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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.
This gateway to the sixth boro dazzles at dawn, with out traffic or with.
Know this ship? You saw this funnel before in a foggy October post as well as in a sunny September post in the past twelve months.
Here are the specs for the 12-year-old vessel going under the almost 50-year-old bridge.
In the distance, that’s the Newark Bay Bridge, located north of Ports Elizabeth and Newark.
Inbound . . .
outbound, and
closely monitored.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who finally watched Saturday Night Fever for the first time, because of the bridges scenes. It turned out to be a much better movie than this non-discoing blogger ever imagined. See it if you haven’t, for a throwback to Bay Ridge (mostly) back in 1977 . . . which started with a president named Ford , new computers were Commodore PETs and Apple IIs, and the Concorde started to fly to NYC.
Here was 18 in this series, which offers similar equipment. Something supermax somewhere?
All these fotos come compliments of Xtian Herrou, who previously passed along fotos for this post and others. He took this foto in Brest, although the tug is by now through Port Said for parts south and east… .
These waters require that Sea Foxtrot and her tow take on specialized gear.
Once they get in the zone, Sea Foxtrot and
Norma 1 will fully deploy gear and look like this,
UAE tug Simyar, currently working in the Indian Ocean.
Merci beaucoup, Xtian . . .
Here’s a post I did six and a half years ago (scroll on through) alluding to pirates that once annoyed ships in the sixth boro . . ..
Click here for my serendipitous fotos of WLV-612 under way a few months back. I traded those fotos for a tour. But the vessel immediately below is not 612 . . . it’s LV-87, 43 years older than the 612. Check out the riveted hull. Here and here are some previous posts on that Ambrose showing vintage in situ views and high and dry ones at Caddell’s last spring.
In comparison, here’s the bow of the 1950 Nantucket aka WLV-612.
The C covers a hatch which when swung outward is marked with a U so that from a distance, one would still read the name on side as Nantucket. I’m not kidding.
This is what a welded lightship stern looks like. But where is Nan, with whom I had the appointment to view the vessel?
A cellphone call brings movement to a forward portlight, and with the right password,
this hatch swung open. ”No, I’m not selling anything or giving away religion . . . I just being tugster. A tour maybe?”
Spirals still lead between decks, although I’m guessing that everything about this vessel has been redone to yacht standards. For the official site fotos of what’s below decks, click here. There are many more fotos on this listing . . for less than $7 m it can be yours. It will probably leave the sixth boro before the end of this month.
Prominently framed below, the builder’s plate. But how did WAL become WLV? Addendum #2 Here’s the answer.
This vessel was the USCG last working lightship until 1983, and it did “other tasks” until being decommissioned in March 1985.
For a PDF on many US lightships, click here. Two of them are abandoned on a riverbank in Suriname. For some haunting fotos of a similar 1910 Dutch lightship (Lichtschip Suriname-Rivier) along that same river, click here. It seems there is a restoration project underway, as filmed here in the past month . . . but in Dutch. Basically, the narrator says “don’t fall through the deck, vessel came here in 1911, here’s the washroom, the kitchen, the anchor machinery, the light tower . . . here’s the companionway heading below, yes . . . there’s water down there but we’re hoping to get her dry.” Come back when the job is done; meanwhile I am NOT going down below where some nasty critters might have settled in.
All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
Upriver at Magdalen Island, here’s a followup to Ooops 3 . . . Mary Alice (1974) brings in bucket on dredge Delaware Bay (2006) to begin process of raising the beached scow. That’s Leopard Albany-bound on left side of page. See Leopard anchored in the sixth boro in the second foto here.
These fotos come thanks to Dock Shuter.
Resolute (1975) heads for a rendezvous with Zim Qingdao. That’s High Mercury and the ferry terminal in the background.
Anyone know who takes credit for that white arch atop the terminal?
Headon view of the new Mary Gellatly (2000). Actually, I wish the green trim along lower side of house windows were left . . . even enhanced. That’s Maersk Caitlin in the background.
Tied up along the salt pile . . . it’s Vane’s Red Hook (2013) and Hunting Creek (2012) They may be the two newest tugboats in the sixth boro.
Catherine Turecamo (1972) closes in to meet UASC Jeddah.
And here . . . high and dry and needing a shave, it’s Specialist. Here (scroll through to the end) is a foto of the same vessel–house up–three plus years ago. Is she really a 1956-build?
And finally, heading into the Narrows, it’s
Sea Bear (1990).
Thanks to Dock Shuter for the Mary Alice fotos. All others by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated: Here’s a NYTimes 12-minute documentary update report on the voyage of Break of Dawn and the Mobro barge of Islip garbage. Thanks to Old Salt Rick for calling it to my attention.
Porthole v. portlight difference? See if this helps. Know this location?
It’s Quester, the legendary “yellow submarine” in Coney Island Creek, which I traveled up with tide/current taxi a few summers back.
Below is the ruins of PC-1264, one of two World War 2-era subchasers disintegrating in a scrapyard in Staten Island. Learn more about it in our documentary Graves of Arthur Kill. Here are some stills I took while we were filming.
ATR-89 –built 1944– is also in the documentary.
This vessel dates from 1950 and has been restored to not only working but also
yacht-like status.
These fotos will serve as teasers until
I get that post together about the tour vessel concierge Nan gave me.
Here’s a post I did a year and a half ago about a tugboat still working on the Hudson that lost its forward portlights. The second foto above (yes, that’s me) was taken by Marie Lorenz. All others by Will Van Dorp.
Here was 10 about an honest Navy tug turned narco-mothership, possibly, and wondering where she now may be.
I owe this post to tugboathunter, who caught not only a major typo in yesterday’s post but also presented me a key to understanding an unusual looking trawler called Nomada. I’ll be direct . . . two, three, four decades ago she was an austere tugboat called Colinette (little hill) working in Canada. See addition at the end of this post. Six and seven decades ago she was a Royal Canadian Navy tug that crossed the Atlantic to operate out of unidentified ports in the UK. My source for all this is here, which tugboathunter pointed me toward.
An hour and some after dawn yesterday I caught this fotos, and imagined she was a rough-cut Krogen type trawler, a scaled-down coastal freighter replica, or some hybrid thereof.
Who would think she started life 70 years ago on Owen Sound.
I’d love to see interior fotos.
All these shots by Will Van Dorp.
And this just in from Jason LaDue, Colinette back in November 1999.
What a retrofit job!
Here was 5. Early May means recreational vessels return to the sixth boro, even if
only for the purpose of transiting through, like Nomada Sultana, a Canadian trawler. See the note at the end of this post. Nomada has an amzing story.
Anchored just east of the eastmost VZ Tower this morning was this small workboat, with
Florida registration. No one seemed around.
This Delaware-registered ketch was quite the
anonymous beauty.
Pioneer III took a party out past tanker New Confidence to fish.
Revenir came into the Narrows recently.
From the name I had guessed an insurance company . . . but this boat operates between Manhattan and a golf course in Jersey.
And finally . . . it appears to be Swivel, one of the 65′ WYTLs sold out of the Coast Guard.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Happy smallcrafting for all.
So the Nomada story is that once she was a Royal Canadian Navy tugboat built in 1943. As such she crossed the Atlantic on her own. I guess I’d better do a post on her tomorrow. If you’re upriver, keep your eyes peeled; she’s headed for Lake Erie.
Old Wine has to be one of the best vessel names ever! Disclaimer . . . she does NOT carry beverage. I’d love to see her come to the sixth boro, although . . . I can imagine the temptation some would feel to alter the name-great as it is–by adding some letters. Some ideas follow. Seriously, I use this foto with permission of Antonio, a Spanish tug captain who visited the sixth boro for the tugboat race back in 2009 . . . scroll through to the end here.
Fairplayer . . . another great name from Colin in Cape Town. I caught a Jumbo in the KVK about three years ago here.
Faust arriving in town might make one worry, although I saw no evidence of that.
Spruce 2 . . .
To play with Old Wine . . . well . . . add an R to the end. Or add a S in front of the second word. I’m sure you could do better.
Thanks to Antonio Alcaraz Arbelo for the first foto, Colin Syndercombe for the second. The last two by Will Van Dorp.
It has been over six years since I first used this title, yet a bridge appears as header for every post. And just in case you’re wondering, I will keep that version of the header no matter what gets announced the day after tomorrow. The VZ Bridge is our Arc de Triomphe. An April morning in 2008 I caught this foto of the QM2 arriving here for the first time. Foto taken from the northwest (NW) side of the Narrows.
Each year representatives of the fleet pass –here USS Nitze–under, with added moisture added by FDNY. Foto from the SE.
Dozens of vessels pass beneath the structure daily. I recall how thrilled I was to drive my boat underneath . . . in 2003, as I was moving it to the Great Lakes and myself into the sixth boro. Aside from its symbolic and logistical value, the VZ is beautiful–here seen from the NE.
It’s most beautiful at dawn.
But the other morning as I caught this, I wonder why the bridgegreen version of navygray was chosen as its color. I think of the Golden Gate, the Purple People Bridge, the yellow bridges of Pittsburgh.
What prompts this post is a sight I saw from the SE a few weeks ago . . . what looked first like a high-hanging fruit hanging west of the Brooklynside tower. I wondered if it’d always been there but somehow I’d missed it.
Zooming in, though, I saw it was a paint crew, at least five painters. Putting on camouflage or daubing antirust?
Maybe preparing to change the color depending on the results of a horse race?
Or prepping for a new VZ Bridge color in honor of the bridge’s jubilee . . in about a year and a half?
Happy May Day . . all fotos by Will Van Dorp. Anyone know why the official spelling of the bridge does not match that of its namesake?
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