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I thought I’d used this title before, but I was thinking about this one, backgrounds. The idea here is similar.
From this angle, can you identify this vessel?
It’s a shipshape Pegasus!
From the same perspective, Justine McAllister and Franklin Reinauer leaving the KVK for the AK.
Ditto equally shipshape Mary Turecamo, from a perspective such that the visor practically obscures the house windows.
What’s the tale of three wakes . . . one recent and the others less so?
This is a good view of how a model bow fits snugly in the notch.
Where’s this and what’s this? Although it looks like a building being overrun by tropical flora and fauna,
this might generate a different set of associations.
This was taken from the same vantage point but with the camera pointed a bit higher yet, and it makes all the difference.
It’s OSC Vision entering the Upper Bay last weekend, giving new meaning to the term “shipshape.” And the fauna here could be called landscaping goats . . . . or “scapegoats,” for short.
Two ships . . . well, at least until you examine the farther one more closely.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who did this earlier goat homage here.
I’d seen McFarland before . . . once at the dock stern out and another time anchored in the middle of the night on Delaware Bay, lit up like a parking lot. I’m so thrilled that I’ll run a series of her . . . .starting with the USACE dredge passing Pac Alnath.
A first sighting for me . . . Charles Burton.
Back to McFarland . . . one of four ocean-going hopper dredges operated by the USACE. Can you name the other three?
. . . Nanticoke and Peter F. Gellatly, both pushing Vane barges.
Huge turntable on McFarland.
Chief . . . I believe the 1979 built vesel.
From this USACE publication, I like this statistic: a full load of dredged materials McFarland carries equals the capacity of 310 dump trucks.
Just before sunrise, she steamed by . . . and passed B. Franklin Reinauer in the city of Benjamin Franklin himself.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
The other three dredges are Wheeler, Essayons, and Yaquina. For comparison info about the four, click here. For Bert Visser’s directory with fotos of all the large dredgers in the world, click here.
For a post on Delaware River tugs from 2010, click here. What I’d like to see one of these days is the loading of livestock down in Wilmington. Currently, Falconia is at the dock; I saw her from the highway on Friday.
On most vessels, the color orange is reserved for safety gear; on others, like
Topeka and Torm Freya it’s the main act.
Other variations of orange as dominant color appear in the harbor as well . . .
like the Staten Island ferries.
The color orange has many other associations in the month of October . . . like leaf color and pumpkins.
Note the difference in visibility here between the departing RORO Topeka and the inbound Atlantic Salvor.
Here were Topeka and an identical fleetmate Totugas back in March.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Here’s another Torm Freya post. More “orange” tomorrow.
Unrelated: Thanks to EuroFred for passing along this Youtube that involved a RO-FLO (roll on/float off), three speciality vessels, the orange mud of Surinam, and 608 tires in a story that could be called “cutter head Fitzcarraldo,” and those are two separate links.
I heard the foghorn (or is it called a ship’s horn?) for some time before I saw the vessel, but I knew I’d see Americas Spirit because of the AIS app on my phone. If I’d had my VHF with me, I’d also know from that which vessel approached and with whose assist.
With these and other elements of redundant technology, any vessel–like the small one below– in the vicinity would have slim chance of being surprised by a massive bow like this appearing unexpectedly out of the fog.
So if the question is . . . why do ships still use these spectacular horns even with all the others means of “seeing” through the fog? I suppose the answer is that redundancy is a good thing.
Click here for fog horns in San Francisco, but I believe the sounds from Americas Spirit were even lower pitched. Even at a quarter mile’s distance, I felt it as much as heard.
Once the docking rotation began, the horn ceased…
and Barbara and Responder pinned Americas Spirit to the dock.
That horn booming out of the fog, though, stays with me. It sounded almost human, like the breath wafting through and resonating within a wind instrument.
Next foggy day, head down to the Kills.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
10 was just over exactly a year ago, and my first “fog” post fotos were taken over six years ago here. This autumn dawn brought fog and horns . . . horns that could be heard, with echoes, and felt. Eukor Morning Conductor seemed asleep to shore folk
as Anna L. Miller motored by.
On the KVK, Gage Paul Thornton chugged to an appointment as Bow Summer , which I last saw in springtime Panama, made all lines fast.
Mary Alice towed more Kills bottom out to sea.
Finally, the loudest and deepest horn came into view.
attached to Americas Spirit, a name of a befogged yet moving vessel which I’ll avoid attributing too much symbolic meaning to.
Taurus passes Robbins Reef Light.
And Americas Spirit came closer.
She was so close to this shore observer that two of her crew could be clearly seen on the bridge wing.
Barbara McAllister spun her stern to put the tanker portside to at the dock. More of these docking fotos tomorrow.
And Hunting Creek also made her way from Brooklynside to Bayonneside.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Here was 5.
Yesterday before noon I saw rain, sun, and then rain again. Afternoon was the same. The foto below of Norwegian Star I took at 16:06.
16:21
16:21 . . . a rainbow spanned from Red Hook Brooklyn to Newtown Creek Queens, although I couldn’t see the Queens’ leg.
16:35, and by this time I was again getting rained on.
16:40
16:44 and here comes the main act . . .
a rainbow spanning from Battery Park to
midtown, although I couldn’t fit it all on a single shot from the middle of the River.
then 17:26. Is that a sundog over Jersey City? Snow soon?
An hour later I was watching the moonrise but got no fotos. Check these out in the vicinity of the Mackinac Bridge here. And while AIS to try to identify the Wagenborg vessel in Ken’s post, I noticed someone off Sarnia who’d been in Bayonne only two weeks ago! Kongo Star! Check her itinerary here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s 3.
Cape Washington left today, following in the wake of Lia. Zim Beijing came in; I’m guessing “my” Bebedouro will leave soon, and the pace of ins-outs is such that I have to content myself seeing in on AIS.
Although I’m intrigued with names and itineraries like OOCL Oakland and
Zim Qingdao back here yesterday,
traffic longterm runs together and
goes out of focus and even
blurs.
For a moment, that is. HS Livingstone entered the harbor Saturday morning, and by midmorning Sunday, it’s off Atlantic City making for Baltimore.
In
in
inbound, then outbound . . .
I wonder about the blur for the mariner of these global box vessels. Here’s a question I have insufficient info to answer: Pick a year like 1940, and the number of dockworkers that year per ton of cargo transferred between ship and shore. Now compare the tonnage of freight handled on the docks of NYC in 1940 and 2012 and thereby calculate how many dockworkers would be needed in 2012 using the 1940 dockworker/ton rate. And why? Check out this article in today’s NYTimes called “…Rise of the Machines.”
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Here was 2.
What kind of fotos does one get on a dark and drizzly morning? Well, through a fence I snapped this one of the virginal Evening Star . . . in the boro less than 24 hours! And less than a year and a half after keel-laying down in Louisiana.
Alice Oldendorff came in this morning . . . the first moving vessel I spotted today AND the subject of my first ever post nearly six short and long years ago. Alice shuttles aggregates between Port of Bayside, NB and Brooklyn Navy Yard.
And even more virginal than Evening Star, here’s DDG-112, to be commissioned in the sixth boro next Saturday.
USS Michael Murphy is named for a fallen SEAL and built at Bath Iron Works.
Here’s Alliance St. Louis, a US-flagged RORO with
a smudge on her bow that resembles smudges I’ve seen on other ROROs. Anyone explain the origin of what appears to be primer paint over damaged coating?
Here’s the Kirby barge Pacific, which
has this unusual feature midships.
Moving her eastbound was Amy C McAllister. The tanker in the distance off Amy‘s stern is Lia.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Soon-to-be commissioned USS Michael Murphy will be open for tours tomorrow.
I’ve seen another Penguin here already, but it was not part of this colorful fleet that I first traced to Croatia here . . . and grouped by their bear logo here.
No vessel–not even passenger carrier–is quite so distinctively colored.
Given their frequency here during winter, I think of the fleet (of which I’ve recorded more than half) as an uncommon seasonal indicator: hungry bears coming to town . . . happens in the cold season. Name and placement on this vessel suggest the bear chases forever across all the seas–like Ahab–but never catches.
Assisting Penguin into port were Brendan Turecamo and
Margaret Moran.
Be on the lookout for more bear ships in the sixth boro.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
No, the crewman is not holding a meteor hammer readying for battle. It’s a monkey’s fist, evidence that centuries’ old tools retain their usefulness.
How? you ask. Let’s back up four minutes. BW Hudson was making its final approach with Joan Turecamo and Laura K Moran assisting. Note the crewman outlined up on the bridge of the tanker.
You and I can afford the distraction way up by Manhattan: it’s Duncan Island bound for sea and Europe. It left Ecuador just over a week ago and spent only about eight hours in Red Hook.
Laura K was hitting the brakes hard as they approached the dock.
That was when the crewman readied the fist to
fling it up to the rail so that
the heavier line could thread the eye and
be secured to Joan so that she too could put the brakes on.
Then slowly and precisely, the tanker was
pinned to the dock. A lot more goes on in a docking, like dock line handling . . . but I’ve already covered that here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. If I read it right, BW Hudson arrived here directly from the Gulf, aka the Persian Gulf. If you’re wondering why an Ecuadorian reefer vessel would be called “duncan island,” here’s an explanation for a place that’s also called Pinzón Island.
Last time I recall doing a docking post was here . . . pinning Eleonora. And last time a monkey’s fist appeared was here . . . in Panama.
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