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Marine News - cont'd. In the November issue, we noted the departure from Toronto on November 2nd of the sail excursion vessel EMPIRE SANDY, which was en route to the warmer waters of the Bahamas, where she will operate during the winter. The former tug was downbound in the U. S. section of the Seaway during the evening of November 3rd. Previously registered at Thunder Bay, EMPIRE SANDY was changed into Bahamian registry as she cleared the St. Lambert Lock. One of the mem­ bers of the Executive Committee of the Toronto Marine Historical Society went along with EMPIRE SANDY as part of her crew on the delivery voyage, and we shall await a full report on his return. A vessel which, for a number of years was a common sight on the Great Lakes, will now be used for the cleaning up of debris left in Antarctica by tourist expeditions. Built in 1952 as KISTA DAN, she has operated under several names, but in the late 1960s and 1970s, she ran into the lakes as (b) MARTIN KARLSEN. She even spent the winter of 1969-1970 in the lakes. Most recently named OLYMPIAKOS, she had been laid up in Greece from 1987 until purchased by London owners this summer for her Antarctic duties. The 210-foot U. S. Coast Guard deep-sea cutter DEPENDABLE was recently given an 18-month, $21. 7 million rebuilding at the Coast Guard yard at Baltimore, Maryland. The work is expected to extend her life by fifteen years, and DEPENDABLE was the eighth of nine cutters to be so upgraded. DEPENDABLE is of interest to lake observers because she was built in 1967 by the American Ship Building Company at Lorain, Ohio. While on the subject of the U. S. Coast Guard, we should catch up on the de­ liberations over the future of the 53-year-old icebreaker MACKINAW. At last report in these pages, her future appeared to have been deep-sixed as a re­ sult of a Virginia consulting firm having projected a $93 million cost for a gold-plated refurbishing of the ship. The incredible expenditure would only have extended MACKINAW'S life for twenty years, apparently. Instead, it was decided by the Coast Guard in late summer that MACKINAW would be kept in service at least through 2006. This will give the Coast Guard time to design and construct a replacement, and by then, MACKINAW will be 62 years old, substantially beyond the normal life expectancy of such a ship. Lake ship­ pers will, no doubt, be pleased at the extension to MACKINAW'S career in that she is the most effective anti-ice force the U. S. Coast Guard ever has had on the Great Lakes, and there would be severe navigation problems if she were not in operation. At the same time, the plan, in calling for the construction of a replacement, acknowledges what shippers have long known, and that is that small tug-type breakers, like the BAY class, can never take the place of a vessel like the MACKINAW. Newspapers around the world carried photos of the Limassol-registered pas­ senger ship ROMANTICA being burned out by a fire which originated in the en­ gineroom during a Mediterranean cruise. The fire occurred off Cyprus, and all 650 passengers and crew were removed safely. Casual observers may not have realized that not only was ROMANTICA one of the oldest ships still running in the deep-sea passenger trade (she was built in Germany as a freighter in 1939), but that she also had a very definite Canadian connection. HUASCAREN, as she originally was named, was captured during World War Two and eventually became war reparations awarded to Canada. Thus it was that she sailed up the St. Lawrence River to Montreal from 1947 until 1954 as Cana­ dian Pacific's BEAVERBRAE, carrying cargo and, on her westbound transatlantic voyages, up to 775 immigrants to Canada. Sold in 1954, she was converted to a passenger ship and served as such as AURELIA, then ROMANZA, and finally as ROMANTICA. The fire which lately has rendered the vessel a total loss occurred on October 4th. The Fortune Navigation excursion ship GARDEN CITY, which returned to the lakes during the summer after her stint on the east coast, was at last re­ port lying in the Poison Street slip at Toronto, where she was to undergo a very much needed refit to repair the substantial damage she had sustained on