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Another quick one . . . starting with Toronto in the rear view.
Gaia Desgagnes passes as we wait outside the entrance the the Welland.
Once Spartan departs lock 1,
we head in.
Burch Nash waits outside Heddle Shipyard on the Canal.
Tim S Dool takes the inside wall to line up on lock 3.
At Port Colborne, CSL Tadoussac heads toward lock 8.
All photos, any errors, WVD, who has more photos but no more time.
The rosy fingers of dawn paint the eastern sky, as we
prepare to meet the pilot boat off Port Weller, which means Lake Ontario is nearly behind us. The pilot has just departed Federal Yukina via Mrs C, and
and readies to join us.
Summertime is the repair season for icebreakers like CCGS Pierre Radisson, named for the renegade French fur trapper.
Behold the immense entrance to the double flight at Welland lock 4.
A crewman on Tim S. Dool employs and time-tested communication device, and it actually works well.
Saginaw discharges coal.
CSL Welland meets us.
Just before climbing W-8, we pass Federal Seto, Happy Rover, and wait for
Atlantic Huron is tied up just north of the scrapyard . . . but that’s for tomorrow’s post.
All photos in the Welland Canal by Will Van Dorp, who posts about four days behind these days since wifi is not always available. When this post appears today, we are approaching the south end of Lake Huron.
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.
What I noticed first about Johanna G is
the cranes.
Never have I seen cranes that stripped of recent paint. Maybe rust-busting is happening as we speak, but
new coating of paint –IMHO– should be applied soon. See a photo of her possibly new and with blue/gray cranes here.
As of this posting,
she’s already headed into the Atlantic . . . Gibraltar bound I believe.
The zoom lens foreshortens the distances here; there was adequate time between Johanna G clearing the bridge and the lowering of the span. There’s no room for a repeat of the Windoc incident.
This photo clearly shows what “seawaymax” means.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who noticed that the other photographer working in proximity to me was stopped shooting for a while to wave the Portuguese flag, not the Madeiran.
This is a reminder also of the NYS Canal Conference happening on Staten Island next week. I will show Graves of Arthur Kill and speak on a panel about the hidden places of the sixth boro.
I’d first assume this was a small tanker, but I was wrong.
Here’s the answer to cargo: dry bulk cement. In previous lifetimes, it had carried grain as well.
A hint of ghostwriting midships and to the right of “SPIRIT” shows another name or several names—Gagliarda and Ardita—were there earlier.
Arriving soon after Mckeil Spirit, was this vessel that I’d seen in Buffalo earlier this summer, wedged in alongside the Lafarge dock.
All this up-high piping suggests cement carrier as well, reminding me of English River, less than a mile away waiting for the scrappers’ torches.
Covered over with paint is the Arklow fleet logo. I never have been able to learn if there’s a technical term for a vessel logo situated on the bow, almost like a harkening back to a figurehead, not unlike the one of the barque Peking.
Now I understand: this is not saying a “new [division] of Algoma; it’s a joint venture between Algoma and Nova, the latter a company from Luxembourg.
Here’s the rest of the fleet. For a photo/article of NACC Argonaut in Oswego, click here.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
At this point in my life, I have a solid list of projects yet to undertake. One of those is scratch-building a ship or boat model. Nothing screams “build me” more than this classic laker style. Enjoy a lot of photos here, curvaceous details to render in a model.
Like the dead ship Paul H. Townsend to the far left, Michipicoten was built in salt water, i.e., Sparrows Point, MD.
If you’re wondering how to pronounce Michipicoten, it’s five syllables with emphasis on PI.
That spar mounted on the bow of “house-forward” lakers is called a steering pole, a guide for the helmsman.
Note the crewman watching the camera from the port light above the “M”?
Half the Lower Lakes Towing fleet has the traditional “house-forward” design: Cuyahoga, Mississagi, Saginaw, Ojibway, and Manitoba.
Note the many large windows on the lee side of the forward superstructure.
The base machinery of the self-unloaders intrigues me.
Note the rounded stern and exposed top of the rudder.
The curves on these boats never quit.
Into Welland lock 8 she goes.
Yup . . . this winter I need to play around with scratch-building a model, and I’ll see if I can make it eight feet long.
All photos and sentiments by Will Van Dorp, who wants to remind you of the NYS Canal Conference happening on Staten Island next week. I will show Graves of Arthur Kill and speak on a panel about the hidden places of the sixth boro.
Port Colborne is the location of MRC, the clean-up business, and right now they’ve a few years–my guess–of projects.
JW Cooper goes in and out several times a day.
But what I wanted to watch was the traffic, up and down bound, like Algoma Buffalo. The previous two times —here and here–I’d seen this vessel predated her sale to Algoma.
Port Colborne is very quiet on a rainy early fall Sunday,
so quiet I could hear the engine room crew commenting about the town’s stillness,
although I’m guessing they spoke louder than otherwise because they had on ear protection.
Algoma Buffalo headed to a turn-off on the Welland and self-unloaded some of her cargo. The 24,300-ton-capacity vessel started her cargo-carrying life late in 1978, i.e., just over 40 years ago.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Besides the title, you might place this photo by the background. It was the focus of this post from about six weeks ago.
I returned to Port Colborne because I wanted to spend more time. All vessels traveling between the upper four Lakes and Ontario/St Lawrence Seaway must traverse here. And an alarm on Bridge No. 21 notifies that traffic will pass in a few minutes from the sound.
In the case of today’s post, however, I was caught between a need to head back across the border and a compulsion to see the vessel about to enter town from Lake Erie.
A schooner.
Leftmost flag on the crosstrees tells the tale.
It’s Lettie G. Howard, homeward bound and beyond. For now, after a summer of sailing and sail training on Lake Erie, Lettie was headed to New York via the Saint Lawrence/Nova Scotia.
As she came into the dock, cold rain starting to fall and hint of winter, the crew tied her up with skill and aplomb to wait for timing.
Fair winds and warm days.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
BFD’s fireboat Cotter is always a high point of a Buffalo visit, a Crescent Shipyard 1900 (!!) Elizabethport NJ product, aka the world’s oldest active fireboat.
Headed west for Port Colborne, we’re treated to beauty over SteelWinds.
As darkness looms, JW Cooper arrives to drop off a pilot.
Imagine my dismay passing MRC after dark,
and head down to Ontario level through the night.
Daybreak brings us to nearly Ontario, and we wait for Wilson T. Cooper to exit the lock W-1.
Port Weller’s shipyard a year ago was occupied by Presque Isle.
We drop off our pilot and
enter Lake Ontario.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
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.
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