Chesapeake Bay Frozen

“The ice in the northern parts of the Chesapeake is up to a foot thick in some places,” commented Mike Reagoso, Vice President of McAllister Towing’s Mid-Atlantic Operations. Record-breaking cold combined with steady wind has frozen over huge swaths of Chesapeake Bay complicating maritime operations.

At the Annapolis Maritime Society happy hour event last night a Maryland pilot remarked that upon leaving the Chesapeake-Delaware (C&D) Canal the other day, she took her vessel all the way to Baltimore without once seeing open water.

“The ice makes piloting a bit more difficult because you can’t use radar to verify your position as the ice on shore reflects an inaccurate coastline.”

Reagoso forwarded us a few photos taken by his colleagues of what towing operations currently look like:

John Shellenberger, one of the Captains on the Kaleen McAllister was breaking ice for a Kirby-owned vessel yesterday in the upper bay and took the following images:

Things weren’t much better in the southern stretches of the Chesapeake.

A Florida-based U.S. Navy warship moored in Yorktown, Virginia found out the hard way that it doesn’t matter what sort of water hose you leave outside, mother nature will freeze it all the same.

The following video shows Baltimore Harbor on Wednesday:

By the way… McAllister is hiring! See their ad on gCaptain’s job board.