Thanks to Brian Wroblewski

Last winter I planned a trip along the southern shore of Lake Erie, hoping to catch photos of lakers in ice.  The results were here, a week after ice out, a schedule that depended on someone else’s time off.  It was a fun trip, but the photos I hoped for eluded me.  Well, Brian caught them in the photos below.  GL New York (1913) and Rhode Island (1930) are frozen in, and Oberstar is so deep in hibernation that her shutters are pulled down.

 

Between the stern of Oberstar and the bow of Presque Ile in the distance, that’s Dorothy Ann, half the ATB with . . .

barge Pathfinder, launched in 1953 as the ore boat J. L. Mauthe.  The stern of the newly-renamed barge Maumee clearly shows the deep notch.  Maumee also started life as a 1953-launched ore boat.

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Tug Victory, which worked in salt water for her first 25 years,  is laid up here between her barge Maumee, until recently called James L. Kuber, and J. S. St John.

Many thanks to Brian for letting me share these photos on tugster.

 

 

Sixth Boro Spring Signs 2018

Call it a sea change.  The air warms up although the water is still very cold.

Sea Lion does what it has all winter, but what’s different is the reappearance of non-workboats.  Sea Lion has some history on this blog.

Evening Light moves north in anticipation of summer.

Pleasure boats move into an environment that has been consistently about work throughout the winter.

Mischief passes New Champion and Stephen Dann, which brought in highway ramp sections.  Would these sections be for the Bayonne, the Tappan Zee, or another?

Small party boats

head out to catch what spring fish migrate in. Should there be a Really Never Snuff Express?

Bigger party boats appear as well.

Fast open boats and

slower enclosed cruisers, of all sorts

pass Atlantic Salvor as it returns from another dredge spoils run.

Norwegian Escape has smaller boats

accompany it on its way into the Narrows and the harbor.  If my numbers are correct, Escape has capacity for 5999 souls, including crew, which is more than the population of Taos, Marfa, and well more than the town where I grew up.

I’ve not seen many of these smaller boats since early last fall, and on a warm Sunday, they start to reappear.  Drive safe; work safe.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, whose other posts about small craft can be read here.

 

A to P 8: OSVs

Any guesses on the ID of the building with the massive curve?  Answer at the end of the post.

A lot of Offshore Supply Vessels (OSVs) anchored off Amador.  By appearance, I’d wager a vessel like D. Oceano once worked in the Gulf of Mexico.  OSVs “sold foreign” can likely be found in numbers in places elsewhere in the Caribbean and Gulf of Guinea.  How about the Caspian?

These have the same basic design.   Of these, all I can identify is the 1982 Diamond Sea, whose previous names were Coastal Moon and Geri Tide.  Their purpose is likely to transport large floating fenders.

Big Dolphin provides confirmation of the design/build:  this site says she comes from Thoma-Sea in Lockport LA in 1982, although it’s my sense that Thoma-Sea didn’t exist yet at that time.  Her previous names are Patricia Bruce, Grady Allen, Maple River, Viveros V, and Great Darien.

It’s Panama Responder I (1954?) in the middle and –the blue North Sea trawler conversion to the right–Gamboa Express.

Above to the left and below . . . I don’t know.  Might she be used to collect slops? Notice Gamboa Express to the right.  I could do a post on her.

Meyers Gustav here is way at the limits of my zoom.  Built 1963 in Port Arthur TX, she has previously sailed under the names Lafayette, Beverly B, and Galapagos.

Bocas Mariner (1981 and ex-Rebel Brio and Gulf Fleet No. 303) and Burica Mariner (1982 and ex-Arcemont Tide) also have that US Gulf  look.

 

Orion XX,  with Algab in the background, appears to be an oil pollution vessel now, but her life began as YOG-77 built in Bremerton WA in 1945.  Since then, she’s also been Bob’s Boat and Northern Orion.  She was once a twin of a vessel that ended up in the “Graves of Arthur Kill.”   See other YOGs here.

Victory is definitely NOT an OSV, but she was anchored near us.

Schlep is all I can identify here, and I include her here because of the Yokohamas alongside.

The photo below I took in early December 2014, Intl Defender near LaRose, LA, along the Lafourche.  So besides Panama, where has the excess OSV capacity gone off to, particularly after the Gulf oil slowdown?  Here’s a post I did back then.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

And that curved building . . . who is it associated with?  Answer here.

Finally, I have a request:  Show me your seat.  What I mean is this:  I’d like to do a post on captain’s and/or pilot’s chairs.  I’m looking for the luxurious all the way to decrepit or basic.  Email me a photo of the chair and identify the vessel.  I appreciate it.

12 Lakers b

Are you still making calendars?  Here’s another set of 12 candidates, if my count is right.

January could be American Integrity, a product of Sturgeon Bay, WI, 1000′ loa x 105′ and when loaded and photographed from this angle, she looks impossibly long.  Her size keeps her confined to the four upper lakes, being way too large for the Welland Canal.

Since these are two of the same vessel, one could be the inset.  This shot of American Integrity discharging coal at a power plant in East China, MI, seems to shrink her.

Radcliffe R. Lattimer has truly been around since her launch in mid-1978.  Besides the usual plethora of Great Lakes ports, she’s worked between Canada and the Caribbean, been taken on a five-month tow to China for a new forebody, and made trips on the lower Mississippi and Hudson.  I took this photo just south of Port Huron.

Here Arthur M. Anderson waits to load at the docks in Duluth.  I’d love to hear an estimate of tons of bulk cargo she’s transported since her launch in 1952.  For many, Anderson will forever be remembered as the last vessel to be in contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald in November 1975.

Here’s Whitefish Bay upstream from Montreal.  Click here to see her and fleet mate Baie Comeau christened side by side at the Chengxi Shipyard in Jianyin, China, in November 2012.

Cedarglen is another laker that has seen major design changes in its superstructure, having first launched in 1959 in Germany with the bridge midships.  She has the same bridge.  Down bound here near Ogdensburg NY, she’s worked on the Great Lakes since 1979.

Walter J.  McCarthy Jr., here down bound on Lake Superior,  is another of the thirteen 1000′ boats working the upper four lakes.

Kaye E. Barker has been working since 1952, here in Lake St. Clair down bound.  That’s the tall parts of Detroit in the distance.

Algoma Integrity was launched in 2009 as Gypsum Integrity.

Cason J. Callaway is another 1952 ship, here discharging cargo in Detroit.

Algoway was launched 1977.  Will she be there for the 2018 season?

So from this angle you might think this too will be a laker . . . ., right?

She once was of the same class as Callaway and Anderson above, but .. . between end of the 2007 season and the beginning of the 2008, she was converted to a barge and married to the tug Victory.

Victory was built in 1980.

And to close out the mosaic that is the December page on our hypothetical Lake 2 calendar, it’s a close up of Victory at the elevator in Maumee OH.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who believes that the number of single hulled lakers will decrease as ATB design becomes predominant.

 

Freshwater Tugs 7

Contining here, I am, from Detroit to Cleveland.

Demolen at the USACE dock near the Rouge,

Stormont pushing the ferry barge

in the direction of RenCen,

Victory moving James L. Kuber

past Fighting Island, and

Leonard M remakes the tow

that’s heaped up with coal,

and I get to watch it all.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.