My First Ship of the Year

After spending two days holed up at home with the respite by taking the picture of the Wolverine, I made my way over to Detroit today.  I was hoping to catch my first ship of the season.  The roads were okay but a little slick in spots but I made it down to Detroit in plenty of time.  Although, why are the sides of the freeways littered with four wheel drive vehicles after a snow like this?

 Part of the reason I was able to catch the Algosteel was because she was inching along at 2 knots.  When I saw this on Marine Traffic, I thought that perhaps she was stopping at the fuel dock.  But it turns she wasn't.

 You can't really tell in this picture but there is a nice layer of ice on the Detroit River.  With ice forming this early, it is really gumming up the system.  I read today that the Coast Guard is limiting traffic to one direction, so downbound ships will go and then upbound, etc.  I suspect that this might put an earlier end to the season.

 Enough about that though.  Algosteel is certainly worthy of being my first ship of the year because she is a beauty.

 If the trends of other ships are any indication, she may not have too many years left in her and that would be a shame.  I still hate to think about the beauties like this leaving the lakes.

 She slowly works her way up the River.  At this point, I could hear her moving through the ice.  It is actually a pretty cool sound.

 A shot of Windsor in the background.

 A shot of her lovely pilothouse.

 The river was calm enough that I got a reflection of her.  Sadly, I was shooting into the sun.

 A shot of her Algostack.

 She slowly pulled away, but it turns out she wasn't quite pulling away but going into the Belle Isle Anchorage.

 Since I saw that there would be another ship coming down in about an hour, I decided to go to Greektown for lunch.  I took this shot from the parking structure.

 And then I came back to Milliken to catch the next ship, which is to the right.

 A shot of her stern.

 She was twisting a little bit in the wind.

One more shot of her before I left.  I believe as of writing this post, she is still in the anchorage.  She is heading to Goderich to pick up a split load for Milwaukee and Chicago.