Heading up in the Welland Canal on our way to Fairport to load Salt for Picton (back to the dock with the cliff). It's been a busy couple of weeks here on the Algowood, but great news, I'm being put up 2nd Mate at last for the month of August. We are doing the crew change in the canal on the 30th, and they are sending us a Nav Cadet, (figures, just when I'm going up 2nd) so that will make it pretty crowded here. Here's a nice shot I got the other night on our way to Detour.

The Picton Salt Dock (or the dock at the bottom of the 100ft cliff)

2nd Mate on the top of the cliff directs the boom (cause the Mate on deck can't see the top of the dock)


I'd like to meet the man who thought, "hey, here is a 100 ft cliff - I think I'll build a dock on it and make ships come here to unload!" Seriously though, what kind of person dreamed this up? The Algoma Manual for self unloaders states that the ship should always be in a white condition (or even keel) for unloading. Obviously that person has never been here. We did the whole unload on a red light (or slightly listed to Port [left for you landlubbers], or even better two red lights, just to prevent the boom from coming into contact with the top of the cliff! It's a scary sight to be down on the deck, and swinging the boom out (the boom, that to cause even the slightest damage to it means being fired) and watching it come so close to the top of the cliff, that wildflowers on the cliff are being bent over.

In the Welland Canal on an incredibly slow transit. Just as well, as Frasers have a crew on board welding up the crack in the port heavy fuel tank. If we are going to have a fire, I'd rather have it here than on the lake. There is still fuel in the tank, which the guys are standing in. They've covered the residual fuel in fire retardent foam, but I'm glad it's them down there and not me.

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Fairport, Ohio. Loading salt at what my be the slowest loading rig in the Great Lakes, about 1000 tonnes per hour. It will probably take about 20 hours or longer to load. Thankfully, the former Columbia Star got out of Nanticoke in record time, about 13 hours. I went over to see it after lunch to get an ETA and the mate kicked me off!! I still can't believe it...

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The moon came up orange qnd nearly full tonight as we made our way across to Nanticoke. Columbia Star arrived at the anchorage @ 2300 to wait for the Enterprise to finish and leave. We are arriving at the East dock, to do the crew change, before going out on the hook to wait for the Star to get done. Hopefully we won't spend the weekend on the hook.

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Currently heading down Lake Huron on our way to Nanticoke, to unload our 30,000 tonnes of coal, our little contribution to global warming. 3 other ships, including the former Columbia Star (62,000 tonnes of coal) are there ahead of us, so that may delay our arrival for the canal.

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testing

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View from the Algowood of Cherry Street Slip in Toronto

What I look like after unloading 30,000 tonnes of coal in the rain


Trip #13 went off about like you’d expect from a trip with “13” in it. It was uneventful until about halfway through the Welland Canal (in #5, for anyone who knows just how bad that is) when I spaghetti’d the #4 wire. Imagine a dropping a pot full of freshly boiled pasta on the kitchen floor…now imagine that pasta is 1” thick steel cable…now imagine that it is attached to a winch that has the capacity to pull 11 tons at 50ft/minute. Or in practical terms, that winch can pull a Ford F-150 truck (with the driver in it, in gear and pedal to the metal) backwards off a wharf (don’t ask how I know this). It was, as my friends in square-rig ships would put it, a cluster-fuck. We held up traffic for about 45 minutes before giving up on it and using the tag wire as a #3 and the #3 as a #4. We finally got it straightened out at on the way to the #3 lock.

On arrival in Toronto, I got woken up at 6 and during a shift at around 10:00 the #4 wire (which we had slaved over the night before), broke a strand at the swage fitting. So I had to call another mate and two more guys to replace the wire. Thankfully the rest of the trip went off without a hitch. Now we are on our way to Sandusky to load coal at the most clockwork loading rig in the lakes, and then back through the canal to Hamilton.