In August, my family and I went to The Pinery Provincial Park. On the way home, I dragged them up to Goderich, a rather small but important commercial harbour on Lake Huron.
On the left the Ocean A Simard and on the right the Tim S Dool
I mostly took my family hoping to be able to get them a tour of one of the tugboats that I used to work on, however nobody was there so we could only walk around the outside. Interesting, there didn’t seem to the the same kind of MARSEC security measure that exist in other harbours.
Goderich is a fairly small port- I first went there when I was on the tall ships as a teenager, and when I went back in December 2019 (to deliver the Ocean A Simard) it was much smaller than I remembered. It was also, in December of 2019, mostly underwater. This time, the slips were not underwater. The Simard was still there, and there was a couple of freighters there as well. 
The Simard is absolutely a day boat. No bunks. It’s absolutely terrible for deckhands- it’s got some ALCO motors.. 12 cylinders? I think? But these enginers are notorious for not being balanced. It’s so loud on deck that one year a captain bought like a fighter pilot helmet so we could have ear protection and a radio ear piece and have a protective helmet. Then the company made us get rid of it because they didn’t like how it looked. It was really awful and I don’t miss this boat at all not one bit.
But for Captains, it’s nice. The command chair is in the middle of the wheelhouse, you have great views around, it’s great and responsive. And vaguely quiet.
my kid Duncan in front of the Simard. Lennox didn’t want to get close.
Here you can see the Tim S Dool with I believe a FEDNAV freighter behind it, the boys weren’t willing to walk further down the pier towards the Salt Mine so I didn’t get close. The Dool is a little bit famous because a few years ago (while I was still on the tugs), CBC did a whole thing about Charlene Munden, then captain of the Dool and one of the few women captains on Lakers. I’ve since learned she was Algoma’s first woman Captain.
Here are both of my boys in front of the Ocean A Simard. It was raining and they didn’t seem too impressed about my old boat. They have also been on the Ongiara, the ferry I mostly work on and they may have found that more impressive.
Here is a close up shot of the Tim S Dool. This is not the first time I’ve been so close to the Dool, we worked with it once in Hamilton when I was on the Tugs, helping it one of the steelmill piers when it had a bow thruster issue.
Here we see the Dool‘s current bow thruster. I believe the Dool was laid up at this point this summer- ships aren’t usually this high up in the water unless they’re completely empty. This is lighter than even Lightship (which is a standard term which includes a certain amount of water and fuel and things but absolutely not cargo)
I love how that with some ships- like with old cathedrals- you can see clues about how they’ve changed over time. here you can see really well how at some point the Dool has been rebuilt with a new mid section that widened the hull, so there’s a tumblehome. So it’s been made wider to more precisely fit the canals and maximize the size of the cargo loads that it can take, but the upper courses of the hull are narrower to maintain effectively the original deck plan.
Also, this photo is just a brilliant illustration of how straight forward ship plating is sometimes. This is very simple, all things considered.
Here is a photo of a couple of locomotives for my friend André who loves trains. These are commercial locomotives just used, I believe, for the trains that go in and out of the salt mine. They seemed to be shunting.
