Bulk Carrier FEDERAL KUSHIRO

As 2014 came to an end at midnight yesterday, so did the shipping season for the St. Lawrence Seaway including the Welland Canal which meant all remaining salties had to scurry to get out of the system or face  a potentially gruesome Great White North winter at a Great Lakes port. Such was the case for the small British tanker, JACKSON PRINCESS which remained locked in the ice of Hamilton harbour during the winter of 1959-60. c):-o
It looked like a similar fate could happen this season as several salties remained anchored off Port Weller earlier this week waiting for a required pilot to become available to guide their way through the Seaway channels and locks to the lower river, and then eventually the Atlantic Ocean and home. The last ship through St. Lambert Lock at about midnight was the 473' Gibraltar flagged tanker STEN BERGEN. Unfortunately my day job prevented me this week from getting any snaps of the BERGEN or even the second to last downbound, that exited out of the waterway hours earlier, the 624' FEDERAL KUSHIRO. However I do have a few snaps here of the KUSHIRO that I took in May 2013.
On that day, I first snapped her passing the downbound self unloader CSL TADOUSSAC http://carlzboats.blogspot.ca/2013/07/self-unloader-csl-tadoussac.html below Iroquois Lock....

....and then she continued to slowly position herself near the entrance of the original Iroquois lock beyond the current lock's lift bridge...

...there the almost motionless FEDERAL KUSHIRO patiently waited for another downbound bulker to exit the lock...

...which appeared to be the once former Fednav fleetmate, and now CSL owned,  BIRCHGLEN http://carlzboats.blogspot.ca/2012/08/saltie-laker-birchglen.html.

So you thought FEDERAL KUSHIRO was sitting high out of the water. Check out these snaps taken in May 2009 by my fellow boatnerd, Ron Beaupre of another Fednav fleetmate and featured last week in Carlz Boats, the 607' FEDERAL MATTAWA http://carlzboats.blogspot.ca/2014/12/bulk-carrier-federal-mattawa.html BIG BOATS!! c);-b

BTW, to find out more about other salties that didn't quite make it out of the Great Lakes before the navigation season ended, be sure to check out a new series in the "News Channels" page of Boatnards.com (http://www.boatnerd.com) entitled "Frozen In" by veteran Great Lakes boat expert/writer, Skip Gilham. It'll give you something to read as we "Escape from old man Winter" for a week in the Hot Hot HOT climes of Varadero, Cuba. Hasta luego, BABY!! c):-))