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Here’s 2010, 2009, and 2008. And here’s 2007, when I got the best race start foto but with a less good camera. September 2006 predated the blog although I posted 2006 race fotos here, my third EVER post.
Many thanks to Working Harbor Committee and all their volunteers and sponsors as well as to the towing companies and their crews for making this event possible, even a week after Irene whirled through here. Here’s my favorite action shot from today, Quantico Creek neck and neck with Maurania III as FDNY Three Forty Three misted them. I’m not sure what the results of the race were, but my bias says everyone who participated or spectated–even before hurrying to baseball, tennis, picnicking, or what have you– won.
By 9:15 the table had been set; bowls at the ready for the gourmet spinach tasting ritual, which I will spare you out of concerns for propriety and delicate palates.
The most prestigious cup in water sport waits.
By 10 am, 0n the safety boat, Capt. John Doswell, calls the parade to order.
The race committee checks radios, stopwatches and imaging devices. Capt. Jerry Roberts stands on the bench.
NY-1 is there with camera; here’s their reportage.
Crews waved as they passed the dais; my special “enthusiastic wave” awards go to the crews of Ross Sea and
Susan Miller.
Nine tugs in all this year paraded
up to the start line,
just south of 79 Street.
Sea Wolf, tug nine this year, enthusiastically raced up to the start line.
From Pier 84 at precisely 10:33:56, I witnessed those puffs of smoke, evidence that the great race had begun.
Here a half minute later, frothy “bones in the teeth” demonstrate that RPM as well as SOG and probably adrenaline levels have risen.
Vessels left to right are Ross Sea, Quantico Creek, Maurania III, and Pegasus. As evidence of investment in the sixth boro towing industry, these boats were launched 2003, 2010, 2004, and 2006, respectively.
Top horsepower boats were (l. to r. ) Ross Sea (3400), Quantico Creek (3000), and Maurania III (4000). As to design and function, the two tugs on the left push oil barges, and Maurania III does mostly ship assists.
Here are the smaller boats, l. to r. Pegasus, Growler, Sea Wolf, Catherine C. Miller, and Freddy K. Miller. Type any of these names in the search window upper left and you’ll see what I’ve written about them before.
For Quantico Creek and Maurania III it was indeed
a foto finish. This is NOT an official foto-finish foto. Check back here for official “processed” results.
Vessel on the extreme right is Susan Miller.
Pegasus passes, and
as does the
rest of the field.
Check back here for results.
Tomorrow more reportage of the rest of the competitions.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who reminds you that unlike the farm tugs I put last month, these boats might already be back on the job this evening, Labor Day weekend notwithstanding.
Aqua diamonds here means anchored tugs; only Miriam Moran is moving. It’s Sunday morning around 0900.
Now . . 48 hours later the harbor escapes dormancy: blue is passenger vessels, green is cargo vessels, and red is tankers.
Monday by 1100 APL Sardonyx re-enters a fairly deserted port to complete her transactions; she had left port Saturday evening before dark . . . as seen in third map here.
Ditto MV Azuma Phoenix; she was here at GMD Bayonne Friday, went to sea, and returned Monday afternoon. Foto thanks to John Watson.
Celebrity Summit also entered port on Monday morning . . . one or two days later than usual. Did her passengers enjoy a day or two extra as they rode out the storm? I’d love to hear their stories. Will the passengers that loaded on Monday lose time on their cruise?
Tuesday morning Maria J pushes a work barge out the east end of the KVK. Is this the crew repainting the VZ Bridge? That project also needed to be dismantled in the uncertain face of Irene.
All manner of tankers got moved into the docks this morning, like Stealth Haralambos, unusual here that assist is provided by two different companies: Miriam Moran and McAllister’s Resolute.
One blimp (heading for the US Open Tennis?) moves in from an unusual direction overtop Evening Mist, Barney Turecamo, Austin Reinauer and Stephen-Scott Reinauer.
Box ships come and go, like Zim Shanghai and Camellia as well as tugs Maurania III, Elk River, and the ones already named.
And all the Tuesday fotos were taken in about a half hour!
Has anyone seen a description of the rebooting of NYC’s transit system in the other five boros?
All fotos by Will Van Dorp except the one credited to John Watson. and did I miss these, pointed out by Rick Old Salt?
the serene before Irene. As of Friday, the USCG Captain of the Port announced the following: ”Commercial deep draft vessels greater than 300 gross tons are not authorized to remain in port alongside a pier after 1800 on Saturday, August 27, 2011. All vessels must be out of Bay Ridge, Stapleton, and Gravesend Bay Anchorage Grounds by 1800 on Saturday, August 27, 2011. Only one barge per commercial mooring buoy, with a tug in the vicinity, is authorized after 1800 on Saturday, August 27, 2011…”
NYC officials dictated that 300,000 residents of certain low- lying zones evacuate. Public transportation will cease at noon today, Saturday. From the morning NYTimes, find these other announcements. Doubleclick enlarges most.
Lots of folks I spoke with yesterday remembered Gloria’s visit in 1985. If Irene heads in, our wake could be breadcrumbs for Irene to find the Battery.
Structures that could move yesterday were doing that, like Fox Boys and this construction barge.
Sailboats played nervously in front of the Statue, where hundreds waiting in line . . . but
lots of smaller vessels moved upriver, like Kimberly Poling here pushing barge Edwin A. Poling as
well as Austin Reinauer and RTC 100.
A friend from upriver called last night to say he’d seen at least $300 million worth of luxury yachts heading north, like
the 1958 Black Knight, the Goudy & Stevens yacht featured here three years ago . . . then also running from a storm albeit a thunderstorm that time.
However, some, infirm and not easily moveable,
their lines reinforced,
… is that a terrified face appearing like stigmata on the second porthole from the right, and a grinch-like demon on the one to its left? … will ride it out at the dock. I hope the “custodians” in the SSSM offices know our eyes are on them as those same eyes are on the vessels left at the dock.
And who will be in the harbor . . . I’m guessing these folks and ones like them–police, Coast Guard, mariners working on the big ferries and certain private commercial vessels … For frequent updates, read Hawsepiper, Paul the pirate, a scholar who works on an oil barge. Paul . . . if you could get me keys, I’d move your truck outa Zone A.
Be safe. I’m staying on high ground inland.
Since I posted here a half month ago about WIX-327 USCG cutter barque Eagle, visiting the sixth boro, I’ve read Capt. Gordon McGowan’s The Skipper & the Eagle, which details the months he spent in 1946, post-war Hamburg, refitting Eagle (his orders were that appropriating Eagle and getting her safely to the US should happen at NO EXPENSE to taxpayers in this country). If you need a good read, to end the summer, this is it. McGowan’s success depended on many things, maybe the foremost of which were Eagle‘s seaworthiness and the brotherhood of the sea that bridged the divide between Capt. McGowan of now-christened Eagle and Kapitanleutnant Barthold Schnibbe of ex-Horst Wessel.
A hurricane struck Eagle on the final leg of the journey–between Bermuda and New York. As Irene approaches, consider these excerpts from McGowan’s book, written about the experience of being in an open bridge, exposed to wind, rain, and wash.
“In the rising seas the swells were beginning to overtake us, each crest coming in from a slightly different angle, and delivering a wallop to the underside of our old-fashioned overhanging counter” (195). [McGowan added six additional helmsman to the two then on the three linked wheels.]
“Whitecaps had long disappeared nd been replaced by angry streaks gouged on the breast of the waves by the claws of the wind. Puffs became roaring blasts of wind. The average velocity rose above fifty knots. This brought another change. The streaks on the surface vanished, giving way to clouds of spray as wavetops were sheared off by the wind … The stinging pellets of water fly horizontally downwind” (196).
“The early skirling and piping of the fresh gale through the rigging had risen in volume and in tone to belowing and shreiking. The vast sound seemed to fill the world. Voices of men died away and became inaudible. Lips moving, neck cords and veins standing out recalled the silent movie days. Here were faces transmitting thoughts by expression alone. Here was sound without sound. It pressed upon eardrums and bodies as a solid thing. The singleness of this mighty roar brought about a solitude … The voice of the storm was more than a roar. There was a sharp tearing sound–the ripping of the fabric of the gates of hell … The fore upper and lower tops’ls were the first to go. One moment they were there; a second later they had vanished. It seemed incredible that all that remained of the broad spread of sail were these ragged little ribbons” (200).
“I turned to the idea of heaving to. The ship had begun to dive and wallow like a wounded wild thing. Each time a wave overtook us I looked apprehensively astern. As the stern began to lift on the face of a wave, the bowsprit dipped deeper and deeper until it disappeared from sight. When each crest swept from aft forward, the stern settled deeply upon the back on the wave, and the bowsprit pointed toward the sky” (202).
Sorry . . . you’ll have to read the rest. Then there’s also Drumm’s book, which I haven’t read.
All fotos taken Friday by Will Van Dorp, who might not post tomorrow.
A South Street Seaport update: Pioneer and Lettie G. Howard have departed for Kingston.
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!!!
Today marks the end of the four-day historic ship festival and the official opening of Pier 25. Friday and Saturday I worked on Pegasus. Click on that link and you can find details of her history, starting from her inception as Standard Oil No. 16, including a time when she sported the flying horse on her stack. 1907 was a recurring number in the history-oriented tour: the date of Pegasus launch in Baltimore and the date of the opening of the Kenneth M. Murchison-designed Hoboken terminal of the Erie Lackawanna Railroad.
Drydock tug Hoboken dates from 1963, but
Yankee ferry, the only surviving Ellis Island ferry, entered service in 1907. Click here for much more about the Philadelphia-built Yankee.
Here’s a view of Union Dry Dock & Repair company . . . from Pegasus.
Also giving tours on the water was the historic John J. Harvey. Type Harvey into the search window on this blog and you’ll see more fotos I’ve taken over the past five years.
Folks including me took fotos of Harvey from Pegasus, just as folks on Harvey zoomed in on us. In the cowboy hat, it’s Mitch . . . of Newtown Pentacle.
Over 150 folks enjoyed a FREE!@#@! Hudson River ride on Pegasus Saturday. Lucky them!! I’m just saying . . . this is a rare treat, and you could make it less rare by joining in this way or that. FYI . . . the engine burns about 35 gallons per hour, if I recall correctly.
If you’re in or around the sixth boro tomorrow, you may see this scene above. I took that foto about a month ago.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who yesterday befriended MV Algolake. a bonafide facebooking, literate ore carrier! Be the first among your FB friends to befriend an ore carrier; for me it’s therapeutic, helping me forget the bulk carrier Alice that has made distance between us!!
Friday, July 1 means it’s the start of a long summer holiday weekend, marking 235 years since the independence declaration was signed. Because fireworks flash and spark unchecked in a plethora of state and federal budget debates, I thought time called for government boats shooting water. FireFighter II under the Verazzano Bridge today seemed
testing its pumps; I wonder what the crew of
APL Qatar thought as they entered . . . feted? dissed?
Fireboat Curtis Randolph has seen 32 years of service already in Detroit.
Actually not one of these three boats . . docked near Curtis Randolph is a government boat: Huron Maid is a pilot boat (see in at work in this “boatnerd” video), Joseph J. Hogan is mail boat . . . as is
the 62-year-old J. W. Westcott II.
This vessel, eastbound in the KVK this morning, probably is
NOT a government boat, but she’s gussied up like a flag. I wondered if the paint job was new and this was a sea trials run?
Edgewater has its own fireboat, as does
Newark. Judging from this video, Newark and Jersey City have twin fire boats?
Closing shot: is this what 50,000 gpm looks like? For an effective quick summary of the features of Fire Fighter II, see this video. Fire Fighter II and its twin–343–have more than 16 times the water-pumping capacity of FDNY’s first fireboat, William F. Havemeyer.
Detroit fotos comes thanks to Cookie Baker (my sister, and NO she does not work in any aspect of food prep and YES that is her name.) Thanks, Cook.
All others by Will Van Dorp. Happy Independence Day. Be independent!
GB15 was here.
About the foto below, I love surprising discoveries like this: Rikers Island has a launch, Officer Guy Hudson. I wonder if the launch has ever figured in searches for escaping Rikers’ inmates. Click here for foto and video tour of Rikers.*
Below foto taken last weekend, Kojima has made the sixth boro an “annual” stop the past two summer solstices! I also spotted them here in early summer a few years back, too. Suppose they come for the mermaid parade?
Thanks to Captain Zizes for this foto of the Bravest, the most recent FDNY Marine unit, commissioned less than a month ago on May 26. Info thanks to Harold Tartell.
Another shot of EPA Bold arriving through the Narrows a few weeks back. I love the small boat on a trailer on starboard side. Bold was docked at Riverbank State Park–the park over the sewage treatment plant!!–less than two weeks ago.
Lower Stapleton (?) serves as homeport for this fleet of speedy USCG vessels . . . just north of the Narrows.
Yesterday’s post featured a Robert Allan tug in Italy; here’s Fire Fighter II, the latest Robert Allan-designed fireboat in the sixth boro.
Special trash skimmer DEP Shearwater . . . I’d love to hear more about it, and is Jamaica Bay still around also?
I believe this is an NYS Environmental Conservation vessel over by SUNY Maritime; Wednesday it was having a hard time dragging some docks . .. horsepower YES but torque NO.
Foto #3 thanks to Captain Zizes. All others by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelateds: Has no one gotten a foto of Cangarda in the past 36 hours? Does the unique vessel only steam Captain Nemo-style under concealment of night?
And the NYTimes CityBlogs had this article recently . . . a story about the tug Petersburg; a foto of a certain deckhand handling Petersburg lines appeared here almost two years back on tugster . . . see the last foto.
Finally . .. if you’re free Sunday night, come to BAM’s short film series for Jessica Edwards’ Tugs. I think I’ll be there.
*Embedded in the Riker’s Island link is some interesting budget info: Riker’s recent budget info (?.. ok this takes more sourcing) reveals that it spends $860 million at the correctional facility to “control” [wikipedia's term] 14,000 inmates with 7000 corrections officers and an additional 1500 civilians; less than 20 miles to the southeast, Nassau Community College (NCC) spends $200 million to serve 22,000 students with 740 fulltime professors number currently in flux) and an undetermined (by me) number of parttime professors and administrative folks. I realize that Rikers has to feed, house, etc. their 14,000 “controlees,” but also added into the equation should be that NCC students depart with skills for upwardly mobile jobs.
She came into the boro less than a year ago, and only yesterday did I catch her close up. Enjoy.
View of the afterside of the house.
Backing from the dock and rotating 180 degrees . . . note the Empire State Building off to the northeast.
Portside three-quarters view of the house.
Starboard view with the W in Hoboken in the distance. No really . . this isn’t “product placement.”
Shots all from Pier 40 . . . now with Stevens Institute of Technology in the distance. Unrelated . . . Alfred Kinsey was born in Hoboken and his father taught at Stevens.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who left this part of Pier 40 to visit Village Community Boathouse. And related to that, check out a new site linked to my blogroll: DoryMan.
Totally unrelated . . . or entangled: that red color, fires, and the Empire State Building, check out this Valentine’s Day story. And wilder than that, a boat dance happening most of a year ago not far from Pier 40.
Winston Churchill said: ”If you’re going through hell, keep going.” I’ll add . . . doesn’t matter where you go, just gogogo, hither and yon, yon and hither.
Bowsprite and I did not collaborate on this . . . or even confer in any way. I’m delighted by our different takes on the same scene.
In less than a mile of navigable water between Vane Brothers’ Elk River and the Staten Island shore in the distance, a lot can go on. Elk River and DoubleSkin 37 lighter Cape Bird from the portside while Barbara C (not sure the barge) does starboard. Then Eagle Service–just off Blue Sapphire with barge Energy 13502 heads north and beyond them, APL Sardonyx heads for sea. Whatever lies or moves west of Sardonyx, I can’t tell.
A short time earlier, GT’s Navigator with barge on the wire . . . meant only one thing . . .
more mystery parts bound between Narragansett Bay and the Chesapeake. This isn’t a part of a Cadillac, but my immediate thought seeing these barges is this song by Johnny Cash. Michelle Shocked’s version, my favorite, I can’t find.
Sheer beauty and joy came next . . . Orange Sun, headed back to the equator for another load of that ambrosia from Brasil.
Adding to the traffic described earlier . . . way over on the Staten Island side Galahad moves in to drop the hook, while nearer, Energy 13502 slips past Cape Bird and DoubleSkin 37.
A fairly new Desh Mahima lies at anchor while (also fairly new) Firefighter 2 waits at HomePort.
Doubleclick enlarges ost fotos; try it here to see a crewman from Blue Sapphire taking a brush to the Plimsoll marks?
Outside the Narows, Paul T Moran lighters off Butterfly.
APL Sardonyx heads for sea (interestingly . . . for Antwerp, just as Bowsprite’s Barrington Island is!!) while Torm Lene gets escorted in the Arthur Kill by Gramma Lee T Moran.
Homeported in Kittery, Maine . . . WMEC-615 Reliance slips in past Fort Wadsworth. Can you see over a dozen people on her decks? And what does the EO or ED just below the wheelhouse mean?
Temperatures pushed 40 today, and it was a joy to walk the Bay Ridge Shore.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
See my previous Queens posts here and here for the 2008 three-vessel event, and here and here for first arrivals of QV and QM2. Last night, the newest Queen vessel departed the sixth boro for the first time escorted by QV and QM2. Tomorrow’s post will feature some daylight shots of all three, including MS Queen Elizabeth.
The following few shots capture brief moments of the festivities last night. Lined up here from farthest to nearest are QM2, QV, and QE. Fireworks finale
was complete
by 7:30.
Most moving for me transpired an hour before as QM2 departed Brooklyn and came upriver to meet the two newer vessels as they headed south from the Manhattan passenger terminal. Her horn, low pitched and determined, sounded a call like that of a bovine calling its calf to steady its legs and follow.
As QM2 rotated between the Battery and the Morris Canal, Laura K Moran stood by, but
I couldn’t tell if contact actually happened.
Margaret Moran (I think) also stood by, although I didn’t notice her until
after the rotation.
343 spouted water.
As I said, by 7:30 the three vessels began to cruise toward the Narrows.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who is grateful to Lee and Jordan for hosting an extraordinary meeting of the Ship Lore, featuring no lesser an authority on ship design than Rick Old Salt as speaker.
More Queens tomorrow.
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