I'm just finishing a book on the Great Lakes and it has given me a lot to htink about. Growing up on the coast of New york, I think of the sea aas the Atlantic but this has opened my eyes to the rich history and oportunities in the Great Lakes of North America. The storms, squalls, ice, lost places, lighthouses, trade routes and the wrecks, guys the Edmund fitzgerald is just one on manym any epic wrecks and almost all of which in the 2070's is UCAS. With the shift in national view north with the loss of the CAS and the west to NAN I would think these would become even more important to the UCAS. Detroit, Chicago, Buffalo, Eerie, Milwaukee are all on the lakes. parts of modern Ontario,

So I'm curious, have any of you had runs involving this patch of North America? Am I maybe getting htoughts flowing?

One of my characters was drowned there along with the team by irate Yakuza. After being flensed but kept alive via magic. And rolled in salt.

I've GMed several runs in Toronto and environs. For my local group I had several connected scenarios regarding a corp's use of dockside street people as 'training aids' for cybered guard dogs. Old ships, docks, dirty water, etc.

For the old Virtual Seattle series I wrote a run that had The Blind Man's minions capture Claudia and take her to a simsense facility in the Movie District (name held over from the old days) where she was being brainwashed by an 'evil genius'. That one never made it out before the series ended. Possibly because I snagged from the other writers the right to develop vorpal beavers. I built them into the series of events in the run and had shoreline wetlands in play, too. With the further influence of the action being in former Canada, I called the scenario Beaver Hunt.

Canadian humour doesn't go over well down south sometimes. (PG rating be damned. And we don't bleep words in movies on TV, either.)

I've spent most of my life near the Great Lakes, and they always felt like inland seas to me. Maybe the waves aren't always as big, but if you can't see the other side of the water, and you feel the effects on the shore of a storm hundreds of kilometres away, its a sea to me.

Peter

In some ways, the Great lakes can be more dangerous than on the ocean. When conditions are right some of the storms, especially around November, can be as strong as an Atlantic hurricane. It's more dangerous for shipping on the lakes as they have nowhere to run when a storm blows in, unlike on the ocean where they can steer around it. The Great Lakes are on a climatological sweet spot with the Jet Stream passing over it, the arctic cold fronts sweeping in from the north, and the Caribbean warm fronts sweeping up from the south. Weather systems converge and clash here, making for some spectacular storms, and many headaches for weather forecasters.

There's also a long history of cross border smuggling on the lakes, but I don't know how relevant that would be in the UCAS.

Another interesting point to note is that Great Lakes shipping vessels tend to be larger than their ocean-crossing counterparts.

Actually, the opposite is true. The largest a Great Lakes Steamer can be is the size of the various locks on the lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Many modern ocean going vessels are too large for the locks.

right, they may look bigger because the huge fragging ships seem to stand out next to the smaller town but they arel imited by the locks and also the fact they do not need to carry as much fuel for passage because there can be freaquent stops.

As for the storms and such I'm just discovering those. Much of the smuggling was liquor during prohibition. But i am wondering with the shape of the UCAS if the lakes would become a highway for products. After all it could be a gateway for Ares to ship goods to the St Lawrence and the world.

Sorry, I should have been a bit more specific in my comment. Supertankers measure at 1,400 feet in length and are designed to cross oceans. However, there are only a small handful of vessels at that size. The majority of Great Lakes carriers are designated as Seawaymax (able to traverse the SLS) and are only half as long as a supertanker (740 feet) in order to fit in the locks. But the majority of ocean-crossing cargo carriers are in the range of 650 feet and shorter.

So your typical Great Lakes carrier will be longer than your typical ocean-crossing carrier. But ocean-crossers also have a deeper draft so they can carry more in their holds. Whatever, I thought it was cool. It was a little factoid I picked up from a Coast Guardsman when I was on vacation in Sault Ste. Marie.

Another weird factoid is that there are around 25 Great Lakes vessels that are built too large to fit through the locks system on the SLS. So they'll never see the ocean.

The typical annotation is handymax and/or handysize either -tankers or bulkers. Handysizes max out at 25.000 ton deadweight (that's cargo + hevay fuel oil). Handymaxes range upto approx maximum of 50.000 ton deadweight.

The sheer amount of strange trivia known by the denizens of this board is staggering

yeah pictures of boats I've seen on the Lakes look strangly enlongated. long and thinned than ocean going and lower freeboards