Saginaw River Report - March 2025

There was only one commercial vessel passage on the Saginaw River for the month of March 2025, starting the 2025 shipping season on the 21^st.  It was tug Samuel de Champlain and the cement barge Innovation calling on the Holcim Cement Dock in Essexville that got things started 3 days earlier than last year with this first delivery.

For the total number of commercial vessel passages for the year-to-date, the number is again one.  This is one less than 2024 at this point, when we had two deliveries in March.

Saginaw River Passage - March 25, 2025: Appledore IV/Appledore V

Bay City's own tall ship, Appledore IV, has been moved from her home dock at the North end of Wenonah Park, across the Saginaw River, and is now tied up at Veteran's Memorial Park, near Veteran's Memorial Bridge. After spending the 2024 season at the wall and covered up, it is encouraging to see work starting to be done to her. Word has it they are rigging her and preparing her for the 2025 season, with the possibility of participating in the Great Lakes Tall Ship Challenge Tour.

Meanwhile, the smaller Appledore V remains on the hard at Bay Harbor Marina in Bay City, tucked away far to the back of the property, while looking a little rough around the edges and waiting for better days.

Saginaw River Passage - March 21, 2025: Samuel de Champlain/Innovation

While you were sleeping... Early this morning, while many people were up at the Soo, waiting for the 8am opening of the locks for the season, Samuel de Champlain/Innovation quietly eased up the Saginaw River with little fanfare, arriving at the Holcim Cement Dock in Essexville around 4am, marking the first vessel and delivery of the 2025 shipping season. For the three Holcim workers and myself, who were there for the arrival, it was a beautiful morning, with clear skies and a light breeze. March 21, 2025

The 2025 shipping season is underway on the Saginaw River! There most likely will not be any vessel traffic through the Bay City bridges until after March 31st as Independence and Lafayette bridges are both closed to masted navigation until then, but we could still see a few more lower river deliveries before then.

Saginaw River Look Back - Agawa Canyon

Over the next three days, I will be featuring my photos of the three Algoma classics: Agawa Canyon, Algorail, and Algoway. All three were frequent visitors to the Saginaw River and fixtures here for many years. Starting today with Agawa Canyon, she last visited the Saginaw River on September 29th 2009. She laid up after the 2009 season was then towed to Aliaga, Turkey in 2010 for scrapping. The photos in this post start with the 2002 season, ending with the last photo from the 2009 season.

Saginaw River Report - March 3, 2025

Interesting fact: Back about mid-February, the road salt pile at the Sargent Dock in Zilwaukee ran out. This was the first time in five seasons there was no road salt left at the dock. Sargent normally gets their salt from Goderich, ON, delivered by Algoma boats. It will be interesting to see what the 2025 season brings for the dock. The empty dock photos were taken today, 3/3/25.

Saginaw River Year End Review: December 2024

This is it, the last review post from the 2024 season:  The best of December.  In what seemed like a year where there was more overcast skies then sun when out taking photos, there were still a lot of great photo opportunities.  It was nice to be able to get some photos of the boats moving through the ice, a few sunrise/sunset photos, a bucket list trip up to Port Gypsum to catch Sam Laud loading there, and overall, just an incident free season taking photos of 57 different boats.  December only had 6 commercial vessel passages, bringing the year end total to 196 vessels.  While the monthly total was less than December 2023, the year end total was 27 vessels more.

For my fourth season flying the drone, December ended with 15 flights covering 19.76 miles, over 2 hours and 43 minutes.  That gave a grand total for 2024 of 206 flights, covering 233.34 miles, over 35 hours and 26 minutes.  Thanks for following along!  Hope you enjoyed the weekly review series!