The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny came to the aid of the Unit­ed States Coast Guard Mon­day night in the St. Marys Riv­er just two (2) miles east of the U.S. Coast Guard Sta­tion, Sec­tor Sault Ste Marie, Michi­gan. The 140-foot Bay-class Ice­break­ing Tug KATMAI BAY (WTGB 101) was dead in the icy waters and required tow­ing assis­tance to its home­port dock. Around 10:45pm Mon­day night, The Tow­ing Com­pa­ny Tug MISSOURI was dis­patched to break ice and assist the USCGC KATMAI BAY back to its dock two (2) hours later.

The Tug MISSOURI is also home­port­ed in Sault Ste Marie, Michi­gan to assist ves­sels through the U.S. Army Corp of Engi­neers locks and to pro­vide emer­gency res­cue assis­tance and ice­break­ing when need­ed. The locks con­nect Lake Supe­ri­or to Lake Huron. This win­ter, the MISSOURI and oth­er tugs of The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny fleet have been extreme­ly busy pro­vid­ing ice­break­ing assis­tance to ves­sels on all the Great Lakes.

The Great Lakes Tow­ing Com­pa­ny col­lab­o­rates and coor­di­nates its ice break­ing oper­a­tions with the U.S. Coast Guard ice­break­ing task groups on the Great Lakes, name­ly Sec­tor Detroit’s “Oper­a­tion Taconite” and Sec­tor Sault Ste Marie’s “Oper­a­tion Coal Shov­el.” “Oper­a­tion Taconite” is the largest domes­tic ice­break­ing oper­a­tion in the Unit­ed States. For the past 115 years, the Tow­ing Com­pa­ny has pro­vid­ed com­mer­cial ice break­ing in ports and har­bors through­out the Great Lakes. The U.S. and Cana­di­an Coast Guards pro­vide ice­break­ing assis­tance in waters where com­mer­cial ice­break­ing resources are either unavail­able or inca­pable of han­dling the dif­fi­cult ice conditions.