Océan Blue 8

Here was “7” and 1 through 6.

This post will run photos from twilight to twilight…

Above and below, prosaically Service Boat No. 1 is doing pilot exchange duty.  She’s not large or particularly powerful or new, but in twilight before dawn she looked and sounded formidable.

Ocean Basques, here approaching the Laviolette Bridge, is a solid 200 miles upstream of the islands with the same namesake.

Ocean Basques was built in Collingwood ON, as was Ocean Sept-Isles.

Quite unique and speedy, Ocean Catatug 1 raced downstream.

As afternoon falls, Ocean Bertrand Jeansonne follows Ocean Henry Bain out of the homeport basin.

That’s the marine traffic control tower on the other side in Levis QC.

Returning to another twilight shot, here’s Ocean Henry Bain pushing a deep barge down bound.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Océan Blue 6

A 4300 hp product of a Collingwood ON shipyard no longer there . . . it’s Océan Basques.

Here’s a better profile, taken a second earlier.  Basques provides ship assists in the port of Trois-Rivieres, QC.  

Docked nearby in the same port, it’s Océan Bravo, slightly older and larger though less horsepower,  a product of Quebec’s  Davie Shipbuilding. 

After Bravo, you’d expect and Charlie . . . and there’s most of the other names of the military alphabet up to Lima in the Ocean fleet. Charlie here is roughly a twin in size and power–though not styling–to Bravo.

Duga is based in the port of Sorel-Tracy, and is a 1977 product of the Trondheim Fjord of Norway.

Staying with the Océan fleet in the quite busy out of Sorel-Tracy, here’s Pilote 2000 stemming between

Leopard Moon and

Jebsens’ Sharpnes.

Downstream to Quebec City, here’s Océan Guide returning from a pilot run to Helena G and

exchanging pilots on Dara Desgagnes.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who was not surprised to find that Canada has more miles of coastline than any other country on the planet.

And here’s an unrelated research question sent along by frequent contributor here, Jan van der Doe, and referring to the photo below taken in rotterdam in 1954.  Question is:  What identification might be provided by the white numbers “3793” visible in the lower right on the dark hull of the vessel just forward of the burning Tanga?  Note the Dutch flag on the stern of the vessel so marked.