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My library for the time period January 1, 2012 until today contains 11,244 fotos. Starting from tomorrow, any 2012 fotos will be taken along the road. So I decided to choose ONE foto per month, quite subjectively and without regard for this foto having previously been featured here. I don’t claim these are the best of the month. Only 12 fotos, one per month.
January, Sandmaster . . . waiting to refuel. Today, Dec 22 . . . Sandmaster was out there doing what it usually does, mining sand.
February . . . Eagle Beaumont escorted in the Arthur Kill by Charles D. McAllister.
March . . . side by side, CSAV Suape and bulker Honesty, Pacific bound through the Miraflores locks, demonstrating graphically what panamax means.
April . . . red-trimmed Taurus west bound on the KVK, cutting past Advance Victoria. And just today, I saw Taurus, now blue-trimmed, heading north between Manhattan and Jersey City.
Choosing just one foto per month is tough, but for May, here’s Swan packed and almost ready to go hulldown toward Africa with these specimens of the Crowley, Reinauer, and Allied fleets.
June . . . Weeks Shelby tows shuttle Enterprise from JFK toward Manhattan.
July and an unforgettable 4th using Pegasus as subject under the rocket’s glare
August . . . and coal-fired Badger heads into the sunset . . . and Wisconsin.
September, and a parade of vessels including Urger and Buffalo leave the Federal Lock bound for Waterford. My inimitable platform here is Fred’s Tug44.
At the start of the Great Chesapeake Schooner race, crew is setting sail on the unique tugantine Norfolk Rebel. In the distance, it’s Pride of Baltimore 2.
Coming into the home stretch from Montreal, it’s Atlantic Salvor delivering segments of the WTC1 antenna.
And December . . . it’s Stena Primorsk looming over the USCG vessels. At this time, Stena Primorsk was impatient to load that first hold with “north dakota crude,” only to experience the malfunction that has left her temporarily disabled upriver, its outer hull gashed open.
Tomorrow I hit the road . . . gallivanting and visiting season. I thank all of you for reading, many of you for helping me get these fotos, lots of you for correcting my errors and supplying missing info. Happy New Year and let’s pray for much-needed Peace on Earth . . . .
First, check “parrotlect flickrstream” along the left margin here for my favorite 45 fotos from the start of the Great Chesapeake Schooner Race last week. I had posted some of them earlier, but put them up in the moment and without the benefit of my “foto-cleanup” tools.
Here is the real predecessor for this post . . . small specialized East coast designs. And here’s a question . . . guess the loa and beam of this vessel. Answer and fotos follow.
Some small craft are just beautiful . . . sweet
not to emphasize the “just” there. Seriously sweet lines here.
And here. And nearby but in the shadows was a twin called Puffin. And that vintage Johnson Sea horse 18 was attached to the
the prettiest motorboat I’ve ever seen. I don’t think that Johnson comes with the blender attachment seen here!!
This is Silk. Silk is a pushboat. Believe it or not, it’s the prime mover for a 65′ skipjack, and while hauling for oysters, Silk needs to be hanging high and dry. I regret I didn’t get a chance to look at the engine.
Stanley Norman dates from 1902. And that boom looks impossibly long.
And here’s a surprise, maybe. The vessel in the top foto here is a restored 1925 Hooper Island Draketail named Peg Wallace, measuring a belief-defying 37’6″ loa with a beam of only 6’8″!! I’d written of local Chesapeake and southern boats here almost two years ago, but this was my first encounter with a draketail. Scroll down to pete44′s comment here to learn his sense of the origin of the design.
I’d love to see her move through the water.
Draketail . . . named for a duck. Make way!
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Why gild the lily? I’ll just put up some of my favorites and number them. If you so wish, comment and refer to the number. I put number or caption ABOVE fotos because of how you scroll to read a blog. Sultana will be 1. Who is that figurehead?
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8 Anyone know the name of this boat?
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12 I missed the name of this yawl. What a beauty!
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All 23 fotos by Will Van Dorp. Many thanks to Capt Terry Briggs for the invite to come to the 23rd annual Great! Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race. See you for the 24th! If you want info on how to support the educational mission, click here. Seeing Norfolk Rebel set sail was quite moving!
I post this as the race is approaching its finish; see live tracking at the bottom here.
Twenty-fours hours ago Baltimore-based Chock WYTL-65602 was leaving Annapolis to go on station as pin boat 1 . . . the west side of the starting gate. Pin boat here takes on a whole new meaning. For a Chock-sibling with a different mission, see bowsprite’s latest here.
Norfolk Rebel, currently itself transformed into a schooner and sailing, was the other pin boat. Here the jaunty captain and crew relax as schooners arrive at the starting line midday yesterday.
Condor was our platform, dashing around trying to catch the arriving schooners as they plotted a “red-carpet” course toward the pin boats. No offense to the smaller, class B boats . . . the faster ones . . . but we focused on the larger class A boats. First in was A. J. Meerwald. Links to many of the vessels can be found here for full info, but Meerwald is 84 years afloat.
Next across the red carpet . . . Sultana . . .
Lady Maryland . . . whom I sawsome years back in the sixth boro,
Some of the class B boats like the one in the distance . . . I never could identify. Any help? RORO is Rigel Leader.
Mystic Whaler and unidentified in background.
And the two vessels (sort of) that started it all . . . From l to r, 1916-launched, Tottenville NY-built Virgina and Pride of Baltimore 2.
Kings Pointer . . . Summerwind, a 1929 Alden schooner, and unidentified smaller vessels.
Anyone identify these?
Libertate.
A part of the field just minutes before the starter-cannon.
When a schooner races starts on a day with little wind, vessels crowd on all manner of sail, and yet . . . the “natives” on SUPs pass them. I believe the schooner is Prom Queen, now vying for first across the finish line.
Mystic Whaler and Summerwind, with bulker Clipper Emperor in the distance.
Part of the field follows. Notice the difference between the start of a schooner race and a tug race.
First Coast bypassed the schooners towing a barge and was already in Norfolk by the wee hours today.
The natives sat down on their boards and hung out at pin boat Chock,
as racers rocket south toward Norfolk.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Thanks to anyone who can identify some of the vessels I could not.
More from the race’s start tomorrow.
Raise the sails! The race is on!
Even the tugantine sails on to Norfolk now that
starter cannon have fired and respects to the founder and tradition have been paid.
Many more fotos tomorrow, but you can track the race here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Many thanks to Capt. Terry Briggs for the invite to ride aboard Condor.























































































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