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.

Government Boats 25

The last post in this series–24–was quite obscure.    And this one . . . could be called ex-government boats.

The foto below comes thanks to Scott Craven, who caught the vessel upbound on the Hudson near the Bear Mountain Bridge.  At first I thought it was a re-purposed 65′ WYTL.  With a bit of research, however, I learned it’s the retired Massport Marine 1, Howard W. Fitzpatrick (scroll through to the 8th foto).  Note the traces of removed signage along her port side.  She’s now replaced by American United.   Again, scroll though, and you’ll see the folks on Windermere posted a foto of American United high and dry at the Canadian shipyard here.  Click here for more info on Massport.   Fitzpatrick launched in 1971 from a now inactive shipyard in southern Illinois, just north of St. Louis.   So does anyone know where Fitzpatrick is headed?  Great Lakes?  the Mississippi system?  Maybe a reader upriver can report?

On a rainy day back in mid-April, Gary Kane caught this display on the East River, just south of Roosevelt Island.

It was the John D. McKean, a retired FDNY fireboat.  McKean was Camden, NJ built about 60 years ago.  Anyone know what her future may be?

All this talk of retired fireboats and mention of Gary Kane give me an opportunity to suggest you buy the documentary produced by Gary Kane and myself called Graves of Arthur Kill.  One of the major voices/story tellers in that documentary is a retired FDNY engineer.

Thanks to Scott Craven and Gary Kane for use of these fotos.

Down the Up Creek

This cryptic title will become clear in time, but first check out these fotos taken by Jim Ash . . . back more than a decade ago when the long-gone Coral Queen was headed up the creek . . . the creek referred to being also known as the Anne Hutchinson River.

The thing about these creeks is that large vessels–that’s a relative term–can only navigate them only when water levels are up.  But if you’re up the creek too long after ebb, you stay where you are until the water comes back.  When levels are up, you head downstream, around

any and all obstacles, overtop of submerged but hidden threats you know are there, underneath

the ones that don’t have to lift for you, through

the portals only at that instant when they’re open and you’re lined up, and

toward the open water.

More on this–the specialized creek work of Diane B and  . . . the proud, the very few . . . soon.  All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Stormy 2 Afternoon

Fotos from Barbara at Rockaway Beach around 100th Street here.  Emergency message to folks on the boardwalk:  ”Go inside, and no surfing.”

From Gary, East River looking toward the mouth of Newtown Creek and

toward the 59th Street Bridge.    No movement.

And finally, from L’amica dalla torre di orologio . . .  Hudson River . . . looking toward  the Statue of Liberty, who probably wishes she could hunker down behind her pedestal.   Geometrical structure to the left is the floating Battery Park City Ferry Terminal.   I’m not sure what contingencies exist for it during a surge, since it’s basically a hull.

Currently Captain of the Port has order vessels of a certain tonnage to leave the docks, as it’s safer for them to hang in the stream than stay affixed to a rigid structure.   So cruising in the North river now as sightseeing vessels,

Meagan Ann,

and the Sandy Hook pilot boats!

That’s the Erie Lackawanna Terminal Tower/Hoboken Terminal in the background.

USCG . . . off to respond to a recreational vessel that’s dragged its mooring?

And finally, back to Rockaway . .  as nightfalls.

Many thanks to Barbara, Gary, and L’amica for these fotos.  The worst is yet to come, I fear.  Stay inside and away from the tongues and talons of water that surge in.

And this just in . . . video from helicopter of USCG rescue of folks from HMS Bounty.

Seeing the Unseen

AIS is just that . .  a tool to help us see the otherwise unseen, those moving things over the horizon.  And wonderful things there are to be seen with this tool.

Yesterday I was reading Ray Bradbury’s short story “Night Meeting.”  A large part of the story features a conversation between Tomás Gomez (TG) , Earthling, and Muhe Ca (MC), Martian.  I’ll simplify part of it here:

“TG:  The canals are empty right there.

MC:  The canals are full of lavender wine.

TG: It’s dead.

MC:  It’s alive. (protested the Martian, laughing more now.)  Oh, you’re  quite wrong.  See all the carnival lights?  There are beautiful boats as slim as women, beautiful women as slim as boats, women the color of sand, women with fire flowers in their hands.  I can see them, small, running in the streets there.  That’s where I’m going right now, to the festival; we’ll float on the waters all night long;  we’ll sing; we’ll drink; we’ll make love.  Can’t you see it?

TG:  Mister, that city is dead as a dried lizard. . . .   “

So I was looking at AIS midmorning;  the purplish clutch of “round the world clippers” was about 60 miles south and a tad east of Montauk.  Another player out there -farther southeast of the racing yachts–was the tug Rachel!   The last time she “passed my radar” was last fall when she towed a vessel from the San Francisco area to the scrappers in Texas.   Now it appears she’s homebound after a tow of parts to Bath Iron works, parts for what will become USS Zumwalt.

Also, just off Brick, NJ on the AIS “map” above is Larvik, which was at the dock in Bayonne yesterday.

Ten weeks ago in Nola, I got this quite distant foto of American Queen, which I understood had been at the dock for some time, a few seasons.  Imagine my surprise, then, when I stumbled upon this article about steam travel on the Mississippi having resumed.

A visit to AIS finds her snaky trail leading to this dense cluster of vessels in Baton Rouge.  Here’s a recent NYTimes story on the boat with a great slideshow.

And finally . . .  I caught Wilson Saga escorted by Brendan Turecamo headed under the Brooklyn Bridge the other day.

She’s not a large ship relative to Brendan.

And  until I got my fotos home, I’d never even noticed,  taking Wilson‘s stern,  the refurbished marketboat turned yacht named Peggy ?

So where do you suppose Wilson Saga has been prior to the sixth boro?  Some obscure and magical places, if you like Nordica:

June 6th, New York

May 23rd, Aalborg

May 19th, Moerdijk

May 10th, Riga

May 7th, Jelsa

May 5th, Heroya

April 23rd, Svelgen

April 19th, Leirpollen

April 15th, Glomfjord

What a saga . . .

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Other People’s Fotos 13

I was delighted to learn that Birk Thomas had taken these last week.  They are golden hour fotos of a highly unusual transit up the East River.   That’s Queens on the left and a varying Manhattan skyline on the right.

In the past, this blog has published fotos of  covered submarine parts headed south to Newport News, like here and here . . .  ( read Les’ comment in that first link) but Birk caught the uncovered and partially assembled cargo headed north toward Connecticut.

A large part of what motivated me to start fotoblogging the traffic in New York harbor, which I started to call the sixth boro, is the diverse and intriguing traffic on the waters.  No single person I met knew the whole story or appreciated all the details.  New York is no simple river town where one person could sit on the bank and see everything that passes.  So to all of you who’ve collaborated on this tugster project in some way, I really appreciate it.

Here, in Hell Gate, Birk Lyman and Sea Shuttle look to be a whole different tow, given that the late afternoon sun is now behind the camera.   Here’s my first posting of  submarine sections on tugster almost three years ago.

Many thanks to Birk, who started this amazing resource.   Lyman belongs to Gateway Towing based in New Haven, CT.  Check out the Gateway Towing page.

Here and here are two previous “submarines in the sixth boro” posts.

Random Tugs 82

Na Hoku (“stars”  in Hawaiian) 1981, ex-Chris Candies.  Sunset Park in the background.

Aegean Sea 1962 (ex-Francis  E. Roehrig, Jersey Coast, John Barker) Greenpoint in the background.  Click here for more Huxley Envelope/East River shots.

Peter F. Gellatly.  Delivery exactly two years ago, 17 November, 2009.  Leaving Newark Bay and headed into the KVK, eastbound.

James Turecamo 1969.

Miriam Moran 1979  on Citron   2007   bow.  James Turecamo westbound.

Kimberly Turecamo 1980  (ex-Rebecca P.) and Serifos 1995   named for an Aegean Sea island.

Duty 2006  headed south for another load of coal.

Margaret Moran 1979 assists Ital Moderna 2008.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s looking for fotos of Eldia, as she was towed from Cape Cod into the Kills and ultimately Witte’s yard in the mid-1980s.  Eldia blew ashore at Orleans in a spring storm 1984 (Click here to see how photogenic she was thought to be on the beach.) and ultimately was towed to Rossville.   Someone out there MUST have fotos of her as “dead ship” coming into sixth boro waters.

Please vote as often as they allow for tugster Village Voice web awards.  Read the directions upper left and click on the icon. And  . .  thanks!

Issuma’s Journey

So here’s a prime example of a sixth boro delight.  No, THAT inspector is not immersed in the sixth boro!  But the object of the inspection sailed into the East River last year in late August from the Sound and then out again heading north, up the Hudson River.  Note the place and date on this foto, which I borrowed from Richard Hudson’s Issuma blog.  Click here if you don’t know (like me) where the “Dolphin and Union Strait” is located.

I took this foto of Issuma last October just off the Rondout, where Issuma anchored.  Who would have guesed that Issuma, one year on, would be NORTH of Whitehorse!

Here’s another from that same morning.  Another schooner . . . Rosemary Ruth . .  was buddied up alongside.

This foto, also from Richard’s blog, shows the exact date.

So how does one get a 50′ schooner from the Rondout to the Yukon is less than a year?   Some thoughts come to mind:  very large truck, a C-17, squadrons of helicopters . . .  or by just sailing it through the northwest passage, doing what a namesake failed to do some 400 years back!

Congratulations to Richard Hudson and his crew, who on Columbus Day 2010 poured me a distinctly tropical drink on Issuma, docked in Long Island City, Queens.  Cheers.  I trust you passed the mustachioed one’s inspection gloriously.

Summertime

Janis Joplin did my all-time favorite rendition of Summertime.  I like how she takes it furiously into flight, almost like these boats, her sibilants and band’s cymbals in places like electric cicadas.

Boats are jumping . . . er getting on plane . . .

If your daddy’s rich . . . or at least willing to put some money into a boat . . . that is if he can after the S & P downgrade .  ..

One of these mornings you’re gonna rise up singing…

Then you’ll spread your wings and take to the sky . . .  or not.  This one seems more like it’ll head for the submarine races or something . . . .

But hush little baby . . . one of these will

take to the sky . . .  one of these mornings . .  or afternoons.

If your daddy’s rich and your moma’s good looking

Or if you’re lucky when you play the flight board . . .  with StndAIR…

Then you really might finally spread your wings and  (leaping over the East River Ferry) . . . .

take the sky…   topping the crown of Queens.

That’s Will Van Dorp’s version, who took these fotos.  Here’s Janis Joplin’s, once when she kept it together and did nothing to harm herself.  A seaplane on the East River appeared here quite long ago.  Still, these booted seaplanettes pale in comparison with the old Aeromarine airships that used to link the North and Raritan Bay with Florida.

Some interesting postscripts:

1) BRBRbrooklyn caught FDNY’s greeting SUNY Maritime’s Empire State return this morning . . . while I was still drinking my coffee!!

2)  Hats off to Stephen Askew, superintendent of North River Waste Treatment Plant, for his recent heroic captaining of a raft, a true friend of all denizens of the sixth boro.

3) News about the “troop carrier” found buried deep in the foundation of the World Trade Center . . . .   Revolutionary War troop carrier that is.

A WTF!@#@! postscript too”

Lady Liberty appears in many fotos on this blog, including one above.  Do you know what Rev. John Benefiel thinks about Bartholdi’s lady?    Fie!!!

Random Tugs 74

Ace . . . never seen it before.  Can you guess its location?  Answer follows.  I’d love to know the story.  Mebbe she’s the 1949er formerly known as Oil King?  And what of the collapsed rail bridge lower left?

Is that Michael Cosgrove sashayed eastbound on the East River with the 2006 Pegasus?

Here’s Franklin Reinauer headed for Erie Basin.

 Note the crewman portside between the two scows as

Thomas J Brown heads for Gowanus.

Is it true that Shawn Miller pushed a barge to  transport Our Lady for some R & R?

Foto of Ace was taken by will Van Dorp in the Wallabout Channel today.

And important news from Reuters, the escaped peacock has voluntarily returned to its home;  my speculation is that a love match had frayed and said-cock needed some time away.