Our friend Gary who helped us move our stored stuff to
Florida invited us to take part in the annual tugboat race in Detroit, MI. Gary is friends with the boat owner and he
uses this particular tug as a personnel yacht.
It turned out that the tug was built in the Netherlands in 1956 for the
Dutch Navy. It still had much of the
original paperwork and ships labels onboard.
When the crew discovered that Anneke was Dutch, she was immediately a
very popular person. She spent quite
some time translating documents and ship labels for the crew.
The owner operates a marine company on Lake Erie and his
whole family is involved. There were
around 50 people onboard including most of the owner’s family. They went all out with the food and drinks
for this 12 hour plus day on the water.
We boarded the tug Josephine at the company dock in Toledo
at 7:00 Am for the trip to Detroit. The
weather was perfect and it was a great day on the water. We passed by many of the waterfront
facilities in Toledo and Detroit that I had dealings with during my working
life in the Coast Guard and later working in the commercial marine
industry. It also brought back many
great memories of our sailboat days on Lake Erie.
This tugboat race is a fun event but certainly the
competitive spirit is strong. As we
assembled in the Detroit River for the start of the race, some of the boats,
ours included, did some close aboard bombarding of the other competitors with
water balloons. I barely avoided water
damage to my camera several times during these battles.
Finally, the race was ready to start and the competitors
lined up abreast of each other for the start.
One of the vessels we had the most water balloon exchanges with lined up
very near to us. At the gun, we were off with the close aboard tug constantly
veering in towards us. Our crew held
fast and it was a very exciting personnel battle between our vessels. When you are traveling full out in heavy
displacement hulls, there is suction and cushion affect that can cause
difficulty with the control of these vessels.
Apparently, the other helmsman was not that familiar with this concept
and we had two rather robust collisions.
It would have been a great time to board with grappling lines and
swords, but many of our crew was too busy heaving balloons and enjoying
beverages. For myself, I was busy
getting lots of pictures, hopefully not for any upcoming admiralty case.
After the race, we made a short port call in Port Windsor,
Canada. They had a celebration going on
as the port was one of the sponsors of the race. We did not have enough time to do any real
exploring, but it was a good chance to stretch our legs.
The return trip to Toledo was relaxing and filled with even
more food served on deck. Thanks to
Anneke’s translation services, we have already been invited back for next year!