The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Marine News - cont'd. 4. A dramatic story unfolded on western Lake Superior at the end of October. The 95-foot passenger boat GRAMPA WOO, moored at Grand Portage, Minnesota, with her propellers removed and two men aboard, broke adrift in a prolonged northwest gale on October 30th. The vessel sent out distress calls and as sistance was rendered by the American Steamship Company's 1, 000-foot WALTER J. McCARTHY JR. which, despite the heavy weather, managed to put a towline aboard the helpless boat and then towed her some 30 miles to Pie Island, on the west side of the entrance to Thunder Bay. The tug GLENADA came out from Thunder Bay and took the two men off the GRAMPA WOO, but then could not im mediately return to port because of the weather, and a Canadian Coast Guard helicopter had to bring victuals to the tug where she had sought shelter. Meanwhile, however, the GRAMPA WOO broke her towing bridle and drifted off downwind despite tug efforts to pick up the tow. In winds as high as 73 m. p. h., GRAMPA WOO was blown onto the rocky shore of Passage Island, off the northeastern tip of Isle Royale, where she pounded, was holed and filled. She was located by a Coast Guard helicopter on October 31st, but the severe weather precluded any approach for salvage attempts. We previously have mentioned the conversion to a self-unloader of the ULS Corporation's straight-decker CANADIAN N A V I G A T O R , (a) DEMETERTON (75), (b) ST. LAWRENCE NAVIGATOR (80), which will be done this winter by Port Weller Dry Docks. We now have details of the conversion, which will be an unusual combination of tunnel-belt and scraper technology. Instead of having only one large cargo hold, as is the case with most reclaimer (scraper) type self-unloaders, the NAVIGATOR will have three holds. Cargo on the central tunnel-belt structure will feed through basket gates by gravity, while that part of the hold on each side will be left unchanged (with no hopper struc ture) and two large front shovel machines, operating through hydraulicallyoperated doors in the bulkheads, will drag the cargo from the sides and feed it to the belt in the centre tunnel. The ship will be equipped with a loop belt elevator and a 260-foot, aft-mounted boom. The NAVIGATOR will operate for the Seaway Self Unloaders consortium when the conversion is completed in the spring of 1997. Seaway Self Unloaders reportedly will have another ship in its fleet in 1997. ATLANTIC TRADER, (a) ALGOBAY (94), will be coming off a three-year charter to Canada Steamship Lines, and will resume service under her ori ginal name. ALGOBAY was built at Collingwood in 1978. Port Weller Dry Docks completed the major rebuilding of the hull sides of the Algoma Central Corporation's straight-decker ALGOVILLE, (a) SENNEVILLE (94), during October, and thereafter the motorvessel re-entered service for Seaway Bulk Carriers. She made her first post-rebuilding trip up through the Soo on November 3rd. The reconstruction has made ALGOVILLE the widest Seaway-size vessel in service. The Marinette Marine Corporation continues to be busy building new vessels. During the last week of October, the Marinette shipyard delivered to the United States Coast Guard the 176-foot buoy tender IDA LEWIS, the first ship of what has been designated the Keeper Class of tender. She is of technolo gically advanced design. Marinette has contracts for four additional tenders of the same class, with options for ten more. The Wisconsin Central Transportation Corp. announced on October 24th that it had signed a letter of intent to purchase the Green Bay North Lines, which has rail lines and other facilities in Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, from the Union Pacific Railroad Company. This sale is of major importance to lake shippers because it includes the Union Pacific's iron ore pellet loading dock at Escanaba, Michigan, which because of its location at the head of Lake Michigan enjoys the longest shipping season of any oreloading facility on the lakes. The dock, with its rotary car dumper and tra velling shiploading machine, was built in 1969 by the Chicago & North W es