There’s a nymph in my soup

I had all the right intention of making a post earlier, but like usual small fires, cargo operations, and a lack of internet access, conspired to keep me from making one. We loaded gasoline in Quebec and jauntily headed up the St Lawrence to Hamilton, always a nice trip. The voyage through the locks and past Kingston and all the quaint towns, and all the fancy riverfront homes, is a treat. Especially in the summer time, as the recreational traffic provides a welcome diversion for homesick sailors.
But of course it is not summer. So this is not about the scantily clad recreational boaters, but rather about a pest of near biblical proportions. For those who live in this part of the world, the following will come as no news to them. But for me, I was quite impress with the shear volume of bugs that we encountered on way up. So many bugs that it started being an operational issue.

The bug is know locally as a “shad fly“. I had heard of these pest before, but my first experience with them was one of disbelief. Lets just say that these little critters have the potential to cause quite a few headache for us engineers. The pictures will explain more of what I mean…

So you think this is after a day in operation, no sirreee bob, our engine room ventilation fan intake screens had to be cleaned off every ten -fifteen minutes. Good things we actually had screens, the engine room was already a mess with just the “broken” parts of these insects going through. We also had to take precautions for our auxiliary engine on our barge, and their radiator, used to transit the locks.