Here was the 12 in this series. Type in the word whatzit in the search box upper left to see the others.
Now if you were out this morning walking along the esplanade near the VZ and not fully awake, upon seeing this you might swear to make lifestyle changes.
?
?? That looks like a Swiss flag
This really did happen . . .
as it raced in at 3.3 kts.
USACE vessel Hudson seemed as appropriate a welcome party as any.
Note the pilot boat and Pouch terminal in the background.
x
And . . . what IS it? Well, it is over 6000 miles from its starting point in Sardinia. Follow them here. And, PlanetSolar, welcome to the sixth boro!! Here are the specs on this 60-passenger vessel that looks like it’s arrived from beyond the galaxy.
All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated: I will try to report from the road today for a few days, but I expect to be back for the fishy invasion on Saturday.
Here’s a projects post I did two years ago. The project boat below–an early 1930s 35′ ACF– is available. Here’s a post I did five years ago about an ACF and here’s an article with a few fotos about another ACF that was lavished with love. For info on the vessel below–located in Cape Cod–get in touch. Seller is motivated!
Multiple prompts have got me thinking about projects. One is the vessel below called Source, starting point for transformation into a restaurant boat in a movie called Secret of the Grain, set in southern France. Possibly this is a good but sad Father’s Day movie.
Some day I will take on a boat project. Shoofly caught my attention when I visited Astoria OR recently. This 28′ cedar gill-net boat is mentioned in Carl Safina’s Song for the Blue Ocean (207). Obviously, I’d have to stop blogging this way if I undertook a project boat or a boat project.
Seth Tane took this foto in the early 1980s on Hoboken bank of the North River. This has to be the wildest variation on a trimaran I’ve ever seen. Anybody know what became of this project?
I wish I’d made more effort to see Comanche when I was in the Tacoma-Seattle area a few years back. She’s had many lives already.
I saw this 1915 beauty in her restored state closeup a few years back in North Cove. This foto I took in Noank CT in 2011. For her history, click here and here.
And then there’s the exquisite Cangarda, once a sunken hulk . . . as shown here.
What else has gotten me into this mood include some books I’ve recently finish, notably Max Hardberger’s Seized: Battling Scoundrels and Pirates While Recovering Stolen Ships in the World’s Most Troubled Waters. Start reading and you won’t put it down. Other forces have also created this mood, which has also driven me through all the “wrecks & relics” on a fantastic site called shipspotting. Here are some of my favorites: Here and here for PT3, wooden yachts Averilla and Wayward Girl, trawler to schoolship Prinses Juliana, island freighter Gerda Maria, and tugboats Arv Fernando Gomez, Tulagi, US Navy tug Saint Christopher, Torrent, and finally Catriel in Argentina. Some exotic projects could be this cold war era patrol boat VMV 20, and twin antiques of the future Falcon II and III.
And seriously, if you’re interested in the ACF in the top foto, please drop me a comment or email.
Some day when I’ve got a space to work in and trade in this blog, I’ll begin a boat project . . . building something new from scratch. And if I do this, I’ll document the project from plans and sawdust to charts and logs of journeys as Meryll and Tom have done here for the past half dozen years.
Guess this tug? This and alternate fotos here are taken by Seth Tane. Answer follows.
Joan Turecamo (1980 and one of the last tugs built at Matton in Cohoes)in the foreground. Guess the one in the distance?
Natoma . . 1976.
Vessel in the distance earlier was Susan Miller, 1981. I’m guessing the barge is loaded with riprap for shoreline protection somewhere in Raritan Bay. I wonder about the origin of those rockaceous chunks.
Craig Foss was launched in June 1945 as LT-648 by Tampa Marine, one of over 700 tugs operated by the US Army at the end of WW II. For a foto of a Tampa hull, click here.
Peering over crane barge Delaware Bay, it’s Caitlin Ann, 1961.
It’s Shaver’s 1981-built Portland. For a foto of a 1947 ship-assist tug Portland, click here.
And finally . . a tug with a tent passing a clock with no hands, it’s Miriam Moran (1979).
Top foto is Amnav’s Revolution at the Rainier Foss shipyard in 2006.
This is NOT Rockaway or Queens or any other boro of New York City. This residence is a post-hurricane structure. The location will be identified at the end of this post.
For the previous installment in this series . . . Sandy to Nemo . . . from four months ago, click here.
Here’s a March foto taken by Barbara from her 7th floor terrace, showing water/land edges in southern Queens. In fotos farther down, you’ll see this reinforced building now painted greenish yellow.
Early April 2013.
Mid April.
The rest of these fotos I took today at sea level. Note the lifeguard on duty, bundled up for morning 60-degrees beach. In the foreground beyond the fence is one of the concrete supports for the boardwalk Sandy peeled away. Maersk Denver, anchored on the horizon, will serve as a reference point. When Nemo happened, this vessel was in port in Taiwan.
And now in situ are the bathrooms that Ashley send a foto of about a month ago here. Foto looks roughly north.
Same bathrooms, looking roughly south.
Beachside view of the bathrooms and yellow structure housing life guard offices/concessions-to-be . . . looking northeast.
Click here for more info on the artwork created from portions of Sandy-splintered boardwalk.
Looking southwest.
Where once a mosaic covered cetacean I dubbed “rockawhale” resided,
construction trailers now stand. A geodesic dome marks the intersection of Shore Parkway and Cross Bay Parkway.
A closer look showed it to be part of another artistic response to Sandy’s devastation. I wonder what will happen after June 30.
I took the top foto in this post in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, where the Make It Right project is attempting to do just that. I hope we make it right too.
Left to right at the Narrows ahead of this front are Maersk Detroit, SSV Corwith Cramer, Oleander, and CMA CGM Utrillo.
SSV Corwith Cramer is a brigantine.
Also, racing in ahead of the storm was this unidentified sloop,
Hindu,
and Joan Turecamo with Nomadic Hjellestad.
And look at that rain.
All fotos this morning by Will Van Dorp.
Ten months ago I did this post of the 1905 ferry Binghamton. Twenty months ago I did this one, this and this with many interior shots at that time. The foto below dates from October 2011 just after Irene.
Here was Binghamton this morning, a work of disintegrative art, refusing to buckle in spite of Sandy.
North end October 2011 and
today, June 2013.
South end 2011 and
peeled back 2013.
Closer up as seen from the right bank 20 months ago and
now.
See a Flickr foto of a NJ historical marker no longer memorializing the wreck, click here. In its place, someone has had the good sense to inscribe the walls of the guardhouse with the 94-year-old words of a gallivanting Edna St Vincent Millay.
How will she fare in the next 10 months?
For a beautifully illustrated report on the life of the ferry prepared by Bill Lee, click here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated but cool story here about a 61-year-old immigrant to US circumnavigating in a 24′ sailboat!!
Let’s make up some words and revisit Sunday’s significant changes to the “landfront” of the sixth boro, not the “waterfront.” In fact, on the waterfront change is fluid, literally. Click on the foto to see the dust fly.
What’s happening on the water at 0553 h? Just the usual . . . bananas
from Ecuador need to be offloaded.
NYPD patrols, and
kayakers make their way across the calm bay.
Tuesday morning, as seen from the Staten Island ferry . . .
machines disassemble the
rubble and
load it onto trucks for processing, once Susan (Catherine?) Miller gets them back to the roads.
Our landfront has never looked this way . . . til now.
Fotos and video by Will Van Dorp.
Captain Charles . . 1953. Know the location? The bridge in the background is a clue. Answer can be found at the end of this post.
James Turecamo, like me class of 1969, foto taken just before yesterday’s planned building implosion. By that early hour, James had already earned a fair amount of “keep.” To see James in Turecamo livery, click here.
Hunter is something different! She’s just towed in a dead fishing boat. How much would a RIB like this cost new?
Catherine and Kimberly, both Turecamo, escorted Tonna up the Arthur Kill, past the scrapyard where Gary Kane and I filmed the documentary.
Jennie B, 1955, in the mighty Columbia.
Captain Bob, August 1945 Marietta Manufacturing Point Pleasant WV hull #538, is a one year younger sibling LT of Bloxom (June 1944 and hull # 519)! Also, in this run was Mary E. Hannah and James A. Hannah, posted here on tugster in 2012. To get a sense what Captain Bob (ex-Sea Commander) looks like high and dry–and by extension what Bloxom of Graves of Arthur Kill once did–click here. On the vessel below, I love the green “door.”
Scroll through here and here for more LT Army fotos.
HMS Liberty 1978 here sidles up to schooner Virginia.
Linda L. Miller, eastbound of the East River. Linda L. and Gabby Miller assisted in loading Mighty Servant a year and a half ago.
Coastline Bay Star, once known as Coney Island, dates from 1958.
Longsplice (originally Shrike, 1959) recently high and dry near the Arthur Kill.
Pilot, 1941 out of a yard in Sturgeon Bay WI, is a sibling of Spooky!
And this vessel, on the left bank of the Willamette, I’ve no idea. Anyone help?
Getting back to that first foto, the bridge in the background is the Bronx-Whitestone. Foto then is taken from the north end of that unique part of the Bronx called City Island.
All fotos taken in the past month by Will Van Dorp.
Very related: I’m looking for someone (or some group of people) to take over guest editor position of this blog for about a month this summer. Compensation is a fortune of sixth boro shellbacks as well as fame; you could become a paladin of the port. You really can be geographically any watery place. And you have to adhere to a disciplined foto-driven/sparse verbiage mix of workboats, history, eccentricity, and apolitical wit. Of course, you can add to that a smattering of your own favorite sprinklings.
Hmmm . . . does that describe tugster? Feel free to add to a characterization of the blog. But seriously, I need to step away for a while this summer . . . to gallivant, of course. Get in touch for details. Learning the blogging template is not difficult.
Click here for the post #1 by this title.
September 2012. Some Governors Island buildings as seen from the Staten Island ferry. Notice the excavator demolish the gradual way.
February 2013.
Building 877 May 2013.
Today, June 9, 07:15 h, as seen from Valentino Pier, Red Hook. Eleven stories about to go down.
Click on the image below to see my YouTube of the implosion.
All fotos and video by Will Van Dorp.
Click here for a view from Jersey City.












































































































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