Boatnerd Discussion Forum

GSA retains half control for 5 years before clear title and it must remain a museum (if so disposed of) for 5 years. When the first group that took her turned her back to GSA and SPCM bought her, the 5 year clock started ticking again. Now it's almost up.

GSA is still involved with Acacia almost eight years after she was decommissioned? Could you elaborate on that? It seems as though common practice is for the government to dispose of the ships as quickly as possible to divest itself of any further involvement or responsibility to clear the books and close out the paperwork.

The Coast Guard looked at re-fitting and re-powering the Mackinaw prior to building the new one. The found it would cost as much as a new boat, use more manpower, and still be a single purpose vessel. It's more cost effective to build a second boat like Mack II which is what they decided to do until our thieving congress took the money and spent it elsewhere. The other thing is the Mackinaw no longer belongs to the Coast Guard, is free of the GSA co-ownership and has a clear title. Nobody, Gov't or civilian is going to spend that kind of cash to re-fit a museum ship for a once in a while if needed mission.
The Acacia could possibly be chartered and fitted out as a private icebreaker if someone wanted to pay for 5 year, repairs and upkeep except us folks at the City of Milwaukee don't have clear title from GSA yet. Close but no cigar yet.
The bottom line is the Coast Guard is stuck with what they've got and unless the Canadians send more help, it's going to be slow going.

Guest wrote:Come on, folks. This is silly. Mackinaw I is done. She isn't going to be rebuilt, reactivated, nothing - her time has gone.

Secondly, what evidence folks, do we have that Mackinaw II is a failure? She's nearly ten years old now, and I'm not aware of her getting stuck or not able to handle ice. This year will be a good test for her, but with innovations in her hull and propulsion design, she's proven to be very effective.

Time to move on.

I am not saying the current Mackinaw is not a good breaker, I think she is a great ice breaker! What I am saying is that occasionally (like now) there is a need for additional heavy assets. And without changing the outward appearance of her at all she could be refitted and possibly repowered in the future, and then used during a season like this!

Come on, folks. This is silly. Mackinaw I is done. She isn't going to be rebuilt, reactivated, nothing - her time has gone.

Secondly, what evidence folks, do we have that Mackinaw II is a failure? She's nearly ten years old now, and I'm not aware of her getting stuck or not able to handle ice. This year will be a good test for her, but with innovations in her hull and propulsion design, she's proven to be very effective.

Time to move on.

Regardless of the early season ice conditions, there is no hope that original Mackinaw is going to be returned to service. Despite all of the talk of global warming, it seems to me that winters such as these run on about a 20 year cycle of harsh to mild. (I remember in the late 70s the fears generated of a coming Ice Age) If the next few winters are as harsh as this one, the companies receiving the cargos carried by lake ships will have to adjust their inventory practices to account for delays of shipments. A company my wife works for is having trouble getting castings from several foundries located in the Midwest that are unable to getting casting sand. From what I have heard, the suppliers of the sand did not get a couple of shipments and thus they are now out of this material. I don't know if this is directly related to the ice on the lakes curtailing vessel operations late in last season or not, but it might be possible. This winter has also played havoc upon ground and air transportation as well. As I have told my son (which complains to have never seen such a winter), perhaps we have gotten too spoiled with all these mild winters?

middlerouge wrote:

Guest wrote:Should use an executive order and hire a tug company to get her going ASAP instead of waiting for the economic fallout of not getting shipping running at full speed. The Feds should also contract every available tug to help maintain the tracks after initial breakout.

What help would a tug be to push an icebreaker? It could work for a while, but once you have to breakout a ship, or use a backing and ramming procedure, your defeating the intended purpose, and becomes a waste of time. I'm not saying it won't work, but it's far from practical.

I do not think we are talking about using a tug to push the Mackinac. What we are proposing is that a tug company refit and operate the Mackinac as a tug.

Guest wrote:Should use an executive order and hire a tug company to get her going ASAP instead of waiting for the economic fallout of not getting shipping running at full speed. The Feds should also contract every available tug to help maintain the tracks after initial breakout.

What help would a tug be to push an icebreaker? It could work for a while, but once you have to breakout a ship, or use a backing and ramming procedure, your defeating the intended purpose, and becomes a waste of time. I'm not saying it won't work, but it's far from practical.

Should use an executive order and hire a tug company to get her going ASAP instead of waiting for the economic fallout of not getting shipping running at full speed. The Feds should also contract every available tug to help maintain the tracks after initial breakout.

The point of removig her superstructure and engines is not to refit her as a single purpose vessel. the new superstructure and equipment would be designed so that she could do work other than ice breaking. The only thing that would be saved would be the hull. In order to think past what she did in the past, we have to think out of the box and look to the future. The only part of her that would be saved would be the hull. That hull can break more ice than any other cutter on the lakes and it could do it faster, better and cheaper after the refit.

Shipwatcher1 wrote:The owner that privately runs the Sundew; has he or can he offer the services of his ship to break ice if it were needed?

It was brought up last year when the CG either refused or was unable to break out Fraser shipyards to dock the Munson. I think it was refused because it wasn't. Navigation channel. The Sundew was mentioned and I believe it was looked into but ultimately decided no. The exact reasons I'm not sure of.

I was on the old Mackinaw with the team designing the new Mackinaw. The experts agreed that the new Mackinaw's modern hull form would be better at breaking ice in all but the heaviest of conditions. After all new Mackinaw was not built with the old school football shaped hull.

Thank You all gentleman for you comments and words of wisdom regarding the Old Mackinaw and the questions that I had about her. So I guess from reading most of your comments, that she is done and not coming back to life as she was once before when she was retired in 2006. I found most of your comments were very informative and interesting to read. My biggest concern and what I really wanted to know is "Could the new Mackinaw be up to the challenge of handling so much ice on the lakes right now?" I am sure she will do just fine but, let's face it as this type of ice we have not seen in at least 20 years or more and I just don't know if today's Mackinaw can deal with that type of ice compared with her predecessor back then. I guess time will tell as far as if she is up to the task and the challenge. Of course temperatures and the wind directions have a lot to do with the melting of the ice also. Bottom line is it will be interesting to see how the new Mack does.

You are correct that the Mackinaw was a grand old ship and great icebreaker. Her designers showed a lot of forethought in building that ship in the early 40's to last as it did and be able to break a wide enough track for the new generation 1000 footers. However, that's all it could do so it was essentially uinderemployed for 8 months of the year. It was also very personnel intensive. When I went on there in 1978, it had an authorized compliment of 106 enlisted and 12 or 14 officers. Its three engine rooms chewed up a lot of engineers when running full bore. In the early 80's the compliment was cut to 66 enlisted and eight officers in an attempt to make it cheaper to run and prolong its usefulness in the eyes of the bean counters, but it remained a single mission ship - icebreaking. I don't know how well the present ship breaks ice compared to the vessel it replaced, but it also is a buoy tender with a compliment of somewhere around 50 Again, I don't know how its performance compares to the old vessel, but the taxpayers are getting icebreaking services at less than half the salary costs of the late 70's, and I presume the maintenace costs are similarly reduced.

If you wanted to have a super ice breaker, for the Great Lakes, the Coast Guard would have to take the "Mac" back, remove all of her machinery and superstructure and refit her with new. Some would say that this would cost too much but that is not true. It would cost about 20 to 30 percent less that building another multipurpose ship like what we now have. The result would be a breaker that would do with ease, the job that the current vessels struggle, at times, to do. The hull of the "Mac" is as good as new and designed to do one thing, Break ice. We would be hard pressed to roll the plates and build the equal of that ship.

Jon Paul wrote:My brother the "Chief" who used to post on here till his passing over the bar on January 18 told me the Old Mac was not capable of ever seeing service again without a costly major re-fit which would take more time and money than the Government would ever spend. He would know he spent 8 years as EO on the old girl.

Beg to differ, a commercial tug crew could probably have her running in a week. When the CG is ready to junk something its still brand new to us.

The owner that privately runs the Sundew; has he or can he offer the services of his ship to break ice if it were needed?

My brother the "Chief" who used to post on here till his passing over the bar on January 18 told me the Old Mac was not capable of ever seeing service again without a costly major re-fit which would take more time and money than the Government would ever spend. He would know he spent 8 years as EO on the old girl.

What was the "only " ship to break out the mighty Mackinaw when it was held fast in the Great Lakes ice ?

From what I read about when the Coast guard layed her up for her museum ship mission, all of her water inlets, outlets, and any other orifices were plugged with concrete. Fitting her out wouldn't be impossible, but it would be a monumental task and more than it would be worth for the short amount of time she would be needed. Face it, her time is done, she served well for a long time. It's time for her to sleep.
Too bad the Polar Star wouldn't fit through the Seaway. That would be fun to watch with a diesel electric plant of 18,000 shp and gas turbine plant of 75,000 shp.