Bulk Carrier BLACKY (Revisited)

Boxing Day is an extra day off after Christmas Day, where many Canadians herd 👥🐮 themselves into shopping malls and big 📦 box stores for super deals or 'bargoons'. However if you're a boat-lubber and there's only a few days left before the Seaway closes for the season, you may instead boot 🚙 it down to the St. Lawrence to see remaining salties exit the Great Lakes for warmer or trans Atlantic destinations, and lakers completing transits and discharges before laying up for the winter. Though it was only -11C and -18C in the wind, the drive was quite worthwhile as we saw four different types of ships motoring like a bat 🦇 out of hell 👿, two going in each direction. Snapped 📷 here is the 607' bulk carrier BLACKY heading downbound on her way to the Eisenhower Lock, near Massena, NY.

You might even say we were "lucky 🍀 ducks 🦆 " to come across what many would suggest is a 'very politically-incorrect' name while actually it's a name of a duck, just like all the other water fowl named green hulled salties that trade the Great Lakes under the Canadian Forest Navigation (CanForNav) banner. Owned by Navarone Marine Enterprises of Athens, Greece 🇬🇷  the "down"- bound BLACKY was built in 2008 in China, and flies the flag of Cyprus 🇨🇾.
Just like her duck boat fleetmate, SHOVELLER (http://carlzboats.blogspot.ca/2012/08/bulk-carrier-shoveler.html), the BLACKY frequents Toronto's Redpath pier with sugar from Brazil then usually flocks off to the Lakehead to pick up a load grain.
With my wife Janice and our dog Tanner shivering on the Morrisburg, Ontario dock, the BLACKY passes by in the background on her way to the sunny 🌞 and hot 🌴climates of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Can We Come Too?? 😁