Stewart J. Cort Back on Ore After Weeks at the Repair Dock

The Stewart J. Cort left the SMET coal dock in Duluth-Superior on the evening of July 31, bound first for fuel and then for the BNSF facility to load ore. The Cort had been tied at SMET for several weeks while crews worked through propulsion repairs.

That is not a routine layover. The Cort is the longest vessel in the American fleet, and propulsion work on a hull that size pulls real tonnage out of the rotation for as long as the job takes. When she finally cleared the dock and pointed toward the fuel pier, it was the most consequential movement on the western lake in days.

The most recent confirmed data puts the Cort at BNSF to load ore; where she is this Monday morning is not confirmed in available reports, but a loaded Cort heading down Superior is what a watcher at the Sault should be tracking. Tonight's forecast adds one more reason to watch that track: a trough averaging 29.7 to 29.8 inches is moving over Superior from the west, pushing conditions above the current two-foot sea state.

Harbor Notes

Dorothy Ann and her consort Pathfinder arrived at Amrize in Marblehead to load limestone, then delivered to Allied Road Products in Cleveland the same day, per the Saturday, August 1 report. They had been anchored in Lake Erie earlier in the week before the Marblehead berth opened.

Baie Comeau and Lee A. Tregurtha both arrived at Toledo on Saturday, the first going to CSX and the Tregurtha to Ironville. Algonova was at George Gradel and Manitowoc at CSX the same day, a full south-Erie roster.

Algoma Innovator was working a salt discharge at Buffalo as of Saturday's report. Salt unloads slowly; anyone driving east has a reasonable chance of finding her still at the wall.

The Levels Ledger

Ontario leads the system at 3.67 feet above Low Water Datum at Rochester. Erie follows at 3.31 feet at Cleveland, Huron at 2.38 feet at Harbor Beach, Michigan, and Michigan at 2.20 feet at Chicago. Superior sits lowest at 1.78 feet at the Sault. For ore and stone carriers on Erie and Ontario, the margins are workable. Superior's 1.78 feet is the number a deeply loaded Cort-class vessel weighs carefully on a westbound departure.

Weather on the Water

High pressure holds Erie, Michigan, and most of Huron quiet today: one-foot waves on Erie and Michigan, two feet on Huron. Ontario is the rough corner at three feet under a departing low. Superior is the watch: a 29.7 to 29.8 inch trough approaches from the west and moves over the lake tonight. Anything on a western or central Superior track should have tonight's updated forecast in hand before casting off.

Looking Astern

Nine U.S. Great Lakes ports earned the Robert J. Lewis Pacesetter Award from the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation last week, recognized for collectively moving more than four million metric tons of international freight through the Seaway in 2025, equal to 27 percent of all international cargo on the lakes that year. The announcement came out of Washington on July 31. The award is named for a former GLS administrator and has been given annually since the Seaway era; a record collective tonnage figure for American ports is the kind of number that takes a full season to build and one press release to mark.

Tomorrow's Watch The NWS trough now crossing Lake Superior will have reset wave conditions on the western and central lake by Tuesday morning; check the Lake Superior Open Waters forecast, zones LSZ123 through LSZ180 on the NWS website, for whether a loaded Cort-size departure from Duluth-Superior is running into building seas.

Vessel Spotlight: The *Stewart J. Cort* departed the SMET coal dock in Duluth-Superior the evening of July 31 after a multi-week propulsion repair tie-up, stopped at the fuel dock, and then moved to BNSF to load ore. Propulsion work on the longest American laker grounds significant carrying capacity for the duration; her return to the ore queue is the fleet news that matters most on the western lake this week.