1500 Mile Great Lakes Trip on a Ranger Tug. Day 4. The Soo Locks Solo on a Ranger Tug
Vložit
- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
- Leaving an anchorage near detour MI I work my way up the St Mary’s River to Sault Ste. Marie and the Soo locks. I fill up at George Kemp Marina then lock through the Canadian lock. I go through Grand Marais then anchor at Murray Bay near Munising MI. The boat is a Ranger Tug R-27 OB.
Ambitious trip and a bit rare to see a series showing a leg across Superior in a power boat. Thanks for your work to do this series and I am looking forward to watching the remainder of this adventure.
Thank you! that one f the reasons i was inspired to make these videos is that there is not alot of content I could find on the great lakes.
That red and white buoy that you're talking about is not a buoy at all, its a lower range light/marker. There's another marker the lines up to create a channel range guide for those piloting ships... we can get within a couple feet of center just by eyeballing the range. It makes it a lot easier to keep a 105' wide ship in the center of the channel. Not to be confused with a safe water buoy, which is also red/white (with a single ball on top).
That sounds like a cleaver way of lining up! thank you for the information. I cant imagine piloting a big ship through there it seems nerve racking!
@tedg2085 What ship do you work on? I spend a lot of time tracking the freighters and watching the live cams, and I love to ride my motorcycle to the St Clair River and down to Welland Canal as much as possible during the shipping season.
@@danielmorris3687 I'm a tug captain in Detroit now, but previously I worked for Great Lakes Fleet (Key Lakes) and American steamship. Most of my time was spent on the Arthur M. Andersom
@tedg2085 Wow, you worked on AMA. Very cool. Beautiful old girl with a ton of history.
Great video! Thanks for sharing
Thank you!
We highly recommend getting a Mantus anchor. They set well and once set, you can sleep soundly knowing you won’t drag.
That would be so much fun!
Nice video , summer is coming !
I cant wait!
Hey buddy, just ran into to your videos. I love your boat, it's really sharp looking. Is there anyway that you could make a video about your boat? Maybe show us the inside of your boat and talk about all the features about it. If you have done a video on it already then let me know where I could find it. Man I would love to make that trip on the lakes in your boat. Take care and keep up the good work with your videos. Man I love that boat!!👍👍👍
I will do a video on it at some point. but it will be sometime after this trip series. I don't currently have easy access to it in the winter. apart from a few minor things its how it came from the factory so the ranger tug website can give you a really good idea of the boat until i can make a video on it. It is a great boat!
I'll be singlehanding my Cutwater 24 through several locks on the Caloosahatchee Waterway - it connects the east & west coasts of Florida - soon. I can't say I've ever seen someone locking through while holding their lines from inside their cabin before...but it looks like it works! When we took our sailboat through locks in Northern Europe, it was always a free-for-all when the lock doors opened. This was sooo much calmer.
It defiantly was much easier and slower paced then I expected. The lockkeepers were also very chill and friendly and were clear when explaining where to go. i generally avoid boating on Friday and Saturday to try to avoid crowds and people in a rush. the great lakes have alot less boaters then Florida though so I wish you luck on your trip!
I don't know for sure why they have two doors on the lock either but my understanding is it's simply in case one set fails they can continue to operate the lock with the other set. The lock in Lockport IL has two lift gates that lower into the canal bed. I think they used vertical lift gates as opposed to miter gates due to the thickness of the concrete at the head end. Or rather the thinness of the concrete. At the head end of the locks the canal is artificially raised above the surrounding land by about 40 feet I think. So there isn't much land to push against for a miter gate system. Having dual gates is insurance against a gate failure which could flood Joliet, Illinois.
In the winter we snowmobile from downtown munising out to grand island then over to Christmas all over 4-8' of ice. Then on the north side of the island is the famous ice caves only accessable via the lake. You'll see people cross country skiing riding mountain bikes out on the bay. I've also been out there when lake effect came in and it was a whiteout. Before gps it was all guts common sense and a compass or die to get back to land and not out into open water. 1-3' chop that's calm as I bet you find out.
Been looking for a good series revolving around smaller Ranger Tugs
$20 for that ferry ride??? I live on the puget sound, and $20 would get you from Bremerton to Seattle, about a 1-hr ferry ride... and this ferry has a galley that serves beer and food lol. I guess the huge volume helps defray the costs...
I have bee non the Bremerton Seattle ferry before! it was a nice way to get across the bay. they didn't even charge me when I took it back to Seattle!
no tour video showing boat and any upgrades you've done?
Wow, I missed a few weeks! Sorry, you lost me. What a shame for me! Best wishes 👋👋👋
In the Canadian lock, the double gates at the upper end, is from the old shipping lock, the lock suffered damage about 30 years ago, and the new lock was installed inside the old lock, thus the new lock is much shorter, than the old shipping lock was, and the orange “bridge” is a lock guard dam, if anything were to happen the the existing lock, the orange gate will swing into place and blockers come from underneath and dam up the channel.
Thank you for the information! I am glad they rebuilt it into a recreational lock instead of a shipping one. That is one massive guard dam! it was huge going past it. it was imposing but looked well maintained.
I see you got an answer on what you thought was a buoy and the orange swing bridge. The other swing bridge is CN Railways crossing. It crosses 2 times a day. Once north and 1 south
The s is silent in grand marais. The grand marais tavern has good food. I have stopped there many times snowmobilng
Thank you for the tip! ill try to pronounce it correctly when I make the video where I stop there.
We have a great way of sorting out the locals from tourists in the GL states. We randomly use the French pronunciation sometimes as in Grand Marais pronounced Gran Mer-ay. But then Brule is pronounced... Brool not Brool-ley. Go figure.
I overnight at harbor island all the time, great and quiet anchorage
I defiantly plan on going back it was absolutely beautiful! are you able to get your boat inside the island? when i was there there were about 6 boats anchored in the smaller bay and seem to use there dinghy's to explore the inside.
@@MillennialAfloat I mainly anchor inside the main island, the larger bay.
That Ranger Tug hauls azz.
It certainly does! It usually cruses at about 30 MPH on a nice day for the best MPG of about 1.3-1.4 MPH Fastest it goes is about 36MPH when its loaded!
@@MillennialAfloat Nice
You went threw my home town sault ste marie the soo locks is in my home town
Thats cool! are you on the US or Canada side?
The yellow booms are for winter ice control.
now that you told me that makes perfect sense with the ferry right there. they reminded me of the oil catching booms they put down for spills.
Yeah the red and white bouy is where the Kracken lives so please don't get too close !!
You need to show the whole boat .. not just the bow and you talking. I came here to see the Ranger tug
The orange swing bridge is an emergency damn it closes off the locks in the event a lock fails
Cool. Its certainly nice to have a backup and a bonus that its cool to look at!
15:00 Wait......what's that thing ?
I completely forgot to mention that sorry. That is the Gros Cap Reef Light. its a lighthouse near the entrance of the bay leading to the river.
@@MillennialAfloat Cool, thanks.
you mentioned that you do not have any experience navigating around Large Ships so you want to "run into one"
I'm no expert but, try NOT to run into any ships, large or otherwise!
RED and White buoys typically mean center of a channel.
Lol, I don't think that would be an encounter my small fiberglass boat would win!
So true, @@MillennialAfloat , but between the thrusters and that 300 yamaha, you can run circles around most!
This was cool until noticing all the “me” and “I” statements. Then, all I could hear were sounds from a self-absorbed douche.
Thank you for the feedback. That was not the intended tone. I am still very new to making videos and open to criticism. I don’t really understand what you mean in this instance. What would be the alternative to “I” statements? How would you prefer thoughts and observations on this trip be expressed?