You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Alice Oldendorff’ category.
I continue my gallivant in Seattle, seeing through eyes conditioned by time in the sixth boro aka harbor New York. And again, mostly lists, as I’d rather be moving around than writing here. Ferry Tacoma (of the largest ferry system in the US, third in the world) carries vehicles as well as people as it approaches the Seattle dock. That’s the Olympic range in the background.
Those are WAGB-10 and 11 (Polar Star and Polar Sea) over in West Seattle. I plan to get closer fotos soon.
Seattle is its own complex tapestry, but Alaska is a palpable presence here.
Island Packer does short (or not so short) sea shipping from here to the Aleutians, I believe (1943 built).
Cargill operates this grain terminal at Pier 86. In the foreground are salmon pens. Vessel is Genco Thunder, loading grain. In the distance is bulker Sanmar Paragon. I enjoyed being close enough to this pier that I could smell the grain as it flowed into the hold.
Closer up. Check Muckleshoot and Suquamish.
Rainier, more than 50 miles away, dominates Seattle.
At Pier 91, catcher-processor Northern Hawk emerges from transfer
of ownership.
In the Lake Washington Ship Canal, a crewman of crabber Lilli Ann–in response to my question–said they were “headed for Dutch” a bit less than a week away.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who is solely responsible for any and all errors in this info. As a newby gallivanter here, I might conjecture here and there while trying to get oriented in my limited sojourn.
Unrelated but wonderful, check out Herb Cold is the Sea‘s rendering of a husky-blue-eyed blogger. Herb . . . wow! Thank you. And juxtaposed with Alice–darling Alice–wowwow!! Alice dear, we are indeed blessed.
Very general backstory: NYK Rigel (965′ x 105′ and 4800 teu) entered service in Spring 2009. See fotos of engine. Named for a star in Orion’s foot in Western conceptualization but equally fascinating cultural significance (رجل الجبار,参宿七,Yerrerdet-kurrk) among star-watchers of other cultures and our own.
I first saw NYK Rigel on my way to work Thursday. The foto above taken around 7 am; I then turned around and took the foto below (That’s Irish Sea pushing DBL 103 with Ross Sea as assist; MSC Carla [I believe] headed for sea in the way background.) looking in the general direction of the sun.
Two minutes later, Irish Sea passes, disturbing the calm reflections. NYK Rigel had arrived in port around dusk Wednesday, having left Shanghai about a month earlier.
By the time I return to my vantage point on Howland Hook around 3 pm for break, tons has happened (literally), the chaplain’s red van of the Seafarers & International House has just left, and Gramma Lee T. Moran drops off the pilot. This can mean only one thing.
Catherine Turecamo is the other half of the backing-down team.
When the “all clear” sounds, Gramma Lee T. muscles the stern away from the dock, azimuth thrusters sending water
racing in the opposite
direction.
I realize how lucky I am to spend my break time here today, seeing this
departure with the cliffs of Manhattan in the way background. Backing down (or out) is a must here since Rigel is too long to turn around until just off Bergen Point, where she did in fact spin counterclockwise on her way out to sea.
Catherine works the bow as
needed. It’s just another day’s
work for some; the best place to take a break for me.
And as I drove along the Belt Parkway headed home five hours later, NYK Rigel was headed outbound (for Norfolk, I think) just south of the Verrazano Bridge. I decided not to stop for fotos. End of my infinitesimally short story. Some other perspectives I’d love to hear relate to the pilot, the tug crews, the chaplain, NYK Rigel‘s crew, pilot boat crew, the families of all those folks . . . along the esplanade.
Hope you enjoy the fotos ( by Will Van Dorp) as much as I enjoyed my two stops yesterday. Work went well too.
About a year ago, I also documented a “backing down” here.
Oh . . . yes I know Alice was in town, but she’s playing so hard to get that I feel discouraged.
Three years ago I got fotos of M/V Ambassador entering the Narrows. If this weren’t the sixth boro, I’d have some trepidation about the ladder and lines down her stern and the men in the tender along Ambassador‘s port stern area. Pirates in the sixth boro? Notable is that Ambassador was built on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario. More important for this post is the structure just forward of the house . . . Ideas? Remember, doubleclicking enlarges most tugster fotos.
That structure is a variation of this one. In fact, it turns out that Ambassador and this vessel–CSL Spirit--unloading at Atlantic Salt on Staten Island both belong to the same fleet, as do–can you guess?
the Oldendorffs. It seems I just cannot escape Alice and her networks, but I’m fine with that; affection remains. That structure is a self-unloader, the best and fastest way to
to discharge
tens of thousands of tons of salt out of the holds and onto
the roads and streets (and sidewalks, train platforms, subway stairs . .. . and penetrating to the inner recesses of your car’s underside and impregnating your shoes and any bags you happen to put onto a walked upon surface with slip-preventing and maybe life-saving but corrosive salt.) Beautiful salt.
If you are reading this from southern US or from many other countries, you may never have experienced salt this way, but judging from truck traffic yesterday in and out of Atlantic Salt on Richmond Terrace, it’s bustling business.
And CSL? Canadian Steamship Lines, tracing its history back to 1845 and currently the world’s largest fleet of dry-bulk self-unloading ships. See wiki link here and CSL’s corporate history site here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
By the way, I’m told the salt piled up on Richmond Terrace here comes from northeast Ireland, County Antrim. See this BBC story/video from the salt mines of Ireland.
Who brings the salt to season the roads and highways and drivers who want to avoid skidding there? And if you detect some family resemblance to the vessel on my first ever blog post,
a glance at the name and profile will confirm that Johanna is a sibling of Alice. Yes, that’s Robbins Reef Lighthouse just forward of the bow. I’ve written about Harmen, so now meet Johanna. I feel quite ignored by Alice these days, so it’s time to ignore her back and move on. Of the three, Alice is the smallest and Harmen has the greatest tons/hour offloading capacity.
Harmen offloads 5000 tons per hour! Johanna conveys it out at 2000 tons her hour.
Clamshell cranes reach into the hold and drop the salt
into hoppers that drain into belts that move the salt toward the main offloading arm. Yes, that’s the Empire State Building in the lower right.
I wonder if the Oldendorff self-unloaders carry
additional crew to operate the cranes while in port. Anyone know?
While Johanna offloaded, Pati R Moran moved an oil barge eastbound.
The salt piles bulge and shrink with weather fluctuations at Atlantic Salt, last summer the home of the Salt Fest. I hope it happens again this year.
All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated except by geography, here’s a story I just learned of related to a spill of Congolese uranium on the north shore of Staten Island back more than 50 years ago. No matter how long ago a half century may seem for us, in uranium half-life terms (millions of years depending on the particular isotope) it’s an instant. Can anyone help me identify the name of the ship that delivered the uranium from Matadi to New York.
I’m not talking about the identification number that all mass-produced boats since 1972 carry. Nah . . . and I’m only tangentially referring to the dimensions of this aframax lighter called Eagle Beaumont or her sisters. Nor do I mean hull speed number. For Eagle Beaumont, whom I’ll call EB [I like Les' suggestion to re-dub her E-Beau to distinguish her from similarly named sisters.], some
of those numbers are as follows: 830′ x 144′ beam and 42′ draft, with big throbbing B&W power . . . whose measures I do not know. Built in 1996, EB carries a max of 99,448 tons of crude, usually transferred into her holds from a larger tanker off-shore . . if I understand this right. For this reason, EB brings in a fresh load of crude more regularly than would be the case if she were loaded near the point of origin, i.e., a wellhead. In the foto above and directly below, EB looks long and lean, svelte even.
Turning the angle, however, and the same vessel seems rather . . . more . . . uh . . zaftig, like the last painting below.
And the same is true if we get a full frontal peek. She is full. But, female or male, we all have certain angles
that serve our needs although from which we’d rather not be seen. Pfffft! EB, your beauty just glows and warms me and all the waters in the Kills, and I love that. You’ve told me a whole lot more already than AO ever did.
EB, you are the best EB you can be, and count me as a fan as you safely float into the harbor what stuff we need.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Escort tug is definitely Marjorie B to port and to starboard, was it Sisters?
is the name of Pamela Talese’s show (til end of October) at Atlantic Gallery at 135 W 29th Street Suite 601 in Manhattan. Pamela and I share some large interests . . . like her take on Alice Oldendorff and
and mine.
Hers of Penobscot Bay, now
gearing up for ice-breaking duty, and mine.
Charleston, being painted in dry dock and
fotograffed in KVK.
Pamela has worked in cold weather and
and warm to
capture the ubiquitous
changes wrought by rust and paint . . . in paint. Below, she travels to her “studio” via the paintcycle.
See her website here. See her work at the Atlantic Gallery soon.
A description of people along the waterfront in the first chapter of Moby Dick omits a class; Melville mentions some ”posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some looking over the bulwarks . . .” To do the unthinkable of completing Melville, my annotation here: ”still others women as well as men devoted to the arts, brush in hand, gazing in turn at ship and then at canvas . . or notebook, then searching with paints or inks or charcoal . . . ” Go Pamela. Go others! I love it. More waterfront art soon.
I wanted to do a sixth boro version of “A is for aardvaark, B is for …” post, but because each foto, no matter what other “A” word I called it, kept pointing toward “attachment,” I’ve have changed my mind, given in to the pressure. So this is a reflection on . . .” attachedness.” Responder demonstrates how the quintessential assist looks; I know I’m asking for trouble here, but this is a fairly “normal” ship assist attachment.
Of course, I couldn’t meditate on “A” and not encounter Alice Oldendorff; While discharging her thousands of tons of aggregates, Alice is attached to the dock, lines on bollards. The lengths of cable involved in working Alice boggle my mind too; a attaches to b, which attaches to c, etc. Further, in an invisible way, I’m attached to Alice, although less than I used to be AND less than I could be once again in the case that Alice reconsiders, and . . . (sigh).
Bel Espoir 2 attaches to Bounty, which itself attaches to Pier 66, which . . . By now, I assume both vessels have detached themselves from the sixth boro as they head up to new attachments in Boston. See you up there maybe.
Ellen McAllister nuzzles against an unlikely partner, an APL President ship; Ellen does its work without a tangible attachment. I stop short of calling this abnormal. Yup, stopped short.
The same invisible attachment exists here between Margaret Moran and her charge. And if you look at the ship’s bulbous bow, you might be as surprised as me to see the amount of algae attached there. Maybe some fleets need to invest in bowmowers.
Standard equipment on all tugs is the axe; Responder below has two. And the reason . . . obviously to effect a really quick detachment.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Soon we’ll move on to “B is for bow . . . or bulb…” and so through the alphabet. Before that, I’ll probably return with A2.
If you’re new to the blog, use the the search window to get the back story on Alice Oldendorff and me . . . or not.
Summer begins on Memorial Day, and the summer solstice does in some instances go by the term “midsummer’s day and night,” calendars begone. I spent a delightful and long day yesterday working at Portside in Red Hook and watching, among other things, the traffic in the sixth boro. Like two schooners–Clipper City scantily besailed and Pioneer wearing its four-piece suit–plying their trade. That’s Jersey City in the distance.
Here Clipper City motors out of the East River. That’s the Wall Street area of Manhattan in the background. Off Clipper City‘s stern is Buchanan 10, and passing far starboard is the powerboat High Tea. More fotos of High Tea in a later post. Does anyone know more about her?
A crew on Ellen S. Bouchard worked yesterday, as did a crew on Pioneer, in the distance.
Here’s a close-up of Buchanan 10.
And it made my day to see she-who-does-not-requite Alice come back into town. I don’t know if the aggregates she carries come–as they used to–from the St. Croix River area, but what endeared her to me to begin with is the sheer tirelessness of this vessel. That’s what started it all, and–so much for what I said about being resolute–Alice . . . I still have a place for you.
Summer 2009 . . . yesterday started you well.
Kudos to Bowsprite for her tribute to Lilac and benefactor, Gerry Weinstein. Lilac, an amazing name for a vessel that would today be part of Homeland Security, lies just north of Pier 40. I cannot, but if you can, come to her 76th birthday party tomorrow evening.
And speaking of Bowsprite some more, she snapped me this foto of my ex- . . . Alice Oldendorff. But I’m resolute . . . it’s over between me and Alice. And a tantalizing foto, . . .I’ve evolved past this and will only say kind things about Alice, but it could not be… Besides, it looks like she has myriad suitors who, like me, adore the sculpture on its deck hatches. Alice might just be an art-boat.
This summer will feature many historic craft on the river and in the boro. Flagship, I’m told, will be Erie Canal motorship Day Peckinpaugh. See a better foto and schedule here. Fred Tug44 has great fotos here.
Besides Onrust, another one of the historic craft is Half Moon. Foto below was snapped mere hours ago by Jed, just north of Poughkeepsie. What looks like smoke from a campfire on the far bank is actually my clumsy attempt at eradicating all traces of civilizations, trying to give the illusion of the primeval river system Henry saw 400 years ago minus a few months. A new book called Mannahatta by Dr. Eric W. Sanderson attempts the same. Bowsprite and I–as I mention maybe too often here–are attempting the same in our own modest fashion. Could you help sending the link to henrysobsession around?
Fotos 1 and 3 by Will Van Dorp; 2 by Bowsprite and 4 by Jed.
Preliminary question: When is Brooklyn Bridge not a bridge? Answer below.
Thanks to George Graham of http://www.goliathcrane.com, (link below) here’s news of a foto contest and an epic voyage for the vessel below, which I foto’d in KVK in late January 2009. It’s Allie B., with vitals: 1977, 106′ loa x 32,’ ex-Express Explorer and ex-Janet Graham.
The story: at low tide (11:30 am) on Saturday, March 7, Allie B will depart Quincy, Massachusetts, towing a barge carrying the disassembled 1200-ton Goliath crane formerly of Fore River Shipyard, the structure that for several decades dominated the Quincy skyline. My eyes used to gravitate unconsciously toward the structure every time I traveled I-93 south of Boston. For the sake of redundancy, here’s info on the foto contest.
Destination for the Goliath: the Black Sea port of Mangalia, Romania. Mangalia was mentioned in this blog back in November 2007, as launchplace of Alice‘s sibling, Harmen. Read that here. And has anyone seen Alice lately? Foto below shows Allie B eastbound approaching our Brooklyn Bridge in 2006.
Can anyone augment my limited imaginings about vessel and crew preparations for the trip. Fuel of course. And spare parts and provisions, obviously. Crew size minimal? Duration of the trip . . . three weeks? Any planned stops? Chance of finding a return tow? By the way, in trucking, a tractor not pulling a trailer is “bobtailing” or “deadheading.” Besides “light” what terms describe a tug without a tow?
Oh, Brooklyn Bridge is the name of the barge carrying Goliath to the Black Sea. More pics of Goliath in this slideshow.
Again, thanks to George Graham. Now, can I get up there by Saturday morning? Anyone up for a field trip to Boston? If I don’t make it up to Quincy, could someone email me some fotos? Are credit, attribution, and fame–coins of my realm–dazzling enough?
Recent Comments