Tug grounds and two others aid ship in Canadian seaway

A tug attached to a loaded cargo barge grounded in the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada and another lost a cargo of containers off Florida during the final week of 2017.

According to local reports, 37 m tug Wilf Seymour and 129 m loaded barge Alouette Spirit grounded in ice in the centre of Lake Saint-Pierre in the St. Lawrence Seaway on 25 December. The 1961-built tug is managed by McKeil Marine as a harbour and coastal towing tug with 73 tonnes of bollard pull.

Alouette Spirit, with a 10,500 tonne cargo capacity, was loaded with aluminium ingots and was being towed from Pointe Noire, Canada, to Oswego, USA.

McKeil Marine was involved in a separate salvage operating in the St. Lawrence Seaway on 30 December. According to Vesseltracker, 34 m tug Evans McKeil, with 23 tonnes of bollard pull, assisted tug Ocean A Simard and one other to refloat grounded bulk carrier Pacific Huron, which was loaded with soya beans.

US Coast Guard officials told local reporters that Pacific Huron hit shoals after it suffered a mechanical malfunction near Rock island, south west of Wellesley Island.

RJ Marine Associates, Donjon Marine and Smit Salvage were also active in that salvage effort.

During the last days of 2017, a tug pushing a barge full of containers ran into trouble during heavy weather while en route from Jacksonville, Florida, to Puerto Rico. According to a Fleetmon report, between 25 and 30 containers were lost off the barge and several on board were damaged.

Another container ship ran into trouble in bad weather in December in the Pacific Ocean. 2001-built Adamastos was en route from Busan, South Korea, to the Contecon Manzanillo container terminal, Mexico when it was damaged in a typhoon. It lost containers and some on the upper deck that remained were damaged.