A FREIGHTER RUN AGROUND

[Ray S S]

On Sunday afternoon, I went ovwer to the river to see how bad the ice was in the lake and river. This is what we saw. There
was this freighter coming up the river and into Lake Huron on it's way to a port in Minisota. It was pushing a lot of ice coming up river, but when it got into the lake it was almost solid. The engings got overheated and stalled, The ice coming down through the lake was so solid that it pushed the empty freighter out of the shipping channel and it was soon hung up in the sand. It was there from Sat morning to late Sunday afternoon. It took two tug boats and two US Coast Guard Cutters to free it and get it back into the channel. Sometime Sunday morning the Canadian Coast Guard cutter went up to help. It went on beyond it a ways
and started to turn around so it would be headed in the right direction and the ice packed around it so quickly thet it got syuck
and couldn't move. Finally one of the US cutters went to loosen the ice so it could get moving again. With the strong current
coming down out of the lake, That ice has tons and tons of presure behind it.
#1 is the freighter. You can see one of the tugs working at the bow. See how close it is to the beach.
#2 The US Coast Guard Cutters coming to help
#3The Canadian Cuter stuck in the ice.
#4, #5, &#6 shows more of the ice at the mouth of the river.

Ray

 

[Ray S S]

I couldn't quite make out the letters. I did see the name once on a quick news bulitin but didn't write it down and don't
know what it was. I don't think it was either one of the ones tou mentioned. But I think you can find out yet if you google
Boatnerd.com. they keep records of shipping on the river by here.
I hope you find out what you want to know.
Ray

 

[Ray S S]

Spooky I believe it was the Bramble and The Hollihock
Ray

 

[bbqbull]

Great pictures and info Ray.

Hope that ice gets out of the frieighters way soon, sure mucks up shipping.

 

[crazyjarhead]

WOW, still alot of ice. I figured with the warm weather it would be gone by now. But I guess I don't know much about the great lake ice cover in the winter either When does all of the ice go away up there

 

[Ray S S]

Thanks Mike.

crazyjarhead, That ice is still covering a huge share of the lake. I think it will probably be at least another week
or more before it is gone. There is a lot of force behind it but it is quite a bottleneck right at the mouth of the river
and our temps have only been in the 30's and 40's for several days now and in the 20's at night. That does not help the
ice situation much. Down river the car ferries at both locations have closed down a few times because of ice jams. With
all the ice still out there yet, they are worried about it jambing all the way to the bottom down where the islands are
and cause severe flooding. It's keeping the Coast Guard Cutters busy trying to keep an open pathway.

Thanks for your good reply.

Ray

 

[crazyjarhead]

Thanks Mike.

crazyjarhead, That ice is still covering a huge share of the lake. I think it will probably be at least another week
or more before it is gone. There is a lot of force behind it but it is quite a bottleneck right at the mouth of the river
and our temps have only been in the 30's and 40's for several days now and in the 20's at night. That does not help the
ice situation much. Down river the car ferries at both locations have closed down a few times because of ice jams. With
all the ice still out there yet, they are worried about it jambing all the way to the bottom down where the islands are
and cause severe flooding. It's keeping the Coast Guard Cutters busy trying to keep an open pathway.

Thanks for your good reply.

Ray

Thanks Ray for a good reply back

 

[Saturna]

An interesting site to track ships ...



http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/default.aspx?centerx=30&centery=25&zoom=2&level1=140

 

[Woodland Detectors]

\
hey guys.

Yes, I remember scenes like this growing up there.
Great pictures

 

[Monty]

Dang, almost looks like you could walk out to it! Is it aground or just icebound? Monty

 

[Woodland Detectors]

Dang, almost looks like you could walk out to it! Is it aground or just icebound? Monty

I think it's exceeded it's draft depth~!!

 

[Monty]

Reminds me of "Das Boot". Fire one! Monty

 

[Ray S S]

Saturna, thanks for posting this site. It is a good one.

mike, yes, sights like this are kind of unforgetable.

Monty, The freighter ia actually hung up in the sand. It was not an easy job to get it back out in deep water, but
since it was empty it was easier than it would have been had it been loaded.

Thank you to all of you for youe interesting replies and questions.

heve a good day.
Ray