After taking an hour or so to get by Toronto during the morning rush hour, made worse by the usual construction, we got on the Queen Elizabeth Expressway headed south to the Welland Canal and arrived there about 8:30am on Friday the 13th which was to prove quite lucky rather than bringing back luck!
For those not familiar with the Welland Canal it provides a navigable connection over the Niagara Escarpment (which creates the nearby Niagara Falls) connecting the great lakes of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. There are a total of 7 locks and 3 of them are connected in a stair step fashion. There is excellent access to the ships transiting the canal although fences are rapidly being installed. A visitor's area is at Lock 3.
Having just missed the Federal Mantane, which I had not seen before, here are the ships I photographed. At this time I have just started this blog and am not posting photos yet - you can see them on www.shipspotting.com under the name of Magogman.
Pochard, imo 9262534, an upbound saltie chartered by the Canadian firm Canfornav (Canadian Forest Navigation). All of their ships are charters and almost all are named after ducks! This was my first siting of this ship!
Algorail, imo 6805531, a self unloading Great Lakes bulker owned by Algoma Central Corp.
Federal Polaris, imo 8321929, downbound, a saltie from Fednav, Federal Navigation of Montreal.
Frontenac, imo 6804848, a Great Lakes self unloading bulker from Canadian Steamship Lines, upbound. Spend a lot of time following this ship up the locks and got some excellent photos of it.
Also the tug Reliance with it barge PML 9000 -- Purvis Marine from Sault Ste Marie, Ontario.
Another Fednav ship, Federal Yoshino, 9218416, built 2001. It was downbound.
This has really turned into an excellent day for photographing ships!
Catherine Desgagnes, 5133979, from the Transport Desgagnes fleet of Quebec City, a neat operation with several smaller ships, including tankers, that operates in the St. Lawrence, Great Lakes, and especially resupplying towns in the Canadian arctic and subarctic on Canada's east coast. Almost all of their ships are named after femaile members of the Desgagnes fleet.
Late in the evening is the downbound BBC Australia,imo, 9331593, a typical blue-hulled small general cargo ship similar to most BBC ships. We see it about sunset above Lock 7 in the company of two shipspotting friends who are prolific contributors to www.shipspotting.com, Michel and Vedran. Both are outstanding photographers. I had met Michel the year before but not Vedran. We had an excellent time talking, telling stories, and especially venting about shipspotting.
One last ship: Liquid Blue, imo 9359600, recently sold and renamed from Brovig Ocean. A nice tanker, upbound. It is completely dark but I watch it lock up in Lock 3 from the visitors' gallery and take several photos, most of which are decent -- the fences came in handy as a place to lean the camera on when taking low speed exposures.
By this time it was dark and I needed to find a motel. Drove to Port Colborne, Ontario at the Lake Erie end of the Welland Canal and after a little searching found a reasonably cheap, by Canadian standards, motel at the edge of town. The Seaway Motel if I remember correctly. I was quite late by this time, I was really tired due to little sleep the night before, and I needed to get up early on Saturday so I unpacked what I needed from the car, downloaded the photos from the last two days onto my laptop and went to bed.
A great day of ship photography!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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