ABOARD THE USCGC PENOBSCOT BAY -- Just before 8 a.m., with the air temperature trying to climb out of the single digits, Lt. Marshall Griffin and his crew of 21 prepared Wednesday to perform their daily angioplasty on one of Upstate's main commercial arteries. The 140-foot U.S, Coast Guard Cutter Penobscot Bay is targeting the near-constant encroachment of ice in the dark 32 waters, which threatens to bog down Hudson River traffic and, among other things, the flow of barge-borne home-heating oil to the region. The ship sat moored in the shadow of the cargo-ship Hamra at the Port of Albany where, overnight, an inch-thick skein of plate ice had grown around the ship. For the Bayonne, N.J.-based Penobscot Bay, which helped the Canadian government free the ice-bound St. Lawrence Seaway last spring, this is like a skilled martial artist trying to chop through a saltine. No sweat. But several miles south of Albany, where 4 and 5-inch thick chunks of broken plate ice bob and bunch up and refreeze, and the navigation channel closes to only a couple-hundred yards, the ship's true mission becomes clear. "Commerce would come to halt, as it does with the Great Lakes in the winter, if it weren't for the guys in the Coast Guard," said Richard Hendrick, port general manager. The concern is not so much that a renegade chunk of ice will gash a ship and send it Titanic-style to the river bottom, but rather the ice's choking grasp will bog vessels down, clogging shipping lanes and exposing their barges to crosswinds that could push them aground. "The power of the ice, especially when it gets thick, is pretty sobering," said Lt. James Collins, the ship's executive officer, who originally is from Kinderhook. Collins said the ice wreaks havoc on navigational buoys, dragging them around despite cement sinkers weighing between 8,500 and 12,500 pounds to anchor them in place. "This year seems to be considerably thicker," said Capt. Patrick Kinnier, port captain for New York City-based McAllister Towing, a tug company that hauls barges up and down the Hudson. Kinnier said he's received reports of ice as thick as 6 to 10 inches at the river's notorious chokepoints World's End, near West Point, and Crumb Elbow in Dutchess County where the river bends. Despite this winter's frigid temperatures, the ice isn't necessarily thickest to the north. The shape of the river and movement of the water affects the conditions. One of a tug captain's biggest concerns, Kinnier said, is that the ice dramatically slows a boat's speed, leaving it vulnerable to the heavy, slow-to-stop barge behind it. With a bottom shaped like a football and a 5/8-inch steel ice belt around its waterline, the 662-ton Penobscot Bay may heave wickedly in open seas but is uniquely suited for chugging through ice as thick as 30 inches without needing to back up and ram it. The ship's engines push the bow up onto the ice, forcing the stern lower. But, naturally buoyant, the stern rises, pushing the bow back down on the ice and sounding like a grinding steam engine as it surges forward. "The ship wants to stay at neutral, on an even keel," explained Griffin, the ship's captain. What you don't see is the "bubbler" system that bathes the hull in low-pressure air bubbles, lubricating its path through the water. The ship also is designed to cut a wide, rolling wake to further shove aside the broken ice, breaking "a path for a ship much larger than yourself," said Griffin. The crew is expected to patrol the river, based loosely out of Kingston, until early next week, Collins said, before ceding the ice watch to their sister ship, the USCGC Sturgeon Bay. "There's no place better than the Hudson River," said 1st Class Petty Officer Patrick Haney, who originally is from New Jersey but has spent five years on the river. "It's beautiful country up here." Jordan Carleo-Evangelist can be reached at 454-5445 or by e-mail at [email protected].
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