set your GPS to the Greater Cleveland aquarium, a good aquarium with a huge parking lot right by the riuver.

I’m being redundant now, but this is the Cuyahoga a half century from the time it caught fire and people who didn’t work on it shunned it.

 

Again, the ship is backing up the Old River, towed

amidst all the fun-seekers on the water

around all the twists and bends by this antique but state-enough-of-the-art 1915 tugboat.  Just up around that bend is the Great Lakes Shipyard.

Cuyahoga!

Cuyahoga!  This is the only photo I took not from terra firma.

 

 

Cleveland needs a song about the rebirth of the river.  Maybe there is one I just don’t know about.

All photos, WVD, who’d go back to Cleveland in a heartbeat.  If you’ve not been, you owe to yourself to go there on a sunny summer day, and there aren’t many of those left for this year.

For other photos of Cleveland, try this one from February. For posts in Cleveland of Buffalo as a US flagged vessel, click here and here.

 

 

MB 2019 E

I’m posting from Montreal, the M in the series title MB.  So I’ve  some catching-up to do.

Let’s start in a waterway where deckhands have an additional task, one involving hand signals.

I commend the deckhands for their polite signals given the crowding.

All proceeds with minimal horn blasts and absence of injury.

 

Some hand signaling has to be repeated though. Have you guessed the town, the waterway?

It’s Cleveland of course with its much-loved Cuyahoga.

 

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

 

Port of Cleveland OH

To repeat what I said yesterday, this was supposed to be a visit to get photos of tugs and ships in ice.  The Cuyahoga may be quite cold, but no ice . . . .

This shot is taken from the Carter Road Bridge looking toward Collision Bend and the bug venues.

Under the Rte 2 Bridge, Alpena awaits her 76th season!  She makes me feel young!

In resplendent light last summer late, I caught her heading northbound mid-Lake Huron.

Again, I imagined ice;  two weeks earlier and I likely would have seen it.

The yellow of the water makes more vivid the yellow of her hull.

Some crew is maintaining boiler pressure.

And when the season begins, Alpena will back out of this dock on the old river, turn to port and head back to work for her 76th season.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who looks forward to seeing her steaming on the Lakes again this summer.

Previous Cleveland posts on tugster include this and this with laker Buffalo,  and this with–among other things–Iowa towing Sea Eagle II up the Cuyahoga.   There are others also if you just use the search window.

 

Freshwater Tugs 8

I’m back near the sixth boro now and have photos for at least through early October, at which time I leave on another gallivant.

So here’s step one in catching up.  Up the meandering Cuyahoga, here are Iowa (1915) and Oklahoma (1913);  these boats were built to work and last.

 

The vintage GL tugs may just be replaced for the next century by this design:  Cleveland, launched less than six months ago . . . 2017.

Click here for a recent article on Cleveland.

Cleveland in this series was doing assist for 610′ x 78′ sand barge Ashtabula powered by 142′ tug Defiance. 

Here’s Elizabeth Anna in the Lake Erie port on Erie PA.

Elizabeth Anna (ex-Bear) last appeared on this blog here.

In the entrance to the old Buffalo River, here’s Daniel Joncaire II, a NYPA tug

launched in late 2015 by Great Lakes Shipyard in Cleveland. NYPA uses the tug for ice boom installations near its hydropower units on the Niagara River. I’m curious now about Niagara Queen II and William H. Latham. 

I’ve always had misgivings about my series title “freshwater tugs” and here’s a good illustration why:  Calusa Coast–here with Kirby barge Delaware–was until a few years ago a regular in the saltwater and brackish , in and out of the sixth boro.   Here she is in the Niagara River headed for Black Rock.

Beyond her stern here is the combination Buffalo Intake Crib Lighthouse. 

And to close out today’s post, it’s Sarah Andrie, another tug that’s made the transition from saltwater to fresh . . . the former Caribe Service.

She’s making her way here upstream into Lake Erie from the Welland Canal.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Freshwater Tugs 3

Click here for previous posts in this series.  I add these now in response to a reader who says  . . .”but we have ship assist and harbor tugs in the Great Lakes as well.”  And the most iconic of those are the GL tugs, an old fleet that has been not only maintained but also updated.

Here are ones I’ve photographed this month.  Vermont dates from 1914 and Washington from 1925, and they are still on the duty roster.

These first two photos were taken in Buffalo, said to once have been the 3rd busiest port in the world.

In the port of Cleveland, much remediated from when the river burned most conspicuously,

Iowa, dating from 1915, towed Sea Eagle II up river.

 

Nebraska, 1929, was coming through a very busy railroad bridge here on the Maumee in Toledo.

Mississippi dates from 1916.

Idaho, 1931 and  the last of this series to be built, was behind this fence in Detroit on the Rouge River.

In previous years, I’ve posted many times about a GL tug stranded in the Erie Canal.

Not all the GL tugs have this profile.  For example there are some converted YTBs like Erie and Huron.  And recently, tugs that were previously only in saltwater have made their ways to the Inland Seas.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

 

Go West Leg 9

Here’s the reference map;  leg 9 took us into Cleveland, where Federal Maas is in port.

William C. Gaynor was anchored on the west side of the Cuyahoga.

Eagle pushed a deck barge outbound.

A small boat analyzed the river, and

Iowa went by light.

A visit to William G. Mather was compulsory, of course.

I noticed where her anchor was cast.

And finally, Iowa towed in Alberta-registered Sea Eagle II moving St. Mary’s Cement II.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who has since moved on to leg 10.