S/V Adirondack | tugster: a waterblog

. . . er “air” and “water.” But with the Earth & Fire post last week, this had to appear, right?

Thanks to the tentatively definitive compendium on “schooner identification in the sixth boro,” I can without a doubt call the leftmost vessel Imagine and the rightmost Adirondack. And for outatowners, that’s Hoboken in the background.

Just a glimpse of the spoon-bowed, yellow-sailed schooner raises my spirits from dragging along May’s rocks to June’s breeziness.

Notice how the profile of Escape Plan gets echoed here in the upper reaches of North Sea.

With the June breezes and right attention, even if just for a few moments, all my cares take wing and fly away . . . propelling my spirit like a little sloop dallying about the start of the North River.

Seeing a yellow hulled sailboat, like Mamzel, powering upriver, one of many migrating mostly northward at season’s start conjures up one thought . . . sailing . . . you’re doing it wrong.

Clipper City . . . sailing, almost doing it right, but

these ones got it: Pride of Baltimore, Imagine, and Adirondack . . . back in 2008, air moving them through the water.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Here’s an “erin wadder” post from last fall; more soon.

And don’t forget the caption contest here . . . I’ve got some good entries but want some more. Send’em in, please.

I call this a “water blog,” but usually avail myself only of salt water shots. Below is what I saw from my bedroom window yesterday morning: rainwater pool on roof beside my building. Foto is obviously flipped, but the vent with round hole to the right serves as “portal” for at least three raccoons who cavort and sing after dark. New York is wild.

Foreshortening . . . makes for some arresting shots: here McAllister Responder, Franklin Reinauer, Jennifer Turecamo, and RTC 150 pushed by Meredith C. Reinauer enjoy much greater separation than appears.

Left to right here are: Chemical Pioneer, Johann Jacob, and OOCL Busan. I post this foto because it suggests that the forward portion of Chemical Pioneer and its stern seem mismatched. Think about it . . . and I tell you the story below.

Foreshortening again . . . plenty of searoom exists between NYK Constellation and OOCL Busan, but for some seconds, from my vantage point, I was getting nervous.

No comment on the frothiness in the center of this foto. Notice the building on the tip of Manhattan between the red and green buoy. That is 17 Battery Place, once the “footprint” for Moran Towing. Starting on p. 273 of Tugboat: The Moran Story by Eugene F. Moran and Louis Reid, there’s an incredible story about a Captain Daniel F. Anglim that dates back to the 1927. In short, Dan had a naturally loud voice “even louder from having to yell against the wind” (pre-walkietalkie days) did dispatch from the 25th floor of that building down to the tugs waiting between Pier 2 and 4 on the Hudson. I cannot imagine. Looking for a good read: Get The Moran Story!

Today several hundred feet of landfill separate 17 Battery Place from the nearest water. See a foto of 17 Battery Place from that time here . . second foto down. I’d love to see a larger version.

Cape Melville bound for sea. I love the name . . . that northeast corner of Australia. In the background you see parts of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and One Court Square, Queens’ and Long Island’s tallest building. One court Square also appears in the second foto above.

That’s Adirondack coming around the side of City Pier A, the once and future dock for NYPD and FDNY?

Yes, this is a wild turkey in Battery Park, it looked totally indignant when I asked that he pose in front of either the Terminal or one of the Homeland Security cars in the background . Imagine that !! But the location is inland about 100 feet with the Staten Island Ferry Terminal to the left and the Coast Guard station to the right. Wild New York.

The Chemical Pioneer story: in late May 1973, a Bath Iron Works container ship called Sea Witch bound for sea lost steering and collided with an anchored tanker called Esso Brussels, resulting in a deadly fire (15 deaths, 13 of them on Esso Brussels, loaded with Nigerian crude) and New York harbor oil spill. Read the complete story here. Later, the stern section of Sea Witch was grafted onto a new forward section. For Sea Witch‘s original lines, click here; she’s the second one down.

All fotos taken on May 20 by Will Van Dorp.

By the way . . . that turkey . . . she goes by the name Zelda; be good to Zelda when you see her.