Tanker HELLESPONT CRUSADER

Alert the media!! I finally snapped my first 'Saltie' for this year's navigation season. Yeah, I know I should get down to the St. Lawrence more often but it is what it is, and in this case we were just about to leave Iroquois Lock during a whirl wind tour to Toronto and back, when in the distance, what looked like a 'ghost ship' was approaching from the east. Come on now, it's not everyday you see a completely 'white' ship motor along on the seaway. True there's the odd white-hulled cruise ship that'll pass you by but not this time of year. Actually, the ghost ship was 473' Oil/Chemical Tanker HELLESPONT CRUSADER making her way upbound to Nanticoke, Ontario on the north shore of Lake Erie. The CRUSADER was built in 2010 in South Korea and though she's currently German owned, she flies the flag of the Marshall Islands. Go figure!!
However, while waiting for their cruise ship, CARIBBEAN PRINCESS to let go her lines, my friend John (or perhaps his wife Carmel) from Lanark Highlands, Ontario also snapped the HELLESPONT CRUSADER (below) moored off to their ship's port side last February in Fort Lauderdale, I mean Port Everglades, or whatever, Florida. Now let me get this straight, the HELLESPONT CRUSADER motored from the warm breezes of Southern Florida to the frigid wind-chills of the 'Great White North'? Skipper must have pissed somebody off!! Or Not.
Actually I snapped my second saltie for the season this weekend too, but that's another story. Coming Soon to a Carlz Boats Near You!! I know, you can Hardly Wait!!

HELLESPONT CRUSADER was sold to Alliance Tankers of Hamilton, Bermuda in 2014
and now plies the Great Lakes as LOKHOLMEN. c):-o