American Century – Steel Giant Arrives in the Twin Ports For Coal
From YouTube Channel: September 5, 2020 at 03:00PM
ONN – Here is the 1000-foot American Century arriving in Duluth-Superior on the morning of August 18, 2020. She was empty on arrival and was in town to pick up a load of coal from the Midwest Energy Terminal in Superior. We first see her enter the Duluth Shipping Canal, where we get the traditional captain’s salute as she passes under the Aerial Lift Bridge. (And of course, we hear the reply from the bridge in return.) I then moved to Rice’s Point to watch the American Century do a reverse pivot so she could back up to the dock at Midwest Energy, after passing under the John A. Blatnik highway bridge. Regular viewers to this channel have no doubt seen this sequence of events before.
One thing that was notable about this visit (for me, at least) was the action of the American Century’s bow thrusters, seen at 7:06 in this video. While one often sees the swirl of water around the thrusters while they are in use, I have never seen quite so much movement of the water as I did with this arrival. Perhaps it’s because the Century was riding high in the water and the thrusters were closer to the surface. The American Century is outfitted with two sets of thrusters, one at the bow and one at the stern. These thrusters help with steering the ship while in port, helping to dock without the aid of tugboat for assistance. Most lakers in service today have thrusters for this reason. Even ships that weren’t originally built with thrusters usually had them installed later on. The circular symbol painted above the waterline shows where the thrusters are located along the hull.
Note from Zennie62Media and Oakland News Now: this video-blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media , Inc. mobile media video-blogging system network that was launched June 2018. This is a major part of Zennie62Media , Inc.’s new and innovative approach to the production of news media. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 on YouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62-created and owned social media pages. The overall objective is smartphone-enabled, real-time, on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. Now, news is reported with a smartphone: no heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop are necessary. The secondary objective is faster, and very inexpensive media content news production and distribution. We have found there is a disconnect between post length and time to product and revenue generated. With this, the problem is far less, though by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system network coding and seeks interested content and media technology partners.