Government Ships 6

Here’s a mouthful:  behold the quite newly commissioned “French FREMM multi-mission frigate, Aquitaine.”

The blue shed along her starboard side gives away the location . . .  that’s Red Hook .  .  . south end of  Brooklyn Bridge park.

Here’s the sum of the parts, at sunrise this morning.  For a CGI walk through, click here.

Here’s a frontal view of the stealth frigate.  For more info, click here.    DCNS was the builder.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Here’s a stealthy French warship that visited three years ago . . . and here are some fotos that include mine of the  previously most recent French naval contingent  in the sixth boro.

 

Meanwhile in the Sixth Boro 4

Before dawn the day of the race, daily port activities carried on:  Atlantic Niyala awaited load shift in Red Hook.

Celebrity Summit arrived from sea for some port time here assisted by  Kimberly Turecamo (?).

Scott Turecamo awaited some rehab

at Caddell’s.

As passengers debarked to starboard, equipment received attention to port.  I’m not sure what all is happening over on the port side here.

Up at the Manhattan passenger terminal Veendam received Tuckahoe  attention to port as well as passengers transferred from ship to island.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who heads for the Roundup tomorrow.

City of Water Day 2012 Survey

Of course, every day is water day in the sixth boro of the city of NY, and it’s great that MWA and other sponsors have chosen for five years now to recognize that fact . . . on a big “get out on the water” day . . . because who OWNS the port . . . ultimately WE do, you and I, as citizens of this country.  Many organizations manage it, enforce regulations in it, and fund educational activities about it . . . but WE own it, the port, the water . . .  and support it with our taxes and our votes.

Enjoy this set of twelve fotos taken over roughly a 12-hour period yesterday.   At daybreak, Pegasus and Urger were still rafted up on Pier 25.  This foto shows two boats whose combined longevity adds up to over 215 years!!

Resolute was northbound over by the Murchison-designed Hoboken terminal . . . which means a larger vessel needing assistance MAY shortly be headed for sea.  Here’s another Murchison-designed mass transit building in what today seems an unlikely location.

North River itself works tirelessly as part of the effort to keep sixth boro waters clean.

Urger poses in front the the Statue.  Lady Liberty was a mere 18-year-old when Urger (then C. J. Doornbos) first splashed into the waters of a Lake Michigan bay.

Launch 5 races downriver.

Indy 7 shuttles folk around as Soummam 937,  the first Algerian warship ever to visit the sixth boro leaves for sea.

Little Lady II and a sailboat negotiate passage.

Laura K and Margaret Moran escort in container vessel Arsos (check its recent itinerary at the bottom of that linked page) and weave their way to the Red Hook container port through a gauntlet of smaller vessels, including Manhattan.

Catherine C. Miller moves a small equipment barge back to base.

Fire Fighter II hurries north on the Buttermilk Channel to respond to an alarm.

A flotilla (or bobbering or paddling or badelynge) of kayaks crosses the Buttermilk.

Pioneer tacks toward the north tip of Governors Island, leaving Castle William to starboard.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp on Bastille-sur-l’eau Day.

Related:  I was overjoyed to read the NYTimes this morning and find this article about a vessel calling at Port Newark!!  Bravo.  Back a little over a week ago I was miffed about this article . . . about the port in Trondheim, which could just as well have been written about skilled workers anywhere in the sixth boro.

Also, I’m passing along a request from the Urger crew:  if anyone sees a foto of Urger crew in any local print publications, please tell me so that I can look for a clipping to pass along to them.  Thanks much . . . .

Unrelated:  From today’s NYTimes Book Review section, an essay by Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp on Woodie Guthrie, who would have turned 100 yesterday.

By the way, from Mitch’s Newtown Pentacle, can anyone identify the tug in this post?  I can’t .

Panama Day 2.2

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.

Mary Whalen Needs Help

I’ve mentioned or featured Mary Whalen in tons of posts. Click here for the archive.  Over five years ago the blog called “A Brooklynite on Ice” did my all-time favorite post of the vessel and PortSide NewYork here.    ”Brooklynite on Ice” title captures her dilemma  . . .  ”613 Tons of Homelessness.”

She’s twisted and turned in the currents too long, her viability as a fantastic asset to sixth boro education and culture trifled with by her lack of easily accessible-to-the-public dock space.  Befriend her on Facebook to see all the good things she’s been doing with that medium, and then

Please  help MARY A. WHALEN & PortSide NewYork

The promised “real estate deal” aka “dock space” fell through and she needs a new home and some fundraising fast. Here are three possible ways to help.

1) Come to a meeting tomorrow Mon 2/27/12 6:30 p.m.  Info here.

2) Submit a supportive comment here.

3) Donate via PayPal here.

Names 14

It’s been some time since I did a post on names, and must confess I’ve neglected to write down some intriguing ones of late.  Here’s Names 13.  But before looking at this batch, I have to call out a disturbing article from today’s NYTimes about closing a customs inspection station in Red Hook, not only raising prices on commodities like bananas and beer but also adding to bridge and road congestion.  I hope this doesn’t transpire.  It sems pennywise poundfoolish to me . . . unless there’s another darker explanation?

I’m happy shipping companies use nomenclature, real names, rather than numbers or alphanumerics.  Actually, vessels do have IMO identification in numeric form, but they also have names, naming conventions that evoke other times.  I love the classical names.  IMO 9324215 is also Golden Venus.

9289518  ?  . . . Ajax sounds better to me.

I don’t even care about the number:  NYK Daedalus suits me.

CSL Atlas . . . fine.

And I love this classic . .  a foto of a banana boat offloading in the sixth boro and taken in 1960 by William Rau and passed along by Thomas Flagg . . . Eros!  I love it.

Here’s an enlarged portion of the shot.  Notice the wooden covered barge in the foreground.  The harbor 52 years ago looked quite different.

Now . .  the same name on a fiberglass motorboat . . .  nah!  Here it seems tacky.  Pop culture references might be better for pleasure boats, like

this . . . I love it!

Except the classic from William Rau, all fotos by Will Van Dorp.

So here’s a question prompted by the Chinese new year:  I cannot recall seeing a large vessel passing through the sixth boro bearing a name with the word dragon in it.  I can’t.  Maybe you can.  A case in point is this foto taken yesterday:  a Chinese-operated container vessel although built in Japan, named for a major Chinese city.  As it passed, I was moved . . . a formidable vessel, a huge water-snake, a contemporary dragon.

 If you’ve taken a foto of a modern vessel with “dragon” in the name, I’d like to hear of it.  Upon more reflection here, I realize that over four years ago in Greenport, NY, I saw a green tug called Dragon.  The registry shows the Gladding-Hearn vessel still operates by that name.   Can anyone pass along a recent foto?

Ghost Gallery 2

“Ghost gallery” returns to scenes from several years back with fotos I’ve not used, at least not in this version.  Take Peking‘s last move . . . the whole harbor exudes gravity on a cold mid-January afternoon as McAllister

tugs Elizabeth and Responder assist in slipping her back into hibernation (a terminal coma?) beside Pier 16.  Compare the colors here with those in Rick’s post about this other Blohm + Voss vessel.

Some years back I went to a BWAC show in the old warehouse, but the only image left in my head from that day intruded from beyond the window  . . . this dome

now gone to leave nothing but a trestle leading to a scar.

Brian A. McAllister . . . where does it now operate?

Time to bring back some color, like the

“Gardens in Transit” decals that covered many moving objects–including ex-LT-2089– in NY some years back.

Last shot here . . . Cosette used to transport the used cars out of New York, a task now performed by Grey Shark and others.  Cosette once occupied the niche of Danalith in Narragansett Bay.  I wonder two things:  where is Cosette today and what great Bolivian port of registry did/does she wear on her stern . . . Potosi?  Salar de Uyuni?

All fotos from the archives of Will Van Dorp.  Got any good fotos to share from your sixth boro archives?  I’d love to see them.

Pegasus Morning

After a four-day festival of introducing New York folk to historic vessels and (more) . . .  Pegasus escorts Lehigh Valley 79 back to Red Hook.

So if I had to list the “more” in  question, I’d say  . . .  history and stories of the port and days gone by and “fire mops” and leaky pipes with names like “old Faithful” , glimpses of present but ever-changing skylines, demonstrations of docking and departures,  churning up mud bottoms and making white frothy spray, lurching and rolling  and pitching on the Hudson, and

now it’s homewater bound, heading for Red Hook;

but first, a quick stop in Erie Basin for

remaking the tow, shifting Pegasus to the side most conducive

to getting the 97-year-old barge that serves among MANY other things as a circus tent and an art gallery

away from a little more past

and fast to its dock, back to the closest front-row seat to the

sweet face of Bartholdi’s imagination.

Lines get adjusted and readjusted according

to commands from the wheelhouse.

Bartholdi’s lady is always first to raise her hand and ask all about another weekend stop on the tour.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who encourages your support of Pegasus and Lehigh Valley 79.

Commodities 2

Using what’s stowed in this vessel and the one from two days back–Black Seal–you’d have “fixins” for lots of

banana splits.  To ensure these tropical foods arrive in prime condition, stow those bananas properly on this reefer.  All manner of stowing advice comes your way from Stowmasters.

What impressed me, though, since I could observe it, was the quick tie up and turn around:  Albermarle Islandapproaches the dock at 8 a.m. with assistance from Brendan Turecamo and Margaret Moran, who

ease the vessel sideways.  Slowly and

steadily.  Crew on the ship and the dock make lines

fast.

By 8:20, it’s “all fast” and the tugs move to the next job.  Less than 10 hours later, Albermarle Island has headed out the Narrows bound for sea and Europe.

I’m left wondering about the story of these bananas in both the weeks before and after this docking.  Here’s a start.   Bowsprite drew a sister of Albermarle here, and I  wrote about the previous generation of reefer vessels in the sixth boro over three years ago here.  Anyone know what happened to the smaller “Ocean” class, and why the “Island” class calls at Red Hook rather than Howland Hook?

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp, who wrote about shipment of another commodity here.

Figuring Out by Doing

You may recall a reference here last week to a three-masted schooner story emerging from the haze.  Thanks to PortSide NewYork, I learned about a project

to ship cocoa by commercial sail.  And as a TWIC-carrying PortSide volunteer, I was invited into Red Hook Marine Terminal to blog for the  unloading of cocoa from the schooner.    Black Seal, a 70-foot Colvin “Sea Gypsy” design with the biggest cargo hold and steel pilothouse, has been the 25-year building project of Capt Eric Loftfield.  Tugster has featured many fotos of two other Colvin boats: samples at  Rosemary Ruthand the misguided Papillon.  On her maiden voyage, Black Seal traveled from Falmouth, Massachusetts to Puerto Plata, DR . . .  to Red Hook, New York.  With cargo.  Twenty tons of organic cocoa beans,

285 bags of over 150 pounds each.   And how much fuel was consumed in the 30-seaday, 3000-mile voyage?  Answer appears later in the post.

The cocoa represents about a year’s worth of Dominican beans used by Mast Brothers Chocolate.  Click on the 8.5 minute clip for some background.

Before containerization, this is what port work looked like.

According to Rick Mast, this voyage is partly about R & D, figuring stuff out like

the pricing, the efficiencies.

This cargo was loaded in the Domincan Republic in two hours and unloaded in Red Hook in

–because it meant fighting gravity–four.

By noon today, the hold looked like this;  I wish the blog could convey the heady aroma of chocolate that lingered.  I could sleep here and dream of flavonoids.

According to Capt. Loftfield, a Cook Inlet pilot in Alaska, the total amount of fuel used, including motoring out of and into port as well as running the generator and galley was

less than 50 gallons.  Assuming 3000 miles, that’s better than a Prius!

Here’s what 12 pallets of cocoa looks like on the dock within sight of

Wall Street.

Some inspiration for using commercial sail to move  cocoa from the Caribbean can be traced back to  Ross Gannon and Nat Benjamin of Gannon & Benjamin Marine Railway.   Ross Gannon is the uncle of  PortSide New York‘s founder and director Carolina Salguero.  Gannon & Benjamin has received their own cargo (wood) by sail.   Some other examples of current commercial sail projects include Beth Alison,  Tres Hombres, Kwai, and Albatros.    I’d love to hear about others.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who is ecstatic to witness extraordinarily-prepared people learning how to do extraordinary things by . . . jumping in–when the time is ripe– and doing them.

Challenges abound; the story of schooner John F. Leavitt illustrates the risk of jumping in prematurely, of not being extraordinarily prepared.

For the Wall Street Journal version of the story, click here.