Great lake boats, a good video

5030 · Jun 13, 2021

Wise move....

cqaigy2 · Jun 13, 2021

That was close. Yikes!

ArlyA · Jun 13, 2021

cqaigy2 said:
That was close. Yikes!

The camera was long ways away and made it look closer than it really was.

MossRoad · Jun 13, 2021

ArlyA said:
When the Whitefish bay rolled a fishing boat over in 2013. I posted this earlier but its really a cool video to see. On its maiden voyage of the newest addition to Canadian Steam Ship Lines Great Lakes Fleet, the Whitefish Bay encounters a fishing boat with engine trouble. The freighter wins.

The guys jumped out of the little boat right before it hit the wake. If they'd have stayed in the boat, they'd have ridden it out. There was, of course, no way for them to know that in advance. (they were reportedly rescued by other boaters later, which is amazing).

So put that in your mental tool box... the next time you're about to get run over by a great lakes freighter, stay in your boat.

RobS · Jun 14, 2021

On the collision:

It's not clear from the video but does the ship stop afterwards? Are they even aware of the collision? Are they required to stop? Logistics of an emergency stop must be complicated. Is there an investigation?

Just curious...

ArlyA · Jun 14, 2021

RobS said:
On the collision:

It's not clear from the video but does the ship stop afterwards? Are they even aware of the collision? Are they required to stop? Logistics of an emergency stop must be complicated. Is there an investigation?

Just curious...

Rob, I assume you asking about the Whitefish bay? They can not stop very quickly so the lake freighters get the right of way, nor can they turn around. If the lake or river bottom is shallow, they then can drop anchors to help them slow more quickly. Boats need to reverse there main props* thrust to stop. In this video the Paul Tregurtha does a crash stop test (no anchor drop) and just about shakes the boat apart. It takes them more than 1/2 a mile to stop. Since the Whitefish bay reported the incident, I doubt they needed to stop.

* some reverse there engines.

ArlyA · Jun 14, 2021

Here is the audio of the captain of the Whitefish bay reporting to the Canadian CG the incident. They knew what happened and had dropped a smoke bouye for the newly swimming fishermen.

cqaigy2 · Jun 14, 2021

These posts are very interesting. Thanks everybody.

RobS · Jun 14, 2021

Yes, very interesting stuff. Thanks @ArlyA

BravoXray · Jun 14, 2021

Kinda reminds me of the opening scene of "Always", with the PBY air tanker and the two guys in the fishing boat.

ArlyA · Jun 15, 2021

I love these big machines and learning how they work. Of course industrial history is something I enjoy.

ArlyA · Jun 15, 2021

Here is the 6 hours of boat traffic seen on the river cams at Port Huron, Marine City and Algonac, Michigan on Aug 12, 2019! Is good they speed the film up and you can see them slipping sideways in the rivers current.

BravoXray · Jun 15, 2021

Some of them look like race cars sliding around a turn in the current.
Hard to imagine how many tons of material move through there in a day.
The sailing ship didn't seem to be making very good headway going upstream.

2LaneCruzer · Jun 17, 2021

Reminds me of a story told to me by a pilot, who also happened to be a lawyer. Seems he did his pilot training on old WWII B-25's (wonder how long ago that was?); and he was getting in his required flying time, over the ocean on the West Coast. He spotted a fishing boat, and so he "buzzed" it. The occupant waved as he passed over the boat, so he did the same thing, this time lower...and the guy in the boat waved again.

He came in lower a third time; this time he opened the bomb-bay doors. He said the guy panicked and jumped in the ocean. When he got back to base, all the pilots were called on the carpet, but they couldn't determine which one it was, so I assumed he got away with it.

ArlyA · Jun 18, 2021

BravoXray said:
Some of them look like race cars sliding around a turn in the current.
Hard to imagine how many tons of material move through there in a day.
The sailing ship didn't seem to be making very good headway going upstream.

I can't say what the St Clair river tonnage is but the Soo's locks average is 80 million tons per year. The larger 1000ft boats can move more than 70,000 tons per trip when the lakes are full. Whereas the 750ft boats are a sparsity 30,000.