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March 2005 IBEW Journal

She was a ship with no name. Launched on the Great Lakes in 1977, the 736-foot-long cargo vessel was christened the "Jean Parisien," but had become known simply as "Hull No. 80," the next patient in line for a maritime makeover at Port Weller Dry Docks in St. Catharines, Ontario.
 


Local 303 member Graeme Adams installs a lighting
junction in tunnel of Hull No. 80.

Members of IBEW Local 303 are critical players on the makeover team. Pete Riganelli, a local member and general foreman, says, "The members get much satisfaction and pride knowing that we, as a local, contribute to such a complex and interesting project as the refurbishment of a Great Lakes vessel."


Strategically located on the Welland Canal at the western end of Lake Ontario, along part of the St. Lawrence Seaway system, the Port Weller Dry Docks has long offered inland and ocean-going vessel owners the facilities to build, convert, refit or repair their ships. On blocks or afloat, the ships benefit from the skills of the areas highly unionized trades.


Cometto, a mobil transporter capable of carrying a
payload of 150 tons, removes tunnel section from paint tent.

Members of Boilermakers Local 680 survey Hull No. 80s cargo hold, no longer seaworthy after years of relentless battering between pounding waves and the shifting, mountainous stores of salt, coal, iron ore and stone it carried. They examine the corroded cranes and conveyors, finished after years of dutifully unloading their bounty at ports like Duluth, Montana, Ashtabula, Ohio, and Port Cartier, Quebec.

They cut the 600-foot hold section away from the aft end that houses the engine room and accommodations, piling up tons of scrap that will be sold. Welders manipulate 6,000 tons of steel plate, using "The Clyde," a traveling jib crane with a vertical lift of 130 feet and a maximum lift capacity of 120 tons. They fabricate a new 78-foot-wide fore body for the vessel, owned by Canada Steamship Lines Inc., which, upon completion, will carry approximately 30,000 tons of free flowing cargo.

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(Above) "Hull No. 80" in dry-dock for refurbishment. Hull No. 80 is shadowed by "Hull No. 77," refurbished in 1999 by an IBEW Local 303 crew working for union contractor Canal Marine.


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Ontario's Maritime Makeovers