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Sandy? Of course, if you live inland from a beach, you may be scoured by the stuff.
These signs appeared along the NJ Turnpike today.
I had to return to the sixth boro from a little time spent in Philly. I saw Lois Ann L. Moran (2009, Washburn & Doughty) pass quite close to Penn’s Landing, but she was way up by Fishtown by the time I could grab my camera.
High Roller (1969, Jakobson) passed also, but the light hardly allowed Roller‘s brilliance to show. Scroll through for a foto of High Roller and her siblings with unique names in a post I did here over two years ago. The dome is the Camden aquarium, where some float-through-and-over-anything hippos live.
Two weeks ago, these small craft bobbed resplendent in summery sunny, but now a storm that should be called stormy or squally or even super-tempestuous dulls their colors.
For now, get to high ground; otherwise, batten ‘em down. Dog’em. Double’em up.
All fotos today by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s some sixth boro area tempests of past years. As I post this (1700 hrs), Queen Mary 2, Maersk Kentucky, and Yasa Golden Dardanel are among the last large vessels leaving boro6 for the safety of sea.
gCaptain comments on vessel heading counter-to-trend with paramount urgency . . . here.
I’d seen McFarland before . . . once at the dock stern out and another time anchored in the middle of the night on Delaware Bay, lit up like a parking lot. I’m so thrilled that I’ll run a series of her . . . .starting with the USACE dredge passing Pac Alnath.
A first sighting for me . . . Charles Burton.
Back to McFarland . . . one of four ocean-going hopper dredges operated by the USACE. Can you name the other three?
. . . Nanticoke and Peter F. Gellatly, both pushing Vane barges.
Huge turntable on McFarland.
Chief . . . I believe the 1979 built vesel.
From this USACE publication, I like this statistic: a full load of dredged materials McFarland carries equals the capacity of 310 dump trucks.
Just before sunrise, she steamed by . . . and passed B. Franklin Reinauer in the city of Benjamin Franklin himself.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
The other three dredges are Wheeler, Essayons, and Yaquina. For comparison info about the four, click here. For Bert Visser’s directory with fotos of all the large dredgers in the world, click here.
For a post on Delaware River tugs from 2010, click here. What I’d like to see one of these days is the loading of livestock down in Wilmington. Currently, Falconia is at the dock; I saw her from the highway on Friday.
About a year ago, bright-eyed bowsprite caught a glimpse of USAV LCU-2011 running through the sixth boro. Last week I knew another LCU was heading northward in the Chesapeake as the schooner race proceeded southward. Little did I know I’d intersect with it at several points as I returned to the sixth boro myself. The first visual contact I made at Fox Point State Park, along the Delaware between Wilmington and Chester, PA. Fox Point’s namesake is S. Marston Fox, who inspired the Park’s creation from what had previously been a riverside dump, and of course many more positive things before that. See the LCU way in the distance?
And this is looking back toward Wilmington (and the Delaware Memorial Bridge) from near where the previous shot was taken.
I hope you didn’t think that mere speck above was the only view you’d have of Brandy Station.
The Commodore Barry Bridge and Philly Skyline are visible here. I’d never have guessed the Commodore Barry was younger than the Verrazano.
To my surprise, a few hours later . . . I arrived at Penn’s Landing, et voila!
The Army has 35 of these vessels.
That’s the Ben Franklin Bridge in the background.
Our third encounter happened the next morning . . . as Brandy Station arced across the river and headed back to . . . . the Chesapeake!
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s back in the sixth boro.
For an LCU high and dry, click here. For LCUs worldwide, click here.
Not quite two weeks ago I did my first post of Blount-built boats in far flung places. Read it here; a list of sixth boro Blount vessels appears at the end.
Now I’m thrilled to put up these fotos, generously sent by Julie Blount, executive vice president of Blount Boats, Inc. This is the launch of Blount’s cargo vessel Kasai, 1960, bound for
the huge inland waterways of the Congo.
Unrelated but what you might see on the inland waterways of central Africa could include MV Liemba, the second oldest operating steam ship in the world. MV Liemba is the ex-Graf von Götzen built 1912 in Papenburg, Germany on the Ems River, taken apart, and reassembled on the banks of Lake Tanganyika) . See this fine fine video trailer of MV Liemba underway.
Gratuitous foto of an interesting Blount vessel Sailor, taken on the Delaware River south of Philly last summer, and
one of Twin Tube provisioning Songa Emerald taken in the sixth boro last week. Fire Island Ferries operates over a half dozen Blount boats.
Back to Blount’s Kasai, I wonder where it is today. For an interesting set of fotos of Congo River system vessels from the time of Joseph Conrad until the relative present, click here. The last shot of the skeletal remains of a steam vessel on a riverbank is haunting.
Thanks again to Julie Blount for the two fotos from the Blount archives. The last two fotos by Will Van Dorp.
A short post . . . explained below. If you live in reasonable travel time to the Manhattan boro, consider going to the Magnan Metz Gallery at 521 W 26th St to see Duke Riley‘s show.
Scroll to the end of this post to see references to previous works by Duke Riley. Below is Acorn, a replica submarine (not in the current exhibit) involved in a 2007 “unauthorized” re-enactment of Bushnell’s Turtle attack on British vessels in the harbor in 1776.
To quote Eleanor Heartney in the introduction to the book accompanying the Magnan Metz show, “As American cities vie to transform their waterfronts into tourist attractions and high-end residential communities, it becomes difficult to remember that historically, the place where the city meets the sea has been the haven of society’s discards and degenerates… long … fertile ground for tall tales and urban legends. Duke Riley’s Imagined Histories, illegal performances and dioramic installations tap into that fast disappearing world, blending fact and fancy in a way that reminds us that history is anything but an objective science.”
The huge (say 10′ x 10′) drawing below–a centerpiece for one of the riparian tales–depicts the battle for what’s today called Petty Island (Citgo) Terminal in the Delaware River between Camden and Philadelphia. Once it was a farm and a “kingdom” of the Laird family. Now it’s home to a tank farm and container port. Play this video for a clue to where I’m off to. A foto of King Ralston Laird’s mural appears in the last foto of the last link in this post.
Riley’s huge works allude to his tattooing work. They also suggest scrimshaw of another age. Pynchonian in scope and beautifully Boschian in complexity and grotesqueness. in I spent at least 15 minutes zeroing in on details in this huge tableau.
The other river tale relates to the Cuyahoga.
If you live in NYC and think you’ve seen this work before, maybe you have: it’s a current poster produced by Arts for Transit program. Bonnie aka frogma wrote about it here.
I will post again when I can. Meanwhile, get down to 521 West 26th Street.
Submarine foto above comes compliments of Kitty Joe Sainte-Marie, Duke Riley’s project manager. Many thanks.
Here’s an article on Duke Riley’s letter to Hugo Chavez, relative to Petty Island. And scroll all the way through this article for a foto of King Ralston Laird atop one of the Petty Island storage tanks.
Here along the edge of the Delaware, inverted reflections of Olympia and Moshulu get transformed in this basin. Suggestions of past and future lurk there too.
A broken edge, where anglers probe, where finny things feed, and treasures may
await discovery . . . along with other surprises, be they finny, spiny, toothy, and slimy.
Trailing edge of continent or leading edge of ocean, or both, extend without clear definition, like the
undefinable edge of the moment, where commingling happens and life renews or metamorphoses.
What’s visible today wasn’t yesterday or won’t be tomorrow; when new vistas appear, they surprise us with
unexpected edges of propinquity.
Edge of darkness, chaos, or creation . . .
and then not, if
you brave the edge of dawn, of wonder, and find the way to your conveyance. Some edges suffice for one environment, whereas
another more buffered suit another.
This single exposure . . . . of bowsprite’s not-for-navigation chart above my desk drew me into the edge of unreality thanks to the apparition of a curvedness of mermaids speaking to a diver.
Edge of another year . . . season.
A thought from Anne Morrow Lindberg about some of the edges above: “The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.”
A cold day’s sizzling thought from Molly M: “I respect boundaries,” she said, “vigilantly. And I love to play right up to the edge of them, see how close I can get.” She smiled, slyly, like one who could never drown. Edges. Places where one thing stops being itself and becomes something else. Places where one thing washes over another and changes it. Edges, where you can fall over, tumble in, be washed away. Hard edges that cut. Soft edges that overlap and enfold. Permeable boundaries that let me flow into you and let you flow into me. Impenetrable borders that keep us apart.”
Unrelated: If you haven’t been keeping up with Issuma, click here for some recent snowy fotos.
Thanks to Pat Folan of Pelican Passage . . . a new Cutler boat? See another foto at the end of the post.
Also thanks to Pat, a new Vane Brothers boat . . . Quantico Creek. See fotos of the launch of the 3000 hp tug here.
A fairly new Wilmington Towing vessel, Capt Harry, brother of Sonie.
Odin, seen here many times before
Marion C. Bouchard, 1979 built.
Bohemia, a 4200 hp Vane boat.
And thanks to east river, the tiniest ATB power unit towing barge Massachusetts . . .
Clearly not a tug, but I wonder if anyone can identify this self-described Black Pearl . . . .
Finally, as promised, another view of the first vessel: Crystal Cutler, a 1600ish hp newbuild rcently arrived in the sixth boro. Welcome!
For more of Pat’s great fotos, click here. All others by Will Van Dorp.
See you at the MWA 2010 Waterfront Conference on Tuesday. For details, click the icon on left side of page.
Fundraiser notice Dec 1, 2010 for the tug Pegasus!!
I give thanks for the doomed ships getting a (maybe temporary) reprieve, although there’s no denying that Olympia does NOT rise and fall with the tide. Here she clearly rests
on Delaware bottom. The draft numbers there suggest a countdown . . . til drydocking and rescue?
While it lasted, the snow seemed more appropriate for Christmas than Thanksgiving. Timothy McAllister moves upriver, as does
Captain Dann, seeking a load for an empty Lockwood 2002 barge; see the loaded barge . . . tomorrow. In the background, Castlegate takes on cargo, after having left New York just Tuesday.
Crew of SKS Tyne fotograph each other as they leave Philly and
Camden and their skylines and
waterfront work and
mothballed vessels. SKS Tyne, goodspeed for whatever your next destination and next ….
Pilotboat Overfalls heads south, and
no matter the day, the harbor beat goes on.
All fotos, Thanksgiving Day, by Will Van Dorp.
Soon afterward, I went out for a Thanksgiving lobster. Speaking of, read this great article about the Pilgrims and their Thanksgiving eels.
Note: Doubleclick enlarges.
Thankgiving, and snowfall on the Delaware, and what it brings–with 9000 hp and San Francisco on its stern–
Pilot! It’s a Crowley’s tug on
La Princesa, the triple-deck 580′ loa barge that runs between Pennsauken, NJ and San Juan, PR.
Just over a year ago, I saw fotos of La Princesa push ashore by the storm named Ida near Virginia Beach, VA, and I read it was big, but here Grace Moran and
Valentine Moran show just how
huge the barge is. See it in the St. John’s River, FL here.
3 pm Thursday they headed upriver under the Ben Franklin Bridge, and
as of noon today, they were still docked at Pennsauken, and I had to move on. More La Princesa fotos here. More Delaware River first snow fotos soon.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Uh … transplant to the Delaware?
Wilmington Tug’s Sonie passes junk-rigged Summer Wind as
she pushes light in the direction of the Ben Franklin Bridge. In the foreground left is the faux sternwheel of Philadelphia Belle.
Gulf Service heads in the same direction from over near the big guns of battleship New Jersey.
That transplant … It launched from Philadephia in 1902 to work out of New York, which it did until 1939. See the fourth profile below.
Petrel is an Allied staple on the Delaware.
Jupiter (ex-Socony #14) currently is operated and maintained by a volunteer group called Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild. The tip of boom and yellow-green-white vessel belong to Gazela, the Guild’s other vessel, previously written about here and here (See fotos 7, 8 and 9). 
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
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