. . . and Cape Town

Any guesses what’s driving the tempest here?

gCaptain posted a great story about a pizza delivery . . . and a bone for the the ship’s dog Alley.  What’s this then?  What resolve will Alley summon among its crew?

The crowd awaits, as

Smit Amandla stretches the line nearly to the breaking point for two straight hours.  Imagine the fuel bill for 16,000 hp chrning at load for 120 minutes!  More on Smit Amandla here.   And here.  Her sister ship, Wolraad Woltemade was broken up at Alang just two years ago.  See a foto of her awaiting her fate here.

But inch by inch, and without incident,

the trawler makes for deeper water.

Might the hero here really be Alley?

Once roused from its slumber on Clifton Beach and safely afloat, Eihatsu Maru takes a stroll into the harbor with Ocean Pride.

And as a treat, let’s have a look to see who else is in port today?

Over there, anchored beside  Smit Amandla  . . . this orange vessel . . . no it just can’t be . . . Super Servant 3?!@#@!??    Dockwise is everywhere these days, it seems.

Many many thanks to Colin, who put all his more productive impulses on hold in order to snap these shots and share the story.    Bravo to the towing team, the pizza delivery guys, the crew, and  . . . of course . . . Alley, ship’s mutt.

Time for some of that pizza and tea, Colin?

And two posts in one day . . . I’m not going to make that a rule, but this news couldn’t wait.

Meanwhile in Narragansett Bay . . .

Of course, here’s another approach to lifting smaller boats onto a transport deck.  All fotos here are compliments of Rod Smith, about 10 days ago.  Rod operates Narragansett Bay Shipping, where I know him best for his tireless documentation of vessel construction at Senesco Marine.  (Doubleclick enlarges.)

It starts here, as Ocean Freedom enters the Bay, passing Castle Hill Light, Saturday, May 5, 0740.   Ocean Freedom works for Intermarine.

And here’s the cargo.  A recent Workboat article discusses the deal:  four new Army ferries bound for the Marshall Islands, specifically for the Reagan Test site.  The builder is Blount Boats, which I did posts about here and here.

Sunday, May 6, 1313h.

Sunday 1436h.  Note the diver in the water directly below the port prop and rudder.

Sunday 1448h.

Monday, May 7, 1035h.  In the foreground is Conanicut Island;  Newport is in the distance.

Monday 1038h

Monday 1039h.

x

All of which answers a question:  given my recent obsession with the Panama Canal, I was wondering if Ocean Freedom carrying possibly the latest government boats might cross paths there with a US government boats on its last voyage.  The vessel is USS Glacier, and it is in tow by Rhea and the company that recently towed the Artship (also with South Pacific connections)  to the scrappers.  .  . but according to marinetraffic, as Ocean Freedom heads into the Pacific, Rhea and Glacier are following Baja California.

Many thanks to Rod Smith for the fotos and to David Hindin for the info on Rhea and USS Glacier.

Swan’s Weight

Note the Crowley props and the orange-clad crew.  Doubleclick enlarges image.

Note the huge design difference between Socrates (1966, 3200 hp) and

Heron (1968, 3200 hp).  

My question is this:  what is the actual weight added to Swan by these five tugs, one barge, and one crewboat?  Does the load change the draft of Swan at all, given that she like any vessel is ballasted as needed?  And I do not know the answer.

For outatowners, these shots from Bay Ridge show the “west” end of the Verrazano Bridge.  Yesterday’s fotos were taken from the bluff more or less just above the white dome of the lighthouse.

And for this foto, I pivoted slightly toward the south, capturing both towers of the Bridge.  Entering the Narrows is a ferry and dredger

Terrapin Island, which as recently as two and a half months ago was sucking up silt from Jed’s coast in southern Georgia.

All fotos this morning by Will Van Dorp, who probably has one more installment on Swan.  For the title, my apologies to Marcel Proust.

Swan is Down

(Note:  Doubleclick enlarges.) The title . . . those were the exact words John Watson emailed me last night.  If the message had been “hawk is down”  . . . or “condor …”  it would have alarmed me, but instead I charged my camera so that right after work I could zoom over to Fort Wadsworth for these shots.  By one, I found Alert loaded onto barge BFT No. 38, which

was already on Swan.  Gabby Miller was present, of course.  Lined up on the Brooklyn side was a cast of characters identified as

Cavalier, Pioneer, and Mars . . . in custody of Charles D. McAllister.

The three Crowley tugs glided onto Swan‘s back, extending beyond the hull on

both sides.

For outatowners, that’s Manhattan in the distance looking across most of what’s called the Upper Bay.  The Lower Bay is behind me, as is the Verrazano Bridge.    On the right is the boro of Brooklyn.  The red tugs are Charles D. McAllister and McAllister Sisters Girls.

If you wonder about my shifting POV, the tide turned from ebb to flood during loading, and with it a bank of fog crept in and out, several times.

Next on board . . . Socrates, who in spite of the fog, found

a place midships, starboard.

This left space for

Heron!  It’s not quite Noah’s ark, but I’m hoping Bowsprite will find a spare moment to drawing this vessel with its cargo almost as diverse as that of Pi Patel.

Loading completed, Susan Miller glides by.  No doubt Swan has already begun to deballast to rise back up, and tomorrow the menagerie onboard Swan will be high and dry.  After that, next stop, Nigeria.

I include this foto for outatowners.  The vessel farthest left and most distant is Swan;  I took it on the ferry about halfway back to Manhattan.   Land to the right of King Emerald is Staten Island.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Some related posts include Mighty Servant loaded last December, Blue Marlin loaded a year ago, and Socrates last summer . .  seventh foto down.

Waiting

We spend so much of our lives waiting.  I guess it’s one of those unavoidables, like taxes and death . . . Ineluctable, if you want to be pedantic.   Yesterday, while waiting for high tide, a helicopter dropped in on the beached fishing trawler.  Click here for a bather flashing the crew. . .  hey, if you live on Clifton Beach and want to meet the unexpected visitors, how else do you get their attention?

At high tide this morning, another attempt to pull the trawler off the beach resulted in another parted towing line.

Meanwhile, holding the lead is Port Arthur-built, Cape Town-modified Ocean Pride.  Note the additions to make her beamier.

Here’s the muscle (Smit Amandla, ex-John Ross) that parts the towing lines.

Here crews of tug and supply vessel sort out the towing warp.

And 8000 miles to the northwest, Swan has not yet started loading.  Prepping and waiting is still going on, four days after I took these fotos.

But with a name like Swan and this time of year,

waiting is intended to be productive.

South African fotos by Colin Syndercombe;  sixth boro NYC fotos by Will Van Dorp.

May 2012 Boro6 News B

Change is the only constant.  New stuff always appears, like this slightly different foto (than Saturday‘s) of Mark Moran, and

old stuff gets painted, again.  Click on that link to see only some of the colors Greenland has worn over the past 22 years.   I may be biased, but the K-Sea colors seemed to have suited her best.

This next series shows what I think is an ongoing filming of a Z-drive tug by a crew on another tug.  ”Reality show” BIG TELEVISION discovers the sixth boro” perhaps?

Notice in the third foto down here Ellen McAllister had the words “tractor tug” painted on her hull midships.

I’m guessing this heeling to apply maximum pressure on MOL Earnest‘s stern was the subject of the filming.

Surely I’ve never seen this many people on the foredeck of a working tug.

Ellen put on quite the show, shoving Earnest‘s stern northish to point the bow southish.

Anyone want to “praytell” what the filming was?

I enjoyed the show myself.

I also caught this behemoth yacht over at the Red Hook passenger terminal, where the Queen Mary 2 docks in town.   My first thought was that it might be a yacht taking design inspiration from Discovery Coast (third down), but then I learned

it was Luna and predates Discovery.   That small white craft on this side of Luna is

is R/V Nauvoo.

Finally, rounding out this newsy but very “mixed bag” is this clutch of sailing vessels, from left to right . . .  Spirit of Massachusetts, America 2.0, and Adirondack.  Next week promises many more sails.

All fotos this weekend by Will Van Dorp, who’s now minding a swan.

Meanwhile at Clifton Beach

All fotos and info comes with many thanks to Colin.  This is Table Mountain, and the white pall emanating from the upper right in this foto might just be due to the pipe smoking contest between the Devil and a local pirate named Van Hunks.   Just might be.  What’s certain is that in the fog yesterday, Eihatsu Maru came ashore.

Clifton Beach is a few miles east and south of the port of Cape Town.  Standing off and maintaining pressure on the wires off Eihatsu Maru‘s stern is supply vessel Ocean Pride, Texas-launched 1954.  Here’s Colin’s description, ” There were two wires coming out of her stern and at quite a distance like half a kilometer  Ocean Pride was keeping the tension on the cables.  . . .”

There were spectators all through Saturday as the tide rose and fell and the

sun began to set.

Part of the crew stays on board;  to leave now would be to sacrifice the vessel to salvors.

Here’s more of Colin’s words, “ Hawser [went from Ocean Pride]  all the way to the tug SMIT AMANDLA (300′  loa x 50′ and 16,000 hp, built Durban 1975) another half K away.   Ocean Pride stood therewith not any strain on the wire for a long time and we all waited for the tide to rise, which it did right on schedule.  Ocean Pride moved out of the way and the tug put a bit of strain on the wire like playing a fish.  Perhaps even for an hour and you could see the wire rising out of the sea and I doubt they used all 16,000 Horse power but kept the strain and in the lights of the tug you could see the turbulence of the prop wash.   It was actually quite exciting. The captain of the Japanese fishing vessel has a nice border collie with him aboard.”

” Then there was an almighty bang followed by the sound of steel wire rope rushing out over steel and then a long splash as the end hit the water.  So that is that till next high tide tomorrow morning.  When I left they were starting to rig another cable and the tug was out of the bay reeling in the towing warp.”

Sunday morning finds the fishing vessel still on the beach;  partial crew still aboard.

Eihatsu is part of a trawler fleet operating off southern Africa.  Here’s a sister vessel, Sumiyoshi Maru No. 10.

Tug is Blue Jay.

Many thanks to Colin for this story and fotos.  More when available.

Unrelated to Clifton Beach . . .  I will be at Pier 25 this afternoon minding the gangplank to Pegasus.   Have you voted today?

May 2012 Boro6 News

Tugster does not strive to be a “shipping news” site, but each time I walk or ride my beat, I DO keep an watchful eye for change, novelty, well . . . new sights.  Certainly this was true yesterday:   let’s start with the orange vessel to your left.  You’ve seen the colors before, but is that a “hole through the stern above deck”?

I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a bit more of Swan in the next few days.  And I trust lessons have been learned from last spring’s Blue Marlin saga.

So Beauford Sea has begun its Kirbyfication.  As has Norwegian Sea, but I was too far off to get a good foto.

Resolute‘s foredeck seemed to be carrying a lot more than deckhands yesterday.  And is that a movie camera?  And what were they all looking at?

How about this unusual equipment on Ellen?  Is MOL Earnest that tough a customer?

Iron Eagle is not new to the harbor, but the Conti name is . . . at least to me.

Rosemary Miller?  New too.  I wonder what has become of Sorenson Miller.

With spring comes the sailing season, and America 2.0 . . .  I last saw closeup  here last fall.

And one last “newby” I was lucky to catch yesterday was Mark Moran, headed south to  .  . who knows where?    Mark‘s so new that even on Birk and Harold’s excellent site, there’s only a drawing of her.

Followup on lots of these soon.   All fotos taken yesterday by Will Van Dorp.

For the news from the Narrows between Detroit (which means “the narrows” in French) and Windsor, click here for Isaac’s site and some great fotos from Wade.  The surprise there for me was Zeus, who worked the sixth boro a bit a few years back.  Also, there are more shots of DonJon’s huge Great Lakes ATB unit.

Also, of course please vote for tug Pegasus and Lehigh Valley 79.   The fact that they’re not in the top few places should NOT be a reason to give up;  we have a daily vote until the 21st.

Errant Ferry

You’ve heard about Flat Stanley and Carmen Santiago?    So, let’s play . . . errant ferry, Staten Island ferry (SIf) in particular.  We’ve seen a SIF here, here, and here . ..  so thanks to Birk Thomas, enjoy these new installments.   Where is this?

Well  . . .  the location is the Chesapeake, and the answer is not really that vessel had chosen to go way offcourse;  rather, it’s that maintenance is done in Norfolk,  the result of bidding, I suppose.   And that’s Colleen McAllister doing the tow.   No matter how capacious the SIf’s appear when you are onboard, they seem to shrink

when juxtaposed with other traffic in the sixth boro.  Thanks to John Watson for this foto of a busy harbor;  foreground ACL is unidentified and the cruise ship is Crystal Serenity.

Thanks to Birk and John.  And now, I’m heading out to get re-acquainted with the sixth boro myself.    Remember . . . to vote for Pegasus/79 daily AND if you see an errant SIf, please snap a foto or several.

Something Different 8

I needed smiles so bad that I went through the past few months of fotos looking for cheeriness.  And as I put these up, the sun broke through what feels like two weeks of mostly clouds.  A sea lion, and

a close up of a sea lion,

a deck seal,

lots of fish, and my pole-vaulting

amazon.

Yeah, and this goes out to Paul . . . I don’t know how you manage all those weeks on the job!  Tomorrow I have got to get some R & R.

Meanwhile the clouds are back and Willie is in my ear.