This installment of “what’s NOT in the 2026 calendar” begins in early October in Sault Ste Marie with the last bloom of fall on the trees. MeredithAshton has a load of wind turbine equipment heading west. In the background, that salt has already melted some icy UP roads.
The 1939 Jimmy L, former USCG WYT-92 Naugatuck, made its way up the St Marys and is Lake Superior bound as well.
Farther towards the sea, Wilf Seymour pushes Alouette Spirit upstream through the west end of the Thousand Islands.
Even farther downbound, it’s Seaway Guardian, along with Performance to the left and Seaway Trident to the right. That’s New York State and the high peaks of the Adirondacks in the background.
In the second half I was back in the sixth boro, admiring all the new equipment, like Gerard McAllister and
Newt Moran, as well as
regulars like Stasinos Boys and
Pegasus.
December is still with us a few days. Here Douglas J and Grace McAllister pass.
Not in existence yet a year ago but hard at work already it’s William E. Moran.
The sixth boro remains a very satisfying place with so much to see . . . like Bruce A. and a rail barge and
Mister T.
All photos, any errors, WVD, who like all of us has no idea where another rotation around the sun will get us.
If you’ve not been watching the exciting Fitzcarraldo-like movement on my other blog, check it out here at Dispatches.
I’ve been down with fluish conditions for the past week, but the snow fall overnight convinced me to see RV Robert Gray close up and snowed over. Remember these past views of the 1936 hull?
Under that canvas is the sauna I would not see in detail today, although the hot water and steam would be most welcome.
Next time I’ll stop by some night when the snow is gone but the lights are lit.
At one point this summer I noticed they were in Halifax. Did they range even farther?
I’m working through the images that were finalists but did not mkae the calendar, photos in this case that I took in July, August, and September 2025. Since I was moving most of that time, much of it non-stop, these photos are from all over. In the photo below taken on the Maumee River not far from Lake Erie, we see a cargo ship namedFederal Minnesota towed by GL’s Cleveland. Federal Minnesota is currently in the North Atlantic, Belgium bound. Cleveland is currently in Cleveland, where it was built in 2017, the first tug GL Shipbuilding made for its own use since . . . 1931! In spite of the appearance, there is a person at the helm. I have a personal connection to the Maumee that come March will go back exactly 40 years; in March 1986, I paddled the length of the river in four days with my then 8-year-old daughter.
Here are two of GL’s Cleveland‘s sisters, New York and Wisconsin, built in 2024 and 2020 respectively. I took the photo inside Cleveland OH’s breakwaters.
Part of the appeal of my job on the Great Lakes is that what I see is so different than what caught my attention for so long in the sixth boro. Not much illustrates this as Dirk S. VanEnkevort, which I caught here above the Soo locks pushing Michigan Trader. I’ll let you read more about the 146′ 7500hp tug built in 1900 here. I hope you find the Lakes as interesting a counterpoint as I do.
Working on the Lakes has satisfied my curiosity about places I’d not seen. I took this at the top end of the Welland Canal, just north of where Lakes Erie connects with the canal. Wyatt M has been around eastern Canada longer than I’ve been alive. By the way, if those elevators in the background look familiar, parts of them date from the same era as the ones in Gowanus Brooklyn.
Isabelle, currently northbound near Trinidad, spent a lot of time in the Upper Bay this summer. A brief review of her history on Birk’s site will say she’s been around.
James Charles, here with the terminals in Bayonne as background, has certainly been around in the past half year, long-distance ocean towing work.
Pelham, one of the oldest active tugboats in the sixth boro, sports the distinctive Henry Marine pink stripes.
The boro has seen a share of foreign-flagged workboats like TSM Texel, subcontracted to the offshore wind contractors.
Back on Lake Superior in September, I caught Clyde S. VanEnkevort into the Poe Lock. Again, working on the Great Lakes has allowed me to see firsthand some unexpected links between the sixth boro and the inland seas of North America. Poe’s namesake is not Edgar Allen.
Back in Cleveland, it’s GL tug Pennsylvania towing Algoma Buffalo into the Cuyahoga River, past American Courage. Note this was the previous GL Pennsylvania, and this, the current.
Meredith Ashton, here at the top [south] end of the Welland Canal, is one of many Great Lakes tugboats with a sixth boro connection. She used to be a regular as C. Angelo.
Sea Eagle II, a US-built tug, has been Canadian-flagged much of its life.
All photos, WVD. I did not choose these photos for the calendar, but then, there are only twelve months!
The backstory is simply that these were the other options for the April, May, and June calendar pages. Before leaving the sixth boro on April 10, I spent several full days on the boro seeing what i would miss. And it turns out it would be a lot like this stone delivery for the Battery Park resiliency project,
this angle on a petroleum barge,
and this light tug exiting the Kills.
In the rest of April, I saw few tugboats, but this Canadian icebreaker was a beaut. In fact, it had appeared on this blog before as Tor Viking, and it appears at some point as Tor Viking II.
By May we were in the Great Lakes, i.e., the inland seas. This one-off supply boat does delivery work at the Soo, in this case to a 1000′ ore boat as it departs the Poe lock.
I caught this classic on the northwestern end of Lake Erie; she’s been around.
This dry cement barge came into Toledo pushed by a tug formerly known as Coastal 303.
Backstory 1 features photos I took in January through end of March 2025, considered for the calendar, but ultimately discarded. This shows fishing and cargo handling over in Bayonne.
This Long Island built tugboat has been a harbor fixture for half a century.
Two vessels here are synonymous with dredging and channel maintenenance.
These two share a sense of a wind-powered future.
This tugboat is moving an e-crane into the Kills.
Less than two decades ago, this company came into the boro and took over much of the bunkering.
The entrance to the Kills can be a very busy location, as
can the East River.
We’ll leave this post mid-Upper Bay and construction materials.
All photos, WVD, who spent all but two weeks of January-March in/around the sixth boro.
I’ve done winter solstice posts in some past years. Here’s my 2025 version taken at 0715 on a morning last week in Sault Ste Marie, a place I saw a lot of this year. In spite of -6 F temperature, it was worth it to me to get photos of these lights, a few days early for the longest night.
This was the scene–headlights on the snow-covered streets–when I was arriving into SSM a few days earlier. The next days saw industrial-sized snow blowers loading up these snow banks, and dumping them near the river, where they might not completely disappear until late May or even June.
The year 2025 has many troughs and peaks. One date was September 14, southbound on Lake Huron and seeing the aurora for the first time ever. Note most of the big dipper here.
But September 30 stands out. At 0630 that day, I saw the aurora on the north end of Green Bay.
About 2300 the same day, they reappeared, this time at the north end of Lake Michigan. The bright smudge on the horizon is a laker–Wilfred Sykes–heading for Port Inland.
Happy holidays. Make up as many reasons to celebrate as you can, and enjoy all the celebration. Here’s one distinction of SSM, sort of like the ice canoe racing in Quebec City for Mardi Gras; it’s the I-500. check it out here and here. By the way, I did detect some folks there with a north-of-the-border accent.
The last time I used this title was just before I spent my long time away, back in April of 2025. As I write this, yes, I’m away again, but this time only a few days, and soon I’ll be able to reveal details of my current trip.
Christopher Edward below might be the key locator here. It’s been keeping the dry dock in Bayonne busy since here almost five years ago. Also in the image here,Sea Scout, Jonathan C Moran, and Cape Trinity.
And added to Sea Scout, here are Shannon Dann hauled out, and in the water . . .
I saw this Forest Wave general cargo ship at the Soo the other day, and was curious that this late in the season it was coming from Thunder Bay ON and heading for Milwaukee, where . . .
Great Lakes mariner happened to catch them preparing to load spent grain, a popular export of the WI city and area.
Here from half a decade ago was the first post with photos from Brian. His work is back here with another wintry batch, this time from Buffalo. These images might make you feel relief, especially if you are reading this from a torrid equatorial location at sea level.
Mark Barker might be described as the newest laker hull on the Great Lakes, less than five years out of the Sturgeon Bay WI shipyard. More info here.
Breaker II is another fairly new Great Lakes vessel, dedicated to maintaining New York Power Authority’s ice boom, a set of linked floats designed to prevent ice chunks from entering the intakes for the hydro-electric turbines on the Niagara River. Breaker II was built by Blount Boats in Rhode Island.
Manitoulin is also a fairly new vessel, built in China in 2015.
Down through the canyon of grain elevators, Breaker II is towing one link in the ice boom.
Many thanks to Brian for allowing me to share these photos.
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