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Here was 18.
The following two fotos come thanks to Joseph Graham, a New Yorker who pilots a Kirby boat among various ports in the Gulf and on the Mississippi. Study the six tugs below . . . yes six. Recognize the one on the left?
Sure! It’s Odin, featured here and here and many more places. Right now she’s in the vessel equivalent of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, in Kirby’s reserve yard in Houston. Odin . . you’re not forgotten!
Notice anything unusual about this staple? It may be common elsewhere, but I’ve never seen one with a stainless steel insert. This foto comes compliments of Allen Baker; here’s one of his many fotos on this blog. And the vessel . . .
is three-year-old Delta Billie, 6800 hp and built in Washington state.
She was docked here on the San Francisco Embarcadero . . . below the Tower there named for “Firebelle Lil’ Coit.”
And finally, from Lauren Tivey, whose foto of a lion figurehead on a Shanghai barge appeared here a year and a half ago, a fisherman working on Er Lake in Yunnan . . . using
these birds we know well in the sixth boro. I love the paint job on these fishing boats. Quiz: Can you name three of the six major rivers that drain Yunnan province?
Poor foto . . . I took on Sunday, but I was fascinated by this KVK cormorant struggling at least two minutes to swallow this sea robin. Cormorants must have throat tissue like a rubber tire!
The rivers flowing out of Yunnan–which borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam– are the Irrawaddy, Mekong, Salween, Red, Pearl, and Yangtze.
Thanks again to Joseph, Allen, and Lauren for use of these fotos.
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. . . or I could say 12480 kms away. Here was the previous one in this series. Remember the port?
Well, in this port recently was this tug named Merlot and the green vessel . . . a large canoe? And yes, check here for tugs named chardonnay, shiraz, and pinotage. Nothing here yet named Ripple or Boone’s Farm . . . Here’s what Colin wrote about the green vessel:
“That ship ULSTEIN CLEAR is fresh as a daisy, built at ZHEJIANG SHIPBUILDING in China and delivered 31 MAY 2012. They also build them in BRAZIL where PETROBRAS ordered six and two have been built there and four will be complete during 2013. I have read that PETROBRAS have ordered quite a few drilling rigs for their offshore operations. On one of the ULSTEIN ships they have a crane mounted for wind farm operations. It lifts 5000 tons so very effectively. It will be used between England and Ireland.”
Some might consider this design so unusual as to be ugly, but I see this as an extrapolation from a canoe bow . . or the prow of a Viking ship.
More info about this hull and its advantages for working in heavy sea–reduced motion and fuel efficiency– can be found here. Great videos and animations. Note the location of the exhausts. If you didn’t identify them, they
are the diagonals more visible here.
I don’t believe a vessel with this sort of bow has visited the sixth boro . . .
yet.
All fotos by colin Syndercombe, to whom I am grateful.
Surprise, lunacy, and freebies commingle in this post. At one point, my perspective shifts a half dozen miles also.
0859 . . . as seen from the “swimming pool” aka Faber Park, Staten Island-side just east of the Bayonne Bridge. That’s Shooters Island (see a then/now post I did here) off the bow of Zim Qingdao. Here‘s something to know about the place Qingdao.
Still 0859 . . . Amy C McAllister awaits instructions on assisting with the turn.
0901 . . . part of the turn accomplished . . .
0902 . . . Zim Qingdao makes the Bridge.
0905 . . . Ellen‘s off the stern now. And when I look up,
… well, there’s no surprise about female mariners except
that looks like a kid! Could this be a contemporary Zim Family Robinson . . . sans the shipwreck of course!!
0940 . . . I’ve jumped onto my horse and raced over to the Brooklyn side of the Narrows. What directed my attention to the Brooklynside base of the VZ Bridge was ships’ horns: one long blast . .. danger! Is it this? At least six “smokers” . . .
as Zim Qingdao sped up . . . for her next port, tailed by Amy C and Responder.
I was half expecting these invulnerables-whose engines will never stall maybe– to jump the bow wave . . . . NYTugmaster links to a WSJ article on “playing in urban commercial waters” here.
Between the VZ and Swinburne/Hoffman, Zim Qingdao meets
Zim Shenzhen . . . Note the crew on her foredeck.
By now, Zim Qingdao is passing the Bahamas after a post stop in Savannah, no doubt headed for the Panama Canal.
Unrelated: Want a free boat ride on Saturday, tickets are available here at 7 pm today. Actually, there are no truly free boat rides; support historic vessels of your choice.
If you’re looking for a thriller to read this summer, try The Ship Killer. Bonnie gave me hers . . . after I’d noticed in prominently displayed at my local Barnes & Noble. There’s info here, and I agree with the first review there by Jim A . . . except I’d go farther and say it’s like Moby Dick . . . but you get inside the whale’s twisted mind just as you get inside Ahab’s lunacy. I was predisposed NOT to like it, I didn’t BUT it was a thrilling ride.
And speaking of thrillers . . . here’s an American jetski adventure stopped by Russian tanks and helicopters, from a blog yesterday.
I had planned something different, and this foto is certainly NOT great, but . . . what it shows is River Wisdom Qingdao, China-bound and Duncan Island Red Hook, Brooklyn, USA-bound. They’re passing each other at sea level Pacific side just “south” of the Miraflores locks.
Here was River Wisdom about a half hour earlier. Any idea what she paid for the transit? Warning . . . I don’t know the answer, but I can come close. Number of vessel transits annually? Answer follows.
Any idea when Duncan Island will arrive at the dock in Red Hook? Again, I don’t have the answer, but bear with me.
Farfan is the assist tug for River Wisdom . . . as I write this.
I’ve forgotten the name of this yacht, but with that tall a mast and that many spreaders, it could be the
same one I’ve seen in New York and Newport . . . like here. (Note: The yacht is Tiara. It rents for a mere $200k/week.)
Some answers or attempted ones: PTCC Tortugas paid over $200,000 to transit the Canal. In cash. At least 48 hours in advance. The alternative is 8000 miles around Cape horn and about two additional weeks . . . . Richard Halliburton swam the Canal in August 1928. Took him 10 days. Cost him 36 cents!
14,000 vessels transit the Canal annually. 52,000,000 gallons of fresh water per vessel do the work. Good thing the rainy season is generous to the watershed.
For River Wisdom, New York PLUS 7 days put her here. Balboa PLUS 30 days will put her in Qingdao.
Might Duncan Island arrive with her bananas and other tropical fruit at the dock in Red Hook around March 22? (Just looked it up . . . they could be there already the 18th!!!.)
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, in the past two hours.
… and actually much much more happened today. CSAV Rio Aysen came in before nine this morning and might be discharging its almost 5000 automobiles in Bayonne as I write this. Since entering the trade in 2007, I wonder how many automobiles she has transported across oceans . . .
Miriam Moran and Gramma Lee T Moran spin her for a stern first docking in the Upper Bay. Not having eyes myself inside the port, I can’t
tell you what make of cars she bears. I’ll bet she traversed the Panama Canal recently.
Bound for sea and Norfolk, APL Indonesia is three years younger than CSAV Rio Aysen.
Exactly a month ago, APL Indonesia departed Ningbo, China. What stories might these crew have to tell?
I’ll bet she traversed the Panama Canal not long ago and will soon do it again. The tug in the distance is Resolute.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s detecting a theme here.
The foto I posted yesterday dazzled my image of Shooter’s. Sure . . . I knew it once saw shipbuilding operations beginning with David Decker’s yard, but I never imagined the scale. And when that industry collapsed, the island was reduced to a speed bump. Obliterate it was the solution proposed by a politician half a century ago.
If I try to put myself in the head of a Standard Shipbuilding employee there 90 years ago, I imagine he would wonder how many vessels the Shooters yard would be turning out a century hence, what cargoes they’d carry, and to which ports. Possibly he also wondered what part of the operation would employ his sons. Never in his wildest dreams–I suspect–would he imagine a scene like the one passing earlier today.
He would never envisage such a ship from China with cargoes like the dominoes stack here. Click here for fotos of Shanghai a little over a century back.
Xin Chang Sha, although barely a medium-sized container ship–is twice the loa and carries eight times the cargo deadweight than a Shooters vessel such as the 1919 San Teodoro.
On a given Saturday morning from sunrise to noon, Xin Chang Sha is one of . . . half a dozen vessels bound for sea through the KVK.
Doubleclick enlarges. This foto taken at the pool, just east of the Bayonne Bridge, looking toward Shooters.
Besides being a bird sanctuary, the island margins are also home to over a dozen ruins deemed “nationally significant” by the NPS Archeology Program for abandoned shipwrecks.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Indulge a bit of shameless self-promotion here: If you haven’t voted yet in the Village Voice poll upper left, please do so and ask a few of your friends to do so too. Just click on the link and then–after putting in your name etc. paste in tugster.wordpress.com in #5 (best neighborhood blog) and #24 (best photo blog). Thanks.
About a year ago this blog featured “turning 70,” with a vessel that subsequently played an unexpected role in history.
See the crewman on the bridge wing looking up? What’s he monitoring?
Ten minutes earlier I’d caught Suez Canal Bridge nosing around a bend on E 1st Street in Bayonne. That’s Caddell Dry Dock and Repair Shipyard over on the far side.
Six weeks ago she actually was at the north end of the Suez Canal,
and now she’s headed for a portal that turns 80 this month, the Bayonne Bridge, dedicated on November 13, 1931. For the next 46 years, vessels passing here like Suez Canal Bridge–escorted by Maurania III and Amy C McAllister–could say
they were passing beneath the longest single arch steel bridge
in the world.
In 1977 the New Gorge Bridge took that distinction from the Bayonne Bridge. See what the New Gorge Bridge looks like here, and that was in turn eclipsed by the Lupu Bridge.
Some vessels traversing this waterway and squeezing under this arch may in fact know the Lupu Bridge.
Anyone have fotos to share of tugboats on the Huangpu in Shanghai?
Maurania III churns the waters to turn Suez Canal Bridge the 90-plus degrees into Newark Bay at Bergen Point.
By the way, the Lupu Bridge is itself no longer than longest steel arch bridge in the world, a distinction that now belongs to the Chaotienmen Bridge.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
As you know, I do this blog because it’s fun. I’ve met a lot of great people, and recently, with the evolution of so-called “social media” have become friends with some hunks of steel aka ships. Well, although I “befriend” a ship, it’s more accurate to say . . . the crew of the ship. And I’m overjoyed to learn of others’ routines, lives, and journeys . . . as offered by FB. Here’s a foto recently posted by the crew of Algolake, a Great Lakes bulker. This post I dedicate to the crew of Algolake, my FB friends. To hear the vessel, click here for youtube of her leaving Duluth. The foto below was taken FROM Algolake.
And, I take a lot of fotos. The first two below I took in the St. Lawrence Seaway in July 2008. Algoport entered the port, and then
moved downbound for its next load. At the time, I recall looking up more info on the vessel, learning that it was built in Collingwood, Ontario, in 1979, and then ran only one foto, seen in this post. Imagine my surprise then, when a few days ago, because of my FB friendship with Algolake, I ran into info about Algoport sinking in the East China Sea, while under tow by Pacific Hickory, for a new “forebody.” Here a youtube slideshow with more info on the demise of Algoport, now gathering marine encrustation (?) 16,000 ‘ below the surface, a wreck no wreck diver will ever see.
Another story: in March 2010 I took these fotos of USS Sanctuary in Baltimore harbor. She served as a hospital ship during WW2 and the Vietnam War. Yesterday, a friend mentioned in passing that this vessel
was on its way . . or already arrived in Brownsville, TX
for recycling. A little hunting leads me to believe her demise/rebirth . . . will involve ESCO, a dismantler or recycler. Foto 7 here leads me to think at least part of the tow was performed by Allie B. Also back in March 2009, I gallivanted up to Massachusetts to see Allie B leave on a fairly long tow to Romania. Some posts on that can be found here, here, and elsewhere.
Ships, like everything else, have lives. Lots of folks, like me, are fascinated by the “end” of the life of various ships. Some sink. Some get reefed and then some of those “reefs” dived upon. Some get recycled. Others get scrapped or broken. If, like me, you’re interested in these things and have the chance to see Park Bong Nam’s documentary “Iron Crows,” by all means . . . go.
I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this interest many of us share on the end of ships . . . breaking, recycling, wreck diving, wrecks in general, . . . and the eerie beauty of rusting derelict ghost vessels.
Algolake . . fair winds, interesting ports! And keep the great fotos coming.
This foto comes compliments of Lauren Tivey, a poet from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Question: where/what? Note the person in doorway just behind the lion “figurehead.” Answer below.
Since my goal here is to post unexpected fotos, enjoy this shot of the befigured Patty Nolan, a unique tug itself towing something different last summer.
Behold the sixth boro’s own Dal Lake or Sausalito or Lake Union. Guess where?
Behold the glorious Gowanus!
And some of its exotic fauna.
These last three fotos come compliments of intrepid paddler Vladimir Brezina, whose fotos have appeared here, among other places.
Lauren’s foto at the top is a restaurant on a barge on West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province . . . just south of Shanghai.
Right in time for Columbus Day . . .a gallivant has beckoned. Back soon …
and . . . Zhen He (1994 launched in China) came into the boro escorted by Gramma Lee T (unpictured ). . . but you’ve seen the venerable Gramma Lee T at least a hundred times here. Click here to see the explorer Zhen(g) He’s mothership juxtaposed with Santa Maria. Also, in the background off Zhen He‘s bow, that’s Sea Raven, who’s been docked at GMD for quite a while. Zheng He discovered America, along with whole other bunches of mariners?
James Turecamo assists Pati R Moran and barge Charleston into the KVK. James launched from Matton in Cohoes, NY in 1969. See the end of this post.
Comet pushes Eva Leigh Cutler toward the Buttermilk, meeting Houma. Comet launched in 1977 as Clarion, then became Gil Hebert, then Gulf Comet.
Marjorie B. McAllister, (ex-Exxon Ocean State, 1974) holds house and neck above it all.
Curtis Reinauer , launched in 1979 as Delaware, can be yours today for a mere $2.2 m . . .. She’s the second vessel to work as Curtis Reinauer.
Specialist II was high and dry here a year back.
Ellen S. Bouchard … one of three Bouchards vessels launched at Halter Marine in Louisiana in 1982.
John Reinauer … also launched in Louisiana but in 1969 and has previously worked as Esso Crystal River and Exxon Crystal River.
McAllister Girls (ex-Challenger and Betty Jean Turecamo, 1969) pushes a scow of harbor bottom.
Sea Wolf (1982, ex-Danny Paul) moves an unusual load.
L W Caddell, locally built and 20 years old works out of its place of construction.
Referring back to the James Turecamo foto above, this is a view of Matton Shipyard in Cohoes as seen less than a month ago. Beyond the barbed wire and buildings is the Hudson.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated: It’s catching me, slowly but powerfully, the tumblr graphicblog called “Adventures of the Blackgang” produced by Monkeyfist, who also does exquisite work with Maritime Monday. And now it’s on my blogroll. Check it out, often.
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