This buildup of heavy ice in the east end of Lake Erie is typical every winter as the storms of January and February push the sheets of ice eastwards against the shoreline between Buffalo and Nanticoke. At Port Colborne where we joined our ship at the beginning of March, there was a good mile of these icy obstacles blocking the entrance. Icebreaking vessel or not, it would have taken days to bash through the normal track out of the harbour so our initial departure was by the easiest, most circuitous route possible with no worries about swallowing our pride.
However, this imposing mile of ice stayed in my mind with the realization that within three weeks time the Welland Canal would be opening and ships would be expecting to pass through this area in both directions. I knew that there was no way the weather would warm up enough to melt these massive mounds of ice in those few days and we would have to face the task of making a path through to the entrance piers in the very near future.
A few days later we escorted a tanker to Nanticoke and were waiting for her to discharge her cargo for the return trip to Sarnia so I decided to head back to Port Colborne to see if we could try to tackle this 'ice Everest'. As I mentioned, it would be days of heavy bashing to try and cut a path directly into harbour so I decided to try and cut a circle around the ice at the entrance and hope the wind would blow the ice away into the lake. Luckily, the wind was blowing almost off the shore as we wormed and wiggled our way through the ice to the west of the piers and then worked our way out to the east of the piers. Eventually, we managed to cut a path from the open water through the ice and back out to the open water.
For the next several hours, the ship did dozens of circles around the massive cut of ice we had made allowing the wake of the ship to break off pieces of ice and gradually reducing the size of the mass in the hope that the wind would send the ice away. At one point, I decided to try and make a cut through the centre of the ice. However, as I got about halfway through the mass there was a very large ridge blocking the ship's path. Rather than risk getting pinched into this ridge, I backed out of the ice and went around to the far side to make another cut towards the first one.
Success! As the ship approached the heavy ridge from the opposite side, the ridge cracked open and the ice mass was now halved.
Over these hours, the ice was gradually moving away from the entrance to Port Colborne. Unfortunately, the western corner of the mass was pushing up against the remaining ice that was still frozen to the shore and the wind was starting to shift slightly so it was more parallel to the shore than off the shore. The effect was to cause the mass of ice to pivot around this western corner rather than drift off shore into the lake. Finally, I decided that nothing further could be gained without a favourable wind and, as darkness fell, we left the area with the entrance to Port Colborne clear but the majority of the ice mass lingering just to the west of the piers.
The next few days, I pondered over the results of my decision. The manoeuvre had been only a partial success since the ice was still near the entrance. Perhaps the winds would come up out of the southwest and just blow the ice back in front of the harbour and it would have been a wasted exercise? In fact, the wind did blow strongly out of the southwest some days later. Nervously, I waited for a clear day in order to obtain a satellite shot of the area to see what the effect of the wind would be on the ice at Port Colborne. Finally, I was able to download a picture of Lake Erie to see the current ice picture.
As expected, the floating ice in the lake had drifted downwind and the entrance to the harbour was again ice covered. But, amazingly, the heavy mass of ice was still to the west of the piers and had, in fact, acted as almost a breakwall preventing the floating ice from piling up at the entrance piers!
It was with a good deal of satisfaction that we returned to Port Colborne in mid-March to assist a Laker out of the harbour for its first trip of the season to find only a couple of small ridges had formed off the piers and our work of the previous visit had not been in vain.
So, what reflections do I have about this episode?
There was a large obstacle that was not going to go away and would have to be faced at some point. I chose to try and deal with it at a time that was favourable to me and not at a later, critical moment when I might have been under more pressure of time or other outside forces (unfavourable winds and/or impatient ships waiting to transit). I realized the limitations of my ship and the magnitude of the obstacle, and approached it from a cautious, indirect, manageable path that had some hope of success though not in a flashy 'here comes the cavalry' way. I accepted a partial success when I perceived that conditions had changed and there was no point in wasting further energy.
Most importantly, I accepted the fact that no one outside of the few people on the ship would even know about the efforts we had gone to to facilitate the passage of ships this spring at Port Colborne and I am satisfied with this fact because I and my fellow ship-mates know it.
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