Riding The Storm Out

I was seriously entertaining the idea of heading over to Chicago today in order to catch the St Marys Challenger on her last journey as a self powered vessel but the weather did not seem terribly cooperative.  It was a pretty windy day on the lakes today.  So windy that I learned the Roger Blough had anchored off Belle Isle this morning.  So rather than heading to Chicago, I decided to head down to Detroit.

 I've seen a few ships in this anchorage in the past.  The first ship that I saw there was the Arthur M. Anderson and it was a similarly windy day.  In fact, that was the time I last my first hat to the Detroit River.  Today it was pretty cloudy and temperature wise it would be fine if it weren't for the wind.

 I don't know if you can see the flag in this shot, but she is almost straight up.  It was that windy.

 A shot of her stack.  She has one of the more unique stacks amongst the lake boats.

 As I was wandering around Milliken State Park, I was trying to get different angles of her.  Here she is behind the Peter Stroh statue.

 In case you did not see the flag in the picture I was trying to point it out.  I wish I could remember the rules of thumb for wind speed based on what a flag was doing.

 So then I moved around the park a little more.  This was near the part of the park that used to be the slip for the Detroit Shipbuilding Company.

 A shot of her through the trees.  There are still little hints of autumn around, although the leaves are pretty much gone.

 A shot of her bow and pilothouse.  I want to say she was the last front mounted pilothouse ship built on the Lakes.

 A closer shot of her pilothouse.

 A view of Milliken State Park to go along with the Blough.

 Shooting at the Blough through the willows.

 A shot of her with Windsor as a backdrop.

 Another shot of her bow and pilothouse.

 A closer shot of her pilothouse from this angle.

 I also wanted to try to get a shot of the Tri-Centennial Lighthouse in a shot with her.  I will have more pictures of the lighthouse later.

 She's looking a little rough for wear but not as bad as some of the ships I've seen out there.

 Sort of a shot of the lighthouse with her.

 Another shot of her full beam.

 The funny anchor sculpture at the park.

 Another shot of the lighthouse.

 Her unusual self-unloading gear.

 A shot of her pilothouse from the rear.  You can see a few more scrapes from this angle.

 The winds shifted a bit.

 Then I decided to take the trip to Belle Isle to get some shots of her with Detroit as the backdroup.

 And then the Ambassador Bridge.

 I was actually hoping to get a frontal shot, but I think I would have had to be on the MacArthur Bridge for that.

 The sun was trying to peek through the clouds every so often.  I never really managed to capture a decent shot of that.

And one more shot of her.