Classic Straight-decker CSL TADOUSSAC (Revisited, Again)

Summer per se is over as daytime and evening highs are dropping and before you know it, so will soon the leaves 🍁🍂 and then the white stuff ⛄, YUCK!! While I haven't blogposted in a bit, I have made several trips to the St. Lawrence and am chomping to show what boats I got and their stories told.  Though technically still spring, it was the upbound CSL TADOUSSAC that I really wanted to see on my run to the St. Lawrence on June 15th. After all, who knows when the classic straight-deck self unloader would be around this neck of the woods again. She’s a uniquely designed ship that's being phased away and since her last long term layup a few years back, the furtherest east I had seen her operating, was to pick up a load of clicker at the St. Mary's Cement plant in Bowmanville on Lake Ontario and speaking from experience that's one location where a good zoom lens is needed and a steady hand.

A few days earlier I had missed CSL TADOUSSAC's downbound passage to Quebec City laden with American iron ore which had been transloaded into her hull while tied off to the thousand footer, EDGAR B. SPEERS at Conneault, Ohio on Lake Erie.  No, I did not want to miss her this time but when I checked her whereabouts on the MarineTraffic 📲 app soon after getting up at about 6:30 🕡, the 730' self unloader was anchored ⚓ across from Upper Canada Village. The St. Lawrence is quite wide there all the way to the American-side at Wilson Hill and a great place to shoot ships but with my zoom on the fritz, I needed a more-in-my-face location to get her and Iroquois Lock would be ideal. She was still anchored⚓ for some unknown reason when I headed down to the River shortly after nine and presuming she got on her way soon, I felt pretty confident it might still be my lucky day to catch her with my standard 📷 lens at Loyalist Park another great vantage point, after checking out the action and boat passages at the Port of Johnstown, upriver.

West Street, Port Colborne - another great vantage point.

Fortunately there was more than one fish 🐡 to catch 🎣 on that day's photo 📷 op by the river. The first find across from the Old Windmill Lighthouse was the Danish-owned 473' oil and chemical tanker HARBOUR FIRST which by the way was the third time I came across her. Flying the flag of Portugal, she was also upbound in Port Colborne in May 21, 2019 when I caught her for the second time but she was downbound also across from the old Windmill Lighthouse when I caught the HARBOUR FIRST for the first time a few weeks earlier on May FIRST! 😀

First time catch of the HARBOUR FIRST, May 1, 2019 at Windmill Point 

It was also neat to catch the Canada Steamship Lines fleetmate, the 740’ CSL NIAGARA motor by another ship named after the famous waterfalls, the Equinox-class Algoma Central self unloader, ALGOMA NIAGARA hiding in the dust as dock crews loaded stone into her at the Port of Johnstown destined for Port Colborne which is my old hometown, a community located in the Niagara Region.

Hey, if you want to see my pics and blah-blah a little sooner, feel free to join my Facebook group, Carlz Boats And Lighthouses. Click here to join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/808680946172702/

I caught CSL NIAGARA again rounding the bend across from the Ingredion starch plant in Cardinal, and then took of my standard lens off and rested it on a long and tall concrete barrier at the water treatment plant's parking area while shooting the big downbound with my zoom as she approached an oncoming sailboat and the 740' gearless bulk carrier, ALGOMA HARVESTER.

Because the automatic feature on my zoom lens was a bit wonky lately, I shot these pics manually and I'll have to admit I'm pretty pleased with my effort.

I then looked at my MarineTraffic 📲 app and was disappointed to see that the TADOUSSAC was still anchored ⚓ east to Morrisburg and with no new ETA for Iroquois Lock, I decided to call it a day and motor 🚙 home. Even with a stop at Costco to fill-up ⛽ my tank, I made it home 🏡 in a little more than an hour and while sitting in my driveway in Kanata putting my stuff together, I said to myself, "self, where is my standard lens?" 💩💩, 💩💩💩, Oh No, 😱 I LEFT IT ON THE PARKING BARRIER IN CARDINAL!!!!!! I quickly walked into the house and did a greeting to Janice similar from what I recall hearing on the "I Love 💘 Lucy Show" from back in the 50's when Desi would say, "Hey Roooseee, I'm Hooome!!" but added, "but I got to go again, 'cause I left my standard lens down by the river." Unbelievable, it SUCKS getting old and forgetful. Zoom 🚙 ZOOM back to Cardinal I went, got to the barrier and the lens wasn't there. 💩💩, 💩💩💩. Wasn't on the ground either, 💩!

So sheepishly I walked over to the water treatment building, stepped in and asked a worker at his desk if he knew of someone finding and handing in a camera lens from outside? "Oh, is it this one?" he said. "One of our guys was walking by the river and found it on the cement parking barrier". I told him that's where I left it, that I hadn't realized that I had forgotten it until after I got home in Ottawa, and had to come back to find it because I knew with the pandemic closures, it would be a hassle and costly to replace it. Still embarassed I asked if he could mention my appreciation to the worker who found and handed in the lens, and then left, while knowing I would be returning soon with a Tim Horton's gift card to really show my gratitude for his honesty.

However, while walking back to the car 🚙 a couldn't help but check out my MarineTraffic 📲 app one more time and immediate thought to myself a Gomer Pyle saying from his '70's TV 📺 show, "Surprise, Surprise, SURPRISE!!!" while seeing that CSL TADOUSSAC was underway and entering Iroquois Lock. SHAZAM (another Gomer Pyle saying) I thought. "It was a miracle" and off I went to the nearby Seaway lock to get my girl, Oh YAAA 👍📷👍

Talk about being at the right place at the right time. As she inched closer and closer to the lock's arrester, I began to feel like it was my destiny to see the classic self unloader one more time. Her name was simply TADOUSSAC when built at Collingwood shipyards in 1969,  and she was the last Canada Steamship Lines self unloader built with a forward wheelhouse and the first to be built with stern mounted self unloading equipment.

While others like her have been cut apart by the breaker's touch in Port Colborne and scrapyards overseas, at least her presence, though looking rough with a steel patch on her starboard bow and badly needing a coat of paint, suggested there still maybe a future for this classic laker.

As the west end of the lock arrester rises and the gates open, soon there would be nowhere to go but forward for the TADOUSSAC as to her stern, the 610' Bulgarian bulk carrier, RODOPI bound for Thunder Bay, can be seen waiting in the basin below for her turn to enter the last Seaway lock before Lake Ontario.

Scraped sides due to years of rubbing against the lock walls suggests she's surely due for some attention like when the TADOUSSAC was given some TLC and an extended lease on life during the winter of 2000, when she entered Port Weller Dry Dock. After all things were done, she received updated self unloading equipment, her centre section was rebuilt and widen by about 18" on each side to the Seaway's maximum ship width of 78', and the company prefix "CSL" was added to her name when rechristened in March 2001.

Like so many shipping seasons before, CSL TADOUSSAC continued to be useful throughout 2014 and not laying-up for winter at Thunder Bay, Ontario until January 17, 2015. However as her gearless and self unloading fleetmates got underway in the following spring, CSL TADOUSSAC stayed put and remained there in long term layup status until December 2018 when she was towed into the old Port Arthur Shipbuilding slip, for an inspection and refit by Hamilton-based, Heddle Marine before then re-entering into service that April.

The engine room door, a fine spot for an upfront view of what has been passed by....

...or as in this photo from May 19, 2013, a great place for a quick puff.

While the favoured design for newbuilds these days are "sternenders" with a    superstructure for crew accommodations and wheelhouse  erected high above the engine room at the stern and behind a long line of cargo hatches, the "straightdeck" design of the CSL TADOUSSAC  was praised when the first laker of its kind, the R.J. HACKETT was built 100 years earlier in 1869, because it offered the captain better vision and quicker reaction to danger in the water and when maneuvering through channels and locks. As the 51 year old classic laker leaves Iroquois Lock for Fairport Harbor, Ohio to take on a load of salt, the increased view from her forward wheelhouse will surely be helpful for her captain as the CSL TADOUSSAC motors through the Brockville and then American Narrows ahead and the Welland Canal locks beyond on that trip and hopefully many more to come until her usefulness days comes to an end. Despite the calamities of the day, I'm glad I got to see her again.

Took awhile but on my next trip to Cardinal on August 17th, I got to meet Mark, the worker and "Eddy Shack" lookalike who retrieved my standard lens off the concrete parking barrier a couple months earlier. Instead of pocketing the lens and selling it on Kijiji, he did the right thing, brought it in and kept it safe for its owner. Yes there are many good people out and because of his honesty, I gave Mark a $25 Tim Horton's gift card. Thanks again my friend and everyone, please keep your distance and stay safe 😷


PS: To those who were affected or lost someone due to the terrorist attacks on 9/11 nineteen years ago today, I will never be forgotten them and that horrible day 😔

Polsteam Bulk Carrier WICKO

Pretty nice meet of the downbound WICKO & upbound ARAGONBORG if only something wasn't in the way. 😁

Unless you've been sitting on Uranus, or Mars, for the last couple of months, you will have noticed that we are living in much different times. No continent with the exception of Antartica appears to have been spared of this highly contagious bug and as a result, virtually nothing that we may have done prior like a simple or normal daily routine can be taken for granted anymore and for some time after this horrible deadly pandemic nightmare is over.  I'm not going to get into how this dilemma has impacted others and me, especially with my part-time job working as a funeral director assistance because it's just too depressing and after all, this is a "Boat-Blog" and anyone who's been chasing ships since at least 9/11, has been having to deal with all kinds of obstacles like high chain-link fences to heavy cement barricades to get that prize pic in. It is what it is.

The fencing that got in the way of most of my pics here when I finally caught up to the 623'4" Polsteam owned bulk carrier WICKO last Thursday had nothing to do with the COVID-19 restrictions but rather belongs to the Ingredion Canada corn starch plant that spans the complete southern point that kind of juts into the St. Lawrence River in the village of Cardinal, Ontario. With my zoom on the fritz and no place to take it in for repairs due to all the pandemic store closures, I've had to become very selective in finding a vantage point which would give me a decent photo with my standard lens. East of the village between the water filtration plant and the former Canada Starch Works is a great spot and that's where I wanted to catch the upbound Dutch flagged ARAGONBORG underway above Iroquois Lock but had to settle with her meeting the WICKO behind all the fencing above. Will have check her out in my next post at Windmill Point.

Would've loved to have snapped the WICKO where that security guard is but no can do in this day and age, eh!  

While most Polsteam bulk carriers are named after Polish rivers, this one is named after Lake Wicko in northwestern Poland. Actually, earlier in time, it was a fairly large bay that  due to constant wave action a wide sandy spit which is now forested over was created preventing the flow back into  to the Baltic Sea. The 5 km long lake is quite shallow and ideal for fishing 🎣. The downbound for Montreal WICKO was built in 2010 at Mingde Heavy Industry in Nantong China and flies the flag of the Bahamas 🇧🇸. Now off to Windmill Point to catch the Royal Wagenborg's tweener. Explanation to come in my next blogpost.

CCGS PIERRE RADISSON - Medium Icebreaker (Revisited)

Built in 1978 CCGS PIERRE RADISSON is makings good speed by Crysler Farm Battlefied Park and Mariatown.

What a difference a year makes. About this time last year I was standing along the St. Lawrence River listening in aw as the big or as the Canadian Coast Guard prefers to call it, medium icebreaker PIERRE RADISSON crashed through a huge field of ice east of Morrisburg like a knife slicing through whipped cream. It was March 22, and the RADISSON was on her way to assist shipping on the upper Great Lakes an activity that she'd been required to do in past, with the exception of perhaps this spring.

Unlike this winter where except for my backyard, much of the Great Lakes region had very little or no snow at all, and most bodies of water were completely free of ice while in mid January 2019, Lake Superior had lots of it and Erie was over 90% ice covered in places. To makes matter worse, gale force winds blew across the continent in February causing huge ice ridges and banks that I hadn't seen since I was a kid growing up in Port Colborne. Along with the help of their American counterparts the Canadian Coast Guard's "Light" icebreakers GRIFFON and SAMUEL RISLEY which had been busy all winter escorting tankers and other carriers to supply communities with needed cargoes, could not break through either. The cry went out and the mighty PIERRE RADISSON was on its way in.

Today the Welland Canal opened and from what I've seen in Janey Anderson's Facebook ship watcher's posts, who was at Port Coborne this morning, no vessels encountered any ice issues. Such was not the case when the RADISSON arrived at Port Colborne a year ago today. Not only was there ice in the harbour, but not far from the canal entrance breakwalls, she encountered ice ridges two and half to three metres high. It was almost a week before the PIERRE RADISSON and GRIFFON could make safe shipping tracks for the 10 vessels waiting in Port Colborne and at various walls along the canal, to get their season underway.

Photo by Our Midland.ca Local News - April 19, 2019

Meanwhile, the call went out for the light icebreaker MARTHA L. BLACK to assist at Cape Vincent at the St. Lawrence Seaway's Lake Ontario entrance because of ice ridges there, and two more medium icebreakers. Once CCGS AMUNDSEN arrived then followed by CCGS DES GROSEILLIERS soon after, the PIERRE RADISSON continued up through to Thunder BAY and eventually broke out BAIE COMEAU in Midland on April 19th which had been trapped there due to ice ridges on Georgian Bay as well.
 

Arctic research vessel during the summer CCGS AMUNDSEN breaks ice in winter at Mariatown - April 4, 2019.

CCGS AMUNDSEN (formerly SIR JOHN FRANKLIN) was the second medium icebreaker built in 1978 at Burrard Dry Dock, North Vancouver.

Light icebreaker CCGS MARTHA L. BLACK also no stranger to spring ice operations on the Great Lakes disturbs a flock of Canada Geese while approaching Iroquois Lock on March 27, 2019. 

Dark sky and setting sun as DES GROSEILLIERS passes Morrisburg.

- April 10, 2019.

The 5,775 gross tonne 322'  medium icebreakers are designed for Coast Guard operations in the Arctic Ocean. Their two fixed-pitch propellers are powered by 6 Alco M241F diesel engines that when driving the shafts can create 17,580 shaft horsepower which allows their powerful propulsion system to break ice over a metre thick at a speed of 6 knots. They have a top speed of 16 knots (30 k/h, a range of 15,000 nautical miles and cants at sea for up to 120 days. They have a flight deck with a retractable hanger to house their light Bell 206L helicopter which provides air reconnaissance to identify safer commercial routes.

CCGS DES GROSEILLIERS was built in 1985 at Port Weller Dry Docks in St. Catharines.

CCGS GRIFFON returning home to Prescott from winter ice ops - April 4, 2018

Between late December 2018 and April 2019, six Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers travelled 19,173 kilometres escorting commercial vessels through the ice on the Great Lakes. Canada and the United States shares icebreaking duties between our two nations as needed and combined with U.S. Coast Guard vessels, they assisted 522 ship transits. While light icebreakers CCGS GRIFFON and SAMUEL RISLEY are dedicated to the Great Lakes each year, it sure is nice to know that once old man winter with his arctic blast from over the top returns, at least there's a few extra big or "medium-sized" guns available to make a clear passage regardless of the flag your flying.

CCGS SAMUEL RISLEY lowers a workboat at Johnstown - September 5,2015

Last River Run - Part 2: Bulk Carrier FEDERAL ALSTER

Having caught the 740' Algoma Central self unloader ALGOMA MARINER motoring by upbound at Brockville, the subject for my last post, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the Fednav bulk carrier FEDERAL ALSTER on her final run for the season still making her way into Iroquois Lock on December 28th. Though somewhat distance, the ALSTER was an easy target when I saw her for the first time from the Battle of the Windmill National Historic site on September 30th while sitting high and hatch covers raised across the St. Lawrence at the Port of Ogdensburg. On that day it appeared that she was finishing her discharge of Chilean road salt, the overseas product I've seen seen being unloaded by many of her fleetmates this season at the Port of Johnstown, on the Canadian side of the river.
With the booms of her four 36 metric ton carrying cranes secured to each other, the  FEDERAL ALSTER appeared to be moments from getting under way when I caught her again from a new vantage point at a dead-end in the old hamlet of Wexford three days later.    

My zoomed-in shots across the St. Lawrence were pretty easy pics taken in my "as-per-usual" dull overcast skies unlike my last rendezvous with the FEDERAL ALSTER when the sun continually broke through the clouds (not complaining, I like the sun 🌞), causing sunspots or a ghost-like haze on so many of my photos. No excuse these days with digital cameras. I should have seen what was happening and adjusted things up, but I didn't notice a thing until I got home in Ottawa so what you see is the best of what I could salvage on what should have been a great photo op.

Built in 2016 at New Century Shipbuilding in Jingjiang City, China, the FEDERAL ALSTER is known as a laker-design dry goods bulk carrier because much of her trading activity is between overseas ports and those on the Great Lakes. At 655' 11' in length, she's a bit shorter than St. Lawrence Seaway maximum-size vessels like the 740' ALGOMA MARINER (https://carlzboats.blogspot.com/2019/12/last-river-run-part-1-self-unloader.html) which I'd seen earlier in the day, but with all seaway lock being 80' wide, the FEDERAL ALSTER's 77' 9" beam makes her a tight squeeze at Iroquois and the other 14 locks in the system between St. Lambert, across from Montreal and Lock 8 in Port Colborne, on Lake Erie.

FEDERAL ALSTER which is named after the Alster River, a tributary to the Elbe River in northern Germany, flies the flag of the Marshall Island though owned by Intership Navigation Company of Limassol, Cyrus and while being chartered to Fednav of Montreal. In her 6 hold that were strengthen for heavy loads, the ALSTER has a cargo capacity of 22,947 gross tons.

What seemed odd though as the immaculate red hulled vessel pushed her way out of the lock and into Lake St. Lawrence, was that her free fall lifeboat was not in its davit at the ALSTER's stern. If you squint real hard at the photos I got of her in Ogdensburg, above, the fully encased bright orange lifeboat is where it should be.

Equipment with a motor, radio, navigational aids, fishing equipment and other supplies needed until rescue arrives, it's been required since 2006 that all ocean bulk carriers be equipped with a free falling lifeboat because they are at risk of sinking too rapidly for a conventional lifeboat to be lowered over the side of the sinking or listing ship. While I've not read of any such incident occurring on a Fednav vessel during it's 75 years of operations, I'm sure that matter would have been resolved before reaching the open water of the Atlantic Ocean.

As the big FEDERAL ALSTER pushed on towards Eisenhower Lock, in the distance was another red-hauled vessel with a tall white superstructure that especially stood out in a bright sunbeam off the bulk carrier's port bow. I knew CCGS GRIFFON was in the area but instead of making her way to her homeport at Prescott before heading to the upper Great Lakes for winter ice operations, the 234' high endurance multi-tasks vessel had her boom over to her starboard side and was working. 🆒, let's see what she was up to in Part 3 of my Last River Run of the season next month at Carlz Boats blogpost. I can hardly wait to show you c):-D