Source: ideas­tream | Author: Eliz­a­beth Miller | Orig­i­nal Date: Jan­u­ary 18, 2017

This week marks the start of a break in the Great Lakes ship­ping sea­son.  A time when lakes freeze over, the locks at Sault St. Marie shut down, and crews on big freighters go home to their fam­i­lies.  But not every­one stops working.

Near the end of the work day at Great Lakes Tow­ing, a com­pa­ny found­ed over 100 years ago by John D. Rock­e­feller, three men secured in har­ness­es weld on the bow of an upside-down tug boat.

“This tug will be named the tug Cleve­land,” says com­pa­ny pres­i­dent Joe Star­ck.  “All the old­er tugs are named after states, so we decid­ed we’ll name these after our ports.”

The com­pa­ny has tug boats sta­tioned from Duluth, Minn., all the way to Buf­fa­lo, N.Y., help­ing clients reach 40 dif­fer­ent ports across the Great Lakes.  But when ship­ping sea­son ends, there’s lit­tle use for tugs — and the com­pa­ny changes gears.

“Ship­yard work is what bal­ances our annu­al cycle so that we don’t go com­plete­ly dark here,” said Star­ck.  “In the old days they would shut down and every­body would go to Flori­da – that doesn’t hap­pen anymore.”

These days, Great Lakes Tow­ing is not only repair­ing its own boats, but customer’s boats, too.

Star­ck says the com­pa­ny changed its busi­ness mod­el and diver­si­fied to make up for a decline in the tow­ing busi­ness.  “It has been a strug­gle. You real­ly have to con­stant­ly keep your nose to the grindstone.”

Com­plet­ing tug Cleve­land is at the top of a long list of projects Great Lakes Tow­ing will com­plete this year. Work­ers will also repair a client’s barge that was dam­aged in west­ern Lake Erie.

“We have a barge in the yard right now that had some dam­age to the bot­tom,” said Star­ck. “The bot­tom plate was opened up by rocks that the barge unin­ten­tion­al­ly land­ed on.”

The com­pa­ny employs about 100 peo­ple, but Star­ck says that num­ber could dou­ble with win­ter ship repairs. Some work­ers come to Cleve­land year after year for the work.

But what hap­pens to all the ship cap­tains, engi­neers, and deckhands?

“Basi­cal­ly they’re all laid off, and then it’s up to them what they do,” said John Clemons, region­al vice pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Mar­itime Offi­cers Union, which has about 400 mem­bers.  “I myself picked up work work­ing on ships, doing repair work for them.

“Some of them go on vaca­tion, a lot of peo­ple are just hap­py to be home.”

The life of a sailor is a gru­el­ing, 24/7 com­mit­ment. Some work what’s called a 60–30 sched­ule, 60 straight days work­ing, then a 30-day break.

Almost 200 peo­ple work aboard the nine ves­sels of the Inter­lake Steamship Com­pa­ny, and they have a few options dur­ing the win­ter hiatus.

“There are some that elect to par­tic­i­pate in win­ter main­te­nance pro­gram and that could be a ship­yard in Stur­geon Bay, Wis­con­sin, a ship­yard in Supe­ri­or, a layup dock in Detroit,” said Inter­lake’s Bren­dan O’Connor.

Every­one – from ship­ping com­pa­nies to engi­neers – is look­ing for a bet­ter sea­son in 2017.  They hope Pres­i­dent Trump’s promise to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges and water­ways brings new oppor­tu­ni­ties to the Great Lakes.

“Any project that requires more steel and more build­ing mate­ri­als will help our busi­ness,” said Starck.

Inter­lake’s O’Connor has a good feel­ing about 2017, too. “Peo­ple do feel a sense of hope­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty with the focus on infra­struc­ture in the Midwest.”

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has already rec­og­nized the need to improve the region’s infra­struc­ture.  The U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment recent­ly released a report that lists a ren­o­va­tion of the Soo Locks, which con­nect Lake Supe­ri­or to the rest of the Great Lakes, as one of the country’s key projects.

The 2017 ship­ping sea­son offi­cial­ly begins at the end of March.