Run up the St. Mary's River to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

Saturday, June 3 -- Drummond Island to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan (51 miles)

We did one last load of laundry (towels and linens) and then topped up with fuel before taking off up the St. Mary's River for the Soo. The Chief Steward really liked the laundry at the Yacht Haven Marina because it was a commercial-scale operation with big, fast dryers and such. She saw locals using the place, and our guess is the the marina's owners are sharp enough to run the laundromat as a profitable year-round business with boaters as a seasonal bonus. 

The run up the St. Mary's River was fun because we got to see lots of freighter traffic. The first one was right as we entered the river, the Florence Spirit running loaded downbound. She's 447' LOA, 70' beam, with 14,850 tons carrying capacity and a 5,794hp engine. She was built in 2004 by Kyokuyo Shipyard. You can get her stats on the McKeil website.

Next up was a much sadder sight, the John Sherwin laid up at an old dock in Detour, waiting for someone to figure out what to do with her. I found a web article that said she was built in 1958 and laid up in 1981 (consistent with when the integrated steel industry pretty much collapsed) and hasn't had any work since except a brief spell storing grain in Chicago. Not clear who owns her, or why she hasn't been scrapped. Hope springs eternal.

Soon after these two ships we passed the old Round Island Light (the one in the St. Mary's River, not to be confused with the one near Mackinac Island) which was built in 1892 and taken out of service 30 years later in favor of a simple steel structure. Someone obviously acquired it at some point and turned it into a private residence. (Notice how hazy it was in all of these pictures. Visibility was only a few miles.)

Our next freighter encounter was passing the Lyulin running upbound. She is a bulk carrier built in 2011 serving in the Navibulgar fleet (a Bulgarian shipping company). Her bow wake was very impressive. She has one of the "new" hull styles with the bulbous bow. 

Soon after we passed the Lyulin we encountered a US Coast Guard patrol boat that had pulled over a runabout and lashed it alongside. This was very odd, as the Coast Guard rarely engages with pleasure craft anymore. Wish we knew what that was all about! 

As we rounded the last bend in the St. Mary's River and approached the Soo we noticed odd splashing about along the American shore, which careful inspection revealed to be some troops practicing with landing craft. 

Soon after our marina was in sight, just on the other side of the Valley Camp, which is an old 1917 freighter turned into a museum ship. I visited it with my dad and my son when we did our Lake Superior trip back in 1995. The big building to the left of the Valley Camp is the Saint Mary's Falls Hydropower Plant (aka Power House). This is at the downstream end of a canal that was dug around the American side of the falls at the turn of the previous century. The capacity is 18 MW, which isn't much by modern standards, but it's renewable and it generates a reliable baseload, unlike wind or solar. 

Our plan was to stay two nights in the Ojibway Hotel in downtown Sault Ste. Marie to give ourselves a boating break, but it turned out the boat docked next to us was a 27' Ranger Tug, so of course we had to visit and we quickly learned that her folks had Lake Superior experience. Their perspective helped us rethink our plan in light of the current weather forecast, which was calling for the wind to shift to the north and strengthen at some point on Monday and then stay that way for a few days. Based on their input, we decided that if we were going to be weathered in somewhere we would rather it be in Munising or Marquette, a hundred-plus miles west into Lake Superior, than at the Soo. So we decided to limit ourselves to one night at the Ojibway in downtown Sault Ste. Marie. We don't feel like we missed much with this decision, as the Soo and the Ojibway have both seen their better days. 

Janet took this picture of the sun setting behind our hotel while walking back from dinner at Zorba's Greek Restaurant. The food was so-so, but it was a nice place.