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Look Out, Ice: Wednesday’s arrival of two U.S. Coast Guard Cutters – our Twin Ports-based Alder (black hull) and the beefy ice-breaker Mackinaw (red hull) – means a double whammy (or double rammy) for ice getting in the way of the start to the maritime shipping season. Photographer Paul Scinocca took shots of both cutters as they came through the Duluth Ship Canal. The appropriately named cutters cut a 100-foot lane for vessels from Sault Ste. Marie to Duluth-Superior. The lane is being widened by the Canadian Coast Guard ship Samuel Risley, which followed the U.S. cutters and will head to Thunder Bay. Between the Coast Guards and the efforts of tugs from locally based Great Lakes Towing Company and Heritage Marine, several vessels that wintered in the Twin Ports will shortly be on their way with loads, according to the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, including American Spirit (which wintered in Lakehead Pipeline Dock in Superior); H. Lee White (Hansen-Mueller Elevator M; Superior); Mesabi Miner (Superior Midwest Energy Terminal; Superior); Kaye E. Barker and Lee A. Tregurtha (both at Fraser Shipyards in Superior). At 12:12 p.m. today, Interlake Steamship Company’s Kaye E. Barker, escorted by the Mackinaw, became the first laker to pass under the Aerial Lift Bridge in the 2019 shipping season. It was bound for Two Harbors to load iron ore and then continues on Indiana Harbor. Built in 1952, the Barker also closed the 2018 season as the last vessel into the Twin Ports on Jan. 15. Recent rains and warm weather had reduced Lake Superior ice cover to about 65 percent as of Thursday, reports Jayson Hron, director of communications and marketing at the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, but he adds “the U.S. Coast Guard reported ice fields in excess of 12 inches thick still remaining on the Lake, along with approximately 16 miles of ice cover outside the Duluth entry.” The Alder crew posted a lovely little video this morning of ice breaking (it’s not as easy as this looks!). Photographer Jane Herrick shows us what it means when a vessel comes to home port, with photos of the Alder families greeting the crew and cutter.
Fraser Shipyards had a busy winter and wraps up those five vessels heading out from the Twin Ports. Still in dock for now is Tim S. Dool, says James Farkas, president and COO of Fraser Shipyards. James notes that the company employed 225 people to work on the vessels
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