Winter doesn't stop bay work

The Capital
By Pamela Wood
Feburary 19, 2010

No matter how cold it gets, how gusty the wind blows, how icy the water becomes, water-based businesses have to keep plugging through winter months on the Chesapeake Bay.

If the workload of the M/V John C. Widener is any indication, there's plenty of business to be done on local waterways.

The state-owned icebreaker is busy busting free watermen, towboats and marinas from winter's icy grip. The Widener has gotten so busy that its sister vessel, A.V. Sandusky, was scheduled to cross the bay to help break ice on the Western Shore's rivers.

"It has been constant," said Jeff Lill, captain of the Widener, which normally breaks ice from the Magothy River down to Rockhold Creek in Deale.

Among those making Wednesday's requests: two towboat companies, one marina, a skipjack, and a sailor with a moored sailboat listing to one side and weighed down with snow.

The Widener traveled up Spa Creek, Back Creek, Lake Ogleton and the Magothy River, passing container ships bringing cars and other goods to the Port of Baltimore.

For Thursday, the icebreaking schedule included requests on the Severn River, South River and Parrish Creek, some of them from watermen who need to get out to go oystering.

Oystering is the main livelihood for watermen in the winter. If watermen can't get on the water, they can't make money.

Already, the Widener busted free Ego Alley at Annapolis City Dock so public works crews could dump mounds of snow from city streets into the water.

Winter brings plenty of calls for marine towing, which means Hamilton Gale of TowBoat US has to be able to get his boats out from Spa Creek.

This winter has been "busier than usual," he said.

Gale said he gets calls for damaged or sinking boats. He has an aluminum boat that can break through about 3 inches of ice, but tries not to beat up his boat by doing that.

If he can't reach a boat by water, he'll go by land.

Gale expects business to pick up in the coming weeks as the weather warms and more people realize the damage that the cold and excessive snow this winter has done to boats.

This is the latest in the season that Lill remembers breaking ice to keep maritime life humming, at least since the winter of 1995-1996. Normally, icebreaking is done by Valentine's Day.

The ice is at least 4 inches thick in spots, causing the 72-foot, steel-hulled Widener to shudder a bit as it pushes up against the ice to loosen it.

But it all depends on the characteristics of the ice. Sometimes breaking thick ice that's beginning to thaw can be like sliding a hot knife through butter. And sometimes, 2-inch ice can be "like trying to bust a sidewalk," Lill said.

Soon enough, though, the weather will start to warm and the sunshine will work its magic, making the ice a mere memory. By then, the Widener crew will be ready for its next task: replacing and repairing some of the state's thousands of buoys.