BANGOR – Breaking up is hard to do especially when the temperature drops below freezing.
But when it comes to clearing a path in the icebound Penobscot River, it’s a snap for the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Tackle from Rockland.
The 65-foot, black harbor tug plowed through the river’s channel Saturday, opening a path so oil barges can make deliveries to Bangor.
“If I had known earlier in my career how fun ice-breaking is, that’s all I’d have been doing,” Chief Petty Officer Frank Makson said. Makson, who has nearly 18 years in the service, is the officer in charge of the small tug operated by a crew of eight.
At about 6 a.m. Saturday, the outdoor temperature had dropped briefly below zero, but an overnight cold snap was enough to create ice from shore to shore in some parts of the waterway.
There’s a knack to breaking ice that is learned mostly on the job.
“There’s no school for this either,” 35-year-old Makson said. “I just learned this on the fly.”
While ice breaking is a hands-on job, the Coast Guard still tries to have an experienced officer on board when there’s a change in command of the vessel. That way, the two top crew members can teach each other the ropes.
The winter work of the Coast Guard’s smallest “ship” has its own lingo to learn, too. Jargon such as “frazzle ice,” “pancake ice” and “fast ice” are terms that would puzzle most people. Frazzle ice is slushy stuff when the water is just beginning to solidify. Pancake ice is irregular chunks – no larger than 3 yards in diameter – of frozen water that pack together. Fast ice is when the river is smoothly frozen over from shore to shore.
When the Tackle got underway Saturday, the crew encountered all types of ice as the ship steamed down the Penobscot.
Makson enjoys running a tug, having a small crew, being in Maine, and “what we do,” he said. “It’s a different part of the Coast Guard.”
“The smaller crew means we’re a lot closer – nobody’s lost.”
Of the U.S. Coast Guard’s 11 remaining tugboats in service from Maine to Virginia, Tackle was the fourth built among the 15 original class ships. It was constructed in Jacksonville, Fla., and launched in 1962. In winter, it breaks ice. Come summer and other times of the year, it is used for maintaining lighthouses and other aids to navigation and now, homeland security patrols.
On Saturday, Tackle departed the pier at Barrett Paving Materials around 7:30 a.m., a little more than two hours after high tide. For some reason, slack tide in Bangor lasts about two hours, Makson said, comparing it to the slow draining of a bathtub. After slack tide, the water ebbs and begins running out for about six hours until low tide hits.
When high tide ebbs, the Tackle is ready to break ice so the outgoing current flushes the river of loose ice.
The nearly 80-ton hulk of steel, powered by a 503 horsepower Caterpillar engine, plowed through most ice with ease, but “what really breaks the ice is our wake,” Makson said, as he maneuvered the ship toward the Joshua Chamberlain Bridge.
Tackle turned at the bridge and headed downriver passing under the Interstate 395 bridge.
When the ship came to Bangor on Friday, there was virtually no ice in the river, but overnight, the crew could hear the ice forming against the hull.
By 7:30 a.m., the air temperature over the water had warmed to 12 degrees and the water temperature was hovering around 32 degrees. Saturday was a quite a contrast from the Tackle’s trip to Bangor in early July when it was above 100 degrees, Makson noted.
Instead of breaking a sweat, the crew had to don cold-weather suits to keep warm during the ice-breaking mission in the Penobscot River.
The river runs 22 nautical miles from Bangor to its mouth, but ice had formed only on a 7-mile stretch that day. There are about 30 turns in the river, Makson said, as the ship sliced through some fast ice at Crosby Narrows.
The top speed of the harbor tug is 10 knots, depending on the tide and winds.
“That’s the most technology we have on board,” Makson said, pointing to a laptop computer with a navigation program.
Seaman Justin Erskine, a Greene native, was at the helm, steering the ship through the frozen channel.
“Two zero five, aye-aye chief,” Erskine said, signaling the magnetic course the ship was about to take.
Tackle broke through the ice, sending glasslike chunks skating across the top of the still-solid areas of the river. “Track maintenance” is another term for clearing the frozen path for deliveries. In the spring, ice breaking is done for flood prevention.
In past years, the Coast Guard would break ice a couple of times a month. Now, it is about four times a year, Makson said, because of the oil pipeline from Searsport to Bangor.
“So, it’s not imperative to keep it open 24-7,” he said, but it mostly hinges on the weather during a particular winter.
If the ice gets too thick, the 140-foot cutter Thunder Bay from Rockland makes the Penobscot River run.
Besides getting a heads-up from barges planning trips to Bangor, the icebreakers get a regular report from riverfront homeowner John Hatch of Hampden, who monitors the ice conditions as a courtesy to the Coast Guard.
At one point, Tackle’s bow rode up over thickly packed ice, but the weight of the hull soon crushed its way through that tough spot.
As Tackle steamed past Hatch’s house, Makson gave a tug on the ship’s horn. On the return trip, Hatch was on his deck waving to the crew.
Tackle had made it seven miles downriver before turning around. The worst of the ice was near Snub Point, where some of the spots were up to 11/2 feet thick. Most of the river’s ice, however, was only a few inches in depth.
“Usually, it’s not this far down that we break ice,” Makson said when the ship neared Winterport. “That’s quite a bit of ice.”
“It’s not even breathing hard yet,” Makson said, referring to the tug, as the vessel neared the Bangor dock.
“This is what we want right here,” he said, noting all of the broken ice had washed away since the Tackle set out that morning.
Comments
comments for this post are closed