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Since noon it’s been raining, but the sunrise brought this sequence: CSAV Romeral outbound for Baltimore and one of the most beautiful work vessels of the sixth boro inbound. Also, that’s Vane’s Magothy in the distance. And for outatowners, way in the distance is Coney Island, home of the mermaid parade on the summer solstice.
Pilot No. 1 New York first splashed into the waters in May 1972.
She’s 180 feet loa, gorgeous, and “related” to a good dozen varied regulars in the sixth boro.
Here she passes between European Spirit and Fort Wadsworth light. Given that New York comes off a Great Lakes shipyard
in the tiny town of Marinette, Wisconsin . . .
she shares that Green Bay/Lake Michigan place of origin with
Vane’s Brandywine and three Staten Island Ferry vessels (Spirit of America, Marchi, Molinari). See tugster posts features the following Marinette constructions. Katherine Walker, Apache, Jennifer Miller, and Ellen McAllister. Here’s Marinette’s current website. Here’s Strong, another Marinette product I never expect to see, but clearly a forerunner of the Brandywine type tug.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who would love to see contemporary fotos of the vessels built in Wisconsin that made their way into the navies of Vietnam, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Here’s my post-Sandy New York Pilot No. 1 foto.
Here was 20. And this first foto is in fact mine: 16 m pilot boat America eastbound in the KVK last week. But the rest of these fotos come thanks to G. Justin Zizes Jr, who earlier this weekend
had a berth on Norwegian Jewel on a “cruise to nowhere,” aka a large ship gallivant on the high seas. Justin caught these fotos from a balcony at an hour that I’m guessing most on board were asleep. Arrival,
beginning the climb,
and departure of the pilot boat, soon just a few lights
in the wee hours of this morning.
Connect the dots . . . er . . .. lights and what do you get?
Two more fotos from Justin: Friday night departure, and
Sunday morning return.
Many thanks to Justin for these fotos.
I took all these fotos this morning. First, here’s the ashoremost portion of John B Caddell in the parking lot waterside of Edgewater Drive, roughly across from the Clifton*** Staten Island Railroad stop. After being delivered from RTC Shipbuilding in Camden, NJ in mid-December 1941, she has come to her end. Most of her life she delivered petroleum products, not water. Click here for a foto of her at work in the sixth boro six years ago.
Looking eastward, one might imagine a beautiful day under dramatic clouds, with the current pilot boat New York in the spotlight, in
an otherwise unusually empty Upper Bay.
An especially clean street here belies
debris left strewn on the street showing how high the surge rose and
leaving behind vile stuff like dozens (!) of vials of blood . . . with recognizable names on them!
Alice Austen house, about a mile farther south,
was spared, but just.
Neighbors on lower land began the cleanup.
And the Kills and Upper Bay, devoid of traffic, had a few vessels checking navigation channels.
Has anyone gotten “aftermath” fotos of Binghamton to share? Here, here, and here are my fotos of that vessel post-Irene.
To reiterate, I found the scattered vials with blood along Edgewater Drive very disturbing. I called 311.
From a mariner’s perspective whose truck got flooded while he was working afloat, click hawsepiper here.
For a report on the storm from a high-rise over the East River, click here for Vlad and Johna’s blog.
*** Six months ago another vessel washed up on another beach called Clifton here.
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,
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.
For a low-emissions all-weather pilot boat, the Dutch port of Rotterdam looked . . . to the US. Kvichak has built for many ports. Fotos courtesy of Fred Trooster.
So would that be a Dutch pilot in middeck with the bare-shoulder uniform?
Sandy Hook Pilots, serving the port of New York, have gotten some of their boats, like Yankee, just up the Sound at Derecktor Shipyards in Bridgeport.
Docking pilots travel in . . tugs like Laura K. Moran.
Click here for a link to vessels carrying pilots in a number of East Coast ports. A highlight of 2011 has to be the ride on an Edison-Chouest C-Tractor, thanks to JED.
Unless otherwise credited, fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Previous pilot boat fotos show vessels of Interport Pilots here, Chesapeake pilots here, Charleston harbor here, Newport here, and New York areas ones here. Below, Sandy Hook Pilots vessel Yankee heads out two months back when Blue Marlin lingered in the harbor; on or about August 4 Blue Marlin will return.
The white speck in front of the Yonkers sugar plant is a Hudson River Pilot, operating out of Station Yonkers. Universal Amsterdam offloads sugar while the nearer vessel, Ocean Titan, prepares to accept a pilot as it heads upriver .
Outside Mayport Naval Station, a pilot steps from the outbound vessel onto the pilot vessel.
St Johns River Bar Pilot heads out to meet an incoming container vessel CSAV Loncomilla.
On the eastern tip of Dodge Island, vessels of Biscayne Bay Pilot wait.
Vessel Biscayne returns to the station between Miami Beach’s South Pointe Park and Fisher Island.
Vessel below was docked on the Key West waterfront; this is all I could find on pilot boats here.
Vessels of Schaefer Pilot Transfer Service–Miss Kitty and Betty S--tie up at the shack under the Rte 213 bridge over the C & D Canal.
Scroll thru to see fotos of the launches in service near the end of this link.
…. which brings us back to the sixth boro.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s a 20-year-old article about Sandy Hook pilots from the NYTimes.
From today’s Times, here’s an article about a canoe trip on the Salish Sea and one about a veritable NYC monster, a 200-ton cutterhead in … er . . under . . . the town.
Enjoy this wild pilot compilation. And another.
And here’s a whole blog devoted to pilots.
Note to Kees Kuyper . . . “your foto on page 18 here of New York from the bridge of Blue Marlin is fabulous! Please take more during your stay in New York.”
Note to all blog readers . . . scroll through to the top of p. 18 to see Kees’ foto.
What follows is another assemblage of fotos from yesterday’s unproductive loading of tugs and barges onto Blue Marlin, a few repeat fotos enhanced by Rod Smith of Narragansett Bay Shipping. Thanks, Rod.
Gabby Miller and (?) Nicholas and crews at 5:38.
Heading for Blue Marlin at 5:39.
Blue Marlin and “floating cargo” at 6:32.
Fog has partly lifted by 6:43.
Blue Marlin crew climbing the port aft “tower” at 6:52.
A closer-up of crew going aloft.
Crewboat bring the towline “on deck” at 7:01, and
beginning to make fast at 7:02 to Maverick (ex-YTB 801 Palatka, launched 1969).
Dace leaves the notch over behind Maersk Matsuyamato ogle the scene at 7:09. By the way, outatowners . . . the land on the other side is Bay Ridge Brooklyn.
Pilotboat Yankee rushes by at 7:17.
Elizabeth McAllister (1967, ex-J. A. Witte and Fournier Boys), which we imagined would be bringing out some barges, arrives on site by 7:25.
With the loading “scrubbed” for the day, Blue Marlin‘s workboat voyages over to the bow at 7:49, and
by 8:30, the stern has clearly risen at least 10 feet.
By 8:39, Blue Marlin has swung with the ebb, as Staten Island ferry Alice Austen arrives through the Narrows. Now if you know anything about the ferry routes, this is unusual indeed, but Alice Austen may just be a contrarian ferry.
At 8:46 in the distance Maryland heads out the Narrows to bunker cutter moored in Gravesend Bay, while a night heron (aka “big pella’) contemplates.
this loading attempt.
By 11:07, more of Blue Marlin has re-emerged, and by mid-afternoon Monday, she has repositioned over to the mooring it occupied earlier off Owl’s Head.
And the suspense goes on. And if anyone wishes to confide in me info on the day and hour of the next attempt, I’ll be watching. Oh, discretion and circumspection are my creeds.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who would love an email from Kees.
Unrelated: For a slideshow from National Tug Day in Maassluis, Netherlands, birthplace of the Dutch towing industry, click here. Fotos are copyright of Frans de Lijster and Willem Kruit.
OK, as Jed points out in his quite elaborate comment (thanks, Jed) . . . it’s PCU (pre-commissioning unit) New York for a few days yet. By the way, by the count of A. G. Sulzberger, this new New York is USS New York number seven. Might it be that the cost of the previous six combined is less than the cost of this one, comparing uneven dollars?
Behold Sturgeon Bay, the generosity of whose captain and crew made these fotos possible.
Looking through my fotos prompts a thought on this ship welcome and our group identity. We all have competing identities, and obviously this dozen plus one fotos taken over five hours were deliberately selected, but see where they lead you. I’ll share my ideas at the end.
Sturgeon Bay, one of nine WTGBs, receives a small boat long the starboard side while outbound to meet . . .
LPD-21, which here heads north toward a water welcome and past
Our Lady of the Sixth Boro (and so much more)
and soon to pause across from North Cove (fantastic images here).
After heading north as far as the GW Bridge, LPD-21 turns and
makes its way close to the bank near 130th Street where another water welcome awaits. Later,
an escort follows on the Jersey
side as (Note: PT728, DCV Gelberman, and tug Miriam Moran in foreground; color spray from John McKean 1954)
LPD-21 crew enjoy the NYC and sixth boro greeting and sunny weather as
the vessel is made fast. Ellen McAllister and Rosemary McAllister here prepare to depart for their next job.)
Refueling begins
almost immediately from barge delivered by Houma.
To say the fire departments were intensely involved in this welcome–as evidenced by both my fotos and those on the New York Times slideshow– is an understatement of huge proportions. And of course reasons go directly back to that horror less than a decade ago that underlies everything about LPD-21′s existence. And I certainly honor the Bravest. I was happy to see you present on both sides of the River, all over the sixth boro.
And this is not to undervalue the efforts of all those folks working on the water yesterday in whatever capacity (public or private) as part of ensuring that the welcome was appropriate. This harbor enthusiast thanks you and all other of those working on the water.
Welcome to New York.
Here and here are a few articles about Lt. Scott Rae, commanding officer of Sturgeon Bay.
All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
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