Old Family Photos

This article was scraped from Rochester Subway. This is a blog about Rochester history and urbanism has not been published since 2017. The current owners are now publishing link spam which made me want to preserve this history.. The original article was published April 03, 2016 and can be found here.

     By       Mike Governale

There's no real reason for this post. I was going through old family photos this weekend and stumbled upon these ones from a boat tour around Manhattan island my wife and I took in 2004. By complete coincidence we sailed directly in front of the infamous     Spirit of Ontario I

(a.k.a. Fast Ferry) on her maiden voyage to Rochester...

   Like two ships passing in the night, the encounter was a brief one. These shots were snapped through a hazy plexiglass window, but I figure they're a little bit of history now so I wanted to share them here.

   The boat was LARGE; 282 ft long, 78 feet wide, and as tall as a five story building with capacity for 750 passengers, 220 cars, and 10 buses or trucks.

   Inside it featured two movie theater rooms, a restaurant, two bars, Wi-Fi, a duty free shop, and a children's play area.

   With a top speed of 55 miles per hour, the ferry made daily trips between Rochester and Toronto for two seasons from 2004-2005 before ongoing mechanical issues and mounting debt shut down the operation.

   In 2007 Spirit of Ontario was sold and has operated in Europe as the     HSC Dolphin Jet

ever since.

   And just like that, she was gone. But here are a few more photos from around the island...

Later that summer...

   The big ship turns into the Port of Rochester. She was quite a sight--while she lasted.    * * *