More Newest Hull 2

The next three fotos come compliments of Rod Smith, whose Narragansett Bay Shipping site does a thorough job of documenting many things including all newbuilds worked on at Senesco Marine, where the new Caddell’s drydock was constructed.   Here’s the launch day, performed by rolling airbags.  See the upper wheelhouse of newbuild Dean Reinauer to the left behind the shed.  Small tug afloat is Hawk, ex-YTL 153.

Although not quite wide enough to contain a football field, it is more than long enough.  It would certainly redefine the game.

Here’s a foto of the drydock taken from the upperwheelhouse of Dean.  Can anyone identify the tug-in-progress directly in the foreground?

Finally, another of my fotos showing the tow just about home entering the Buttermilk Channel.  The octagonal structure to the left is the vent tower for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

Again, many thanks to Rod for use of these fotos.  If you do Facebook, Rod has just posted fotos of arrival of United Yacht Transport’s Super Servant 4 in Newport, RI.  Now if I were free, I’d head up and watch the float-off process.

Here was my first post on this drydock.

Newest Hull in the Sixth Boro 2

A month ago I caught this small drydock floating in.    Today at noon Doris Moran with James Turecamo assisting dragged

this huge newbuild under the Brooklyn Bridge, the very same

day this tip was added to the WTC1 spire.  Also, it was about 175 days ago that some parts for the spire came barging in like this.

Those are South Street Seaport Museum’s vessels over beyond the drydock.

Someone can refresh my memory of the dimensions this drydock will accommodate, but I can see the Staten Island ferry eyeing it already.

The tow headed through the Buttermilk Channel before

John Watson picked up these shots as they headed across the Upper Bay, passed Robbins Reef Light, and the

KVK, where she will operate.

The last two fotos here come from John Watson;  all others by Will Van Dorp, who got these fotos inside another Caddell drydock three years ago.

Newest Hull in the Sixth Boro

I suspected as much when I saw this train . . . although I was quite surprised by the tug out front.

I hadn’t seen Yemitzis under way for a few years now.   Yemitzis dates from 1954, launched as Pennsylvania RailRoad’s Philadelphia, hull 227.  Here‘s the link. . .  but scroll about 2/3 through to get to PRR tugs info.   So Yemitzis is one of the oldest hulls working here.  Tailing tug Robert IV is 1975.  No, the newest hull is the black box between them, hull #92 just launched at Senesco, destined to be part of a drydock at Caddell’s.

Meanwhile , I’m happy to see Yemitzis out and about working again.

Does anyone have a foto of her as PRR’s Philadelphia?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Clipper City

When the sixth boro looks like this, I recall

the warmth of late summer and

even late spring, truly splendid times to sail  It’s Clipper City above and  .  . following Dewaruci, Clipper City below.  But to ensure the vessels are ready, crews dedicate winter

to visiting places like this

for haul-out.

The vessel gets inspected

everywhere, even under the keel.

Wear and tear gets repaired and

and reinspected.

Exactly 90 days from today (April 26, 2013), the 158′ vessel begins season 2013.  Clipper City is one of two vessels operated by Manhattan by Sail, the other being Shearwater.  Click here for more info on Clipper City, a 1984 replica of a Manitowoc lumber schooner  that operated on Lake Michigan between 1854 and 1890 and capable of sailing 115 miles in less than 8 hours.

Manhattan by Sail is owned by Tom Berton, who first sailed on Petrel, a now-gone pioneer of sixth boro public sail operated by Nick Van Nes.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

For profiles of Clipper City, Shearwater, and many other vessels from June 2009, click here.  For fotos of Clipper City bound for the yard, click here.

Dockwork Orange 2

No orange is more brilliant on the Upper Bay than that of the Staten Island ferries.   Of course, no creature of the water–live or mechanical–sports the same colors ventral as dorsal.  And thanks to the following fotos from John Watson, let’s go below.

Here’s a thing of beauty as visible from the inside of a floating drydock at Caddell– one end of the double-ender Samuel I. Newhouse.

Note the worker for scale.

What might surprise many people is the absence of props/shafts and the existence of this disc-like recess.

Disassembled, here’s the drive unit that fits into the recess

Each of the circular spaces in this subassembly houses a vertical blade.  For an animation showing movement, click here.

Note the same transition from orange to blue to red and vertical blades here on Noble.

If you’ve wondered how these ferries negotiate into the ferry racks in adverse tidal flow, traveling sideways . . . now you know.

All fotos above except the first one come compliments of John Watson.  Newhouse fotos date from summer ’94;  Noble . . . from summer 2000.

Here’s a parting shot of one of my favorite moments of orange from earlier in 2012.

High and Dry 8

Here was 7.

Below . . . that’s Weddell Sea, last here (second foto from last) in green.  Seeing a vessel like this is not unlike “doctor’s office” nekkid . . . so much more is revealed, and I don’t mean just physical.

To see many more fotos of her afloat, click here.

Amy Moran–telescoped-up-house– was here literally half a year ago.

And four years older and upstate New York-built . . . here’s James Turecamo.

Finally . . . about to be high and dry, here was Barbara McAllister just driving into Dry Dock #1 in the Brooklyn Navy Yard last week.  Click here for a short lecture on Dry dock #1 by a Yale architecture professor.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes to get some great high and dry later this week.

Rhythms 3

Here was Rhythms 2.

And the tugboat with the travel trailer on the afterdeck–anyone wish to help C. E. Grundler speculate about why it’s up there?–is Nancy Ann on the Willamette River in Oregon.

Last night my question was “to post . . .  or not to post,” and  . . . I think I made the right choice.   Here . . . at dusk was Gramma Lee T Moran, light east bound in the KVK, and

less than an hour later, westbound with a tanker–like a trophy–alongside.   The tanker is Kimolos, two weeks out of Denmark.

A view of a Bouchard barge notch, and

a different Bouchard barge inside the “notch” of Caddell’s big floating drydock.

Taurus light, and

slinging a barge.

Asian King delivering cars to NYC Bayonne, and

Radiant Sky taking their dismemberments away from Claremont.

Meridian Ace crew getting their last fotos in NYC before geting their next fotos in  . . . who knows . . .

Philly.  By the way, click here and scroll down to see where all they’ve been in the past quarter year . . .

All fotos by Will Van Dorp last night, with thanks to JC for getting me there.

Ambrose Backgrounds

January 1909.  New Jersey-built Ambrose LV-87 in second year on the job.  Photo by N. L. Stebbins.  Click on the next two fotos and you’ll get to their context.  Click here for many more Stebbins fotos.

January 1912, a mere 1202 months ago.  Ambrose at work with White Star Olympic passing in background. Olympic at this time was less than a year on the job and already suffered one collision.  Four months later, of course, her younger sister ship would begin its ill-fated maiden voyage to New York.

I recall seeing this foto before I moved to New York and imagined that “channel 87″ was the means to contact the vessel.  Oh well . . . live and learn, eh?

March 2012.  Ambrose in her 46th year post-decommissioning after having served the USCG (and precursors) 59 years.  Photo by Birk Thomas.  In lower right hand corner, that’s Atlantic Salt’s Richmond Terrace mountain.

St. Peter’s neo-Romanesque sanctuary has dominated the east end of the KVK for over a century.

Structure just forward of Ambrose here is Sono’s “postcards,” a 9/11 memorial.

This may be my last post for a while . . . am gallivanting south soon.

Many thanks to Birk for these fotos.

Related:  Click here for a Reginald Marsh mural of a black-hulled Ambrose.  Here are some crew shots from the late 1950s.

Unrelated:  Crossing the Darien isthmus right now is Ever Deluxe, which appeared just barely in this post from almost three years ago . .  and NYK Diana, a Howland Hook regular.

Meanwhile in the Sixth Boro 3

Back in December, Ambrose went to the yard for a makeover, and John Watson took these shots.

Today, John got these, mere minutes ago, as they tangoed

Charles D. McAllister and Ambrose,

chico y chica

felizmente

como amantes en la primavera.

Big party is NEXT Monday evening.  RSVP!

Many thanks, John.

Other People’s Fotos 9

I’d planned something different for today, but then my inbox started to fill.  And it makes me happy to feel a community building here.  So . . . thanks all for reading and sending fotos and links.  I wanted to go out taking fotos, but a pile of tasks told me to stay home.

First, Ann O’Nymous sent me a link to Tugboat Tales, a fabulous documentary made by the late Bart Lawson back in 1991.  This first-rate documentary is divided into parts one, two, and three.   A click gets you to youtube.

Next, harbor photographer extraordinaire John Watson went to check progress on Ambrose, and discovered the drydock had been floated out and reoriented 180 degrees, with the lightship on board.  That would have been a sight to behold.

  Now here’s the bow . .  as seen from shore.   Given the wind, the blue belly over the mushroom anchor is clearly a blue tarp.

Next, from Allen Baker, this foto of a lightship undergoing restoration two hundred miles . . . downeast . . . well, in Boston.   It’s LV-112, which last appeared in this blog almost two years ago.  That info back in 2010 was passed along by Matt of Soundbounder.  Check this link (Thanks to Rick) for many more fotos of LV-112.

As I said, I stayed inside this morning, chomping at the bit because Orange Star was headed out.  Had I realized that her sister vessel was coming in and that they’d cross not far from the Narrows, I would have “busted out.”  Nothing could have kept me inside.  Then, I got an email from bowsprite informing me that Orange Babe Wave had come into port, and I was beside myself.  At which point . . . .

I got an email from John Skelson, with attached fotos of Orange Wave!!!  If you’re new to this blog, I’m a self-professed orangejuiceaholic.  Here, thanks to A. Steven Toby is a link to the technology of these juice ships.

And since this post has become a gallery of other people’s fotos, here’s another from Allen Baker.  A little self-disclosure here:  I moved to the Boston area in the mid-1980s.  One day in 1986, I was walking near the Science Museum and saw two very tired tugboats there, Luna and Venus.  The sad sight drew me in.  To see these beauties in such an utter state of disintegration broke my heart.  I thought both were doomed.  Venus was clawed into matchsticks in 1995, and Luna very narrowly escaped the same fate.  Read the much nuanced story here.   Luna dates from 1930, the same year as W. O. Decker.  I hope to see Luna again soon;  too bad I didn’t carry a camera around back in 1986.

And Decker brings the post to South Street Seaport, which I’m thrilled isexperiencing early springtime, frigid temperatures notwithstanding.  Also, if you’ve been in NYC recently, you know it’s been a snowless winter so far;  this foto was taken last year.  I’ve always know the vessel below as Helen McAllister, but now I’m embarrassed to note that she’s also the ex-Admiral Dewey and Georgetown.  I’d never realized that.  Further, she came off the ways into the KVK in 1900, built at the same yard that produced Kristin Poling!    And this raises two questions:  is Helen McAllister that last power vessel of that yard  still extant?  And, does anyone know of fotos of Helen McAllister that show her working during OpSail 1992.  Which raises the question . . . am I the only one NOT hearing talk of planning for OpSail 2012 New York?

Both Ambrose and Admiral Dewey/Georgetown/Helen McAllister are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

It’s cold outside and tomorrow should be colder, so you could click on every link above  and drink some hot tea.  Did I complete many of my tasks today?  No, but I had a ball with these fotos.  Watching all three parts of Tug Tales will take about a half hour, but it is well worth the time.

Thanks to Ann, John, Allen, bowsprite, Steven, and John for fotos and info.

Finally, here are two other worthwhile places to check while emptying that pot of tea:  Oil-Electric on “marine railroads” and a treasure trove of fotos from the National Maritime Museum on Flickr.