CEW Up Mac Westbound 1 sharper 12-01-07 by Debra Kohlrust-Withrow

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Description This is the pilot's eye view from the pilothouse of the 745' long bulk carrier, M/V John J Bolland. We were running empty for Escanaba to load taconite iron ore concentrate pellets. The time is approximately half an hour after sunset and the bright horizon indicates that we are most likely running out of a storm.This was one of my first trips as a 41 year old Deck Cadet from the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, located in Traverse City, MI. My prior career encompassed all facets of film, still, and video program production. I joined the Academy June of 1998 and had spent an entire year studing the basics of operating a bulk cargo vessel longer then 2 1/2 football fields and carrying around 30,000 tons of coal, stone, iron ore in various forms, and whatever else could be dumped into the holds and unloaded over the side by our 235' long conveyor belt.The Mackinac Bridge dead ahead of us spans the Straits of Mackinac (pronounced as Mack' in awe) which seperate lower Michigan from upper Michigan. The 'Big Mac' was the first major suspension bridge built after the spectacular failure a few years earlier of Washington State's Tacoma Narrows Bridge.Notice the deep triangular trusses beneath the roadway of the bridge. The second New Tacoma Narrows bridge appears virtually identical to the Mackinaw Bridge built almost 50 years earlier. If you look closely, both car and truck traffic can be clearly seen crossing the span in both directions.To the far left of frame is Round Island. The Round Island Passage leads down Lake Michigan's eastern shore to Stoneport and other frequent stops for the Bolland, down to Indiana Harbor at the very southern tip of Lake Michigan.The large grey structure down and ahead of the pilothouse supports the base top end of the self-unloading boom. Out of sight at the forward end of that structure is an enormous hydraulic lift cylender which can raise the boom to approximately 30 degrees above the vertical. Other cylinders mounted hor

Debra Kohlrust-Withrow, Tacoma, Washington
Member Since November 2007
Artist Statement I have been taking photographs and doing my own processing since the second grade. Dad was in the industrial/commercial motion picture business and Mom did animation for Disney just before and during World War 2.

Starting in 1967, when I left college, I worked in the professional still, film, and video program production fields until I felt that I had gone as far as I could with that profession.

In 1982 I bought a 9 meter diesel auxiliary sail boat and joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary to learn how to operate her safely. April of 1989, the Coast Guard Auxiliary held their area confrence in Traverse City, Michigan. That's the site of The Great Lakes Maritime Academy at Northwest Michigan College. During breaks in the confrence, I filled out their application and was accepted as a 42 year old deck cadet. I graduated 2 1/2 years later, and six months ahead of the rest of my class, with a 3.48 GPA.

I enjoyed that profession immensely until I suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury while directing the loading of a 735 foot long Great Lakes bulk carrier vessel January of 2004. I tried sailing again in both 2005 and briefly 2006, but I was not able to handle the work properly.

So, I'm now scanning my thousands of 35mm negative and hundreds of digital images in the hope that some folks out there will enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Enjoy!