Small Craft 4

First, check “parrotlect flickrstream” along the left margin here for my favorite 45 fotos from the start of the Great Chesapeake Schooner Race last week.  I had posted some of them earlier, but put them up in the moment and without the benefit of my “foto-cleanup” tools.

Here is the real predecessor for this post . . . small specialized East coast designs.  And here’s a question . . . guess the loa and beam of this vessel.  Answer and fotos follow.

 Some small craft are just beautiful . . .  sweet

not to emphasize the “just” there.  Seriously sweet lines here.

And here. And nearby but in the shadows was a twin called Puffin.   And that vintage Johnson Sea horse 18 was attached to the

the prettiest motorboat I’ve ever seen.  I don’t think that Johnson comes with the blender attachment seen here!!

This is Silk.  Silk is a pushboat.  Believe it or not, it’s the prime mover for a 65′ skipjack, and while hauling for oysters, Silk needs to be hanging high and dry.  I regret I didn’t get a chance to look at the engine.

Stanley Norman dates from 1902.  And that boom looks impossibly long.

And here’s a surprise, maybe.  The vessel in the top foto here is a restored 1925 Hooper Island Draketail named Peg Wallace, measuring a belief-defying 37’6″ loa with a beam of only 6’8″!!  I’d written of local Chesapeake and southern boats here almost two years ago, but this was my first encounter with a draketail.  Scroll down to pete44′s comment here to learn his sense of the origin of the design.

I’d love to see her move through the water.

Draketail . . .  named for a duck.  Make way!

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Dockwork Orange 2

No orange is more brilliant on the Upper Bay than that of the Staten Island ferries.   Of course, no creature of the water–live or mechanical–sports the same colors ventral as dorsal.  And thanks to the following fotos from John Watson, let’s go below.

Here’s a thing of beauty as visible from the inside of a floating drydock at Caddell– one end of the double-ender Samuel I. Newhouse.

Note the worker for scale.

What might surprise many people is the absence of props/shafts and the existence of this disc-like recess.

Disassembled, here’s the drive unit that fits into the recess

Each of the circular spaces in this subassembly houses a vertical blade.  For an animation showing movement, click here.

Note the same transition from orange to blue to red and vertical blades here on Noble.

If you’ve wondered how these ferries negotiate into the ferry racks in adverse tidal flow, traveling sideways . . . now you know.

All fotos above except the first one come compliments of John Watson.  Newhouse fotos date from summer ’94;  Noble . . . from summer 2000.

Here’s a parting shot of one of my favorite moments of orange from earlier in 2012.

Fog 12

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.

A View of Cargoes

Late last week I alluded to an imminent gallivant.  I imagined it’d be like this (truck’s not mine and I didn’t steal it), being transported away from all

thought of the sixth boro as I explored the bountiful  interior on the first day of fall.

So down this valley about 300 miles upstate we traveled to see what would be around the next bend, and

the next.

Look at the terrain on this foto, left side.  Notice anything?  I’ll come back to it.

Who would imagine this is New York state?

And then the birds caught my attention:

buzzards and

and hawks of some sort.

Bird play was interrupted by the rumble of a train, and I’d imagined the bridge in the foto above was derelict!  It was long.

Here’s the cropped version of the foto above I asked you to look at.  Notice the horizontal break in the trees?  I didn’t get to that side, but once there was a

canal there, the Genesee River Canal.  Click here to see the same ridge from more or less the same vantage point about 150 years ago.  And the tugs looked like this.

And that bridge . .  here’s what it took to build its predecessor.

The beauty of the Genesee River convinced me to follow it up toward Lake Ontario.  Here’s High Falls in Rochester . . . and another train crossing it, this one with containers ultimately bound for  . . . China via the sixth boro, which

these reminders won’t let me escape, and that’s not a bad thing.

And this business has operated here since Prohibition.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s pictured in the gratuitous foto of the 1959 Chevy Apache pickup.

North Woods Alligator Paleontology

Two years ago, I learned about these tugs while north of the border here.   Many thanks to Paul Fehling for today’s fotos of alligator tug remains.  He took the fotos while canoeing recently in western Maine.    My reference book called Alligators of the North makes me believe these could be this could be what’s left of a 1923 warping tug called Alligator shipped from Simcoe Ontario to Portland Maine.

These ruins raise questions like . . .  are there fotos of Alligator intact and

how did it ship from Lake Erie to here?

When was it last operational?

It lies downstream from Umbagog Lake near the New Hampshire/Maine border, not far from the town of Errol, where I haven’t been in over 20 years.

Many thanks to Paul Fehling.

For some coastal Maine delights, click here for Sally W reports from Camden.

Meanwhile . . . 8000 Miles Away 2

. . . or I could say 12480 kms away.    Here was the previous one in this series.  Remember the port?

Well, in this port recently was this tug named Merlot and the green vessel . . . a large canoe?  And yes, check here for tugs named chardonnay, shiraz,  and pinotage.  Nothing here yet named Ripple or Boone’s Farm . . .  Here’s what Colin wrote about the green vessel:

“That ship ULSTEIN CLEAR is fresh as a daisy, built at ZHEJIANG SHIPBUILDING in China and  delivered 31  MAY 2012.   They also build them in BRAZIL where PETROBRAS ordered six and two have been built there and four will be complete during 2013.  I have read that PETROBRAS have ordered quite a few drilling rigs for their offshore operations.   On one of the ULSTEIN ships they have a crane mounted for wind farm operations.  It lifts 5000 tons so very effectively.  It will be used between England and Ireland.”

Some might consider this design so unusual as to be ugly, but I see this as an extrapolation from a canoe bow . .  or the prow of a Viking ship.

More info about this hull and its advantages for working in heavy sea–reduced motion and fuel efficiency– can be found here.   Great videos and animations.  Note the location of the exhausts.  If you didn’t identify them, they

are the diagonals more visible here.

I don’t believe a vessel with this sort of bow has visited the sixth boro . . .

yet.

All fotos by colin Syndercombe, to whom I am grateful.

Meanwhile in Cape Town

In May 1962 John Kennedy had a party upon turning 45, and most people remember one person who attended.  But there were other entertainers who sang too like this native New Yorker (yes, he is.) and another singer, now largely unknown, whose name appears on that blue banner center below.   If you don’t remember the name, here’s (IMHO) her best song.  She also performed with this neighbor of mine from Queens, NY.   But this vessel?

She might be called Agulhas II, arriving yesterday in her homeport, having come from winter half a world away to the north just in time for winter way down south.  Here’s  her predecessor, once involved in an Oldendorff vessel (no, not this one) in the far far south.

Here she arrives after a month-long journey.   For the complete press release announcing her mission, click here.

Whether Miriam Makeba becomes her unofficial or official name, Agulhas (needles) refers to the true southernmost cape aka point of Africa.

Enseleni is one of the assist tugs. Click here to see her launched  . . .  in a manner I’ve never seen.  Click here to see a wide array of South African tugs.

Here’s a closeup of pilot boat Gannet (1977).

And the answer (correctly supplied in the comment by anonymous [Ann O'Nimes??])  to the figurehead question .  . . Europa it is!    And in a graphic demonstration of the interconnection of the sixth boro to almost everywhere watery, click here and here for fotos of Europa on a recent visit to the US “north coast.”  Has Europa ever been to New York?

Europa, 1911 launched!!  and beautifully preserved.  A reminder to, please, vote for Tug Pegasus and Waterfront Barge, today and every day until May 21.

All fotos here come compliments of Colin Syndercombe, who’s generously serving up the shipping news from the Cape Town waterfront.  Thanks much, Colin.

A final treat from Miriam Makeba . . .  Pata pata.  Fifty years ago she was a popular enough in the US to get major play on top-40 radio

Panama Details 1

One type of post that has evolved here is Whatzit?   Know what this juxtaposition of hardware and jungle might be?

This might help . . . well-maintained metals and uncontrolled jungle coinciding in this case is two

ships side-by-side nearing their transit of the Canal from north to south.

I have no more understanding what happens within the 10 miles or so of piping that make up the manifold of this parecel tanker than I have of the circuitry inside a computer.

One of the many joys watching traffic at the Miraflores lock was getting new perspective on these vessels.  Just a few weeks back I caught sister ship Bow Chain in the KVK, but from the platforms allowed me, I could not see above deck much.

So here’s a chance for both of us to look into recesses, nooks and crannies.

We can familiarize ourselves with the rules and

codes . . .

Contemplate her high and

low.

If you return to the top foto here, you’ll see the green bow of this vessel–Ever Dynamic–sharing the Miraflores locks with Bow Summer.

One of these days, I’ll do a post on the silver mules, like the one lower left.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

To see the construction and innards of a tanker in fast motion in Philadelphia, click here.

Tying the recent Nola visit and this post together, click here for a tugster post from over five years ago.  S/R Wilmington was one of the first ships I got upclose fotos of;  she was built in Avondale, LA, and has recently been scrapped.  A related vessel currently called Oriental Nicety is also bound for the scrappers; Nicety‘s previous names have been as follows:  Dong Fang Ocean,  Mediterranean, SeaRiver Mediterranean, and last but not least . . . . Exxon Valdez.

Mardi Gras 2

Ooops . . . I used the title “mardi gras” three years ago, so I’ll add “2″ today, but it’s Fat Tuesday, and where is this eponym of a city synonymous for festivities of the day?

Why, the sixth boro  . .  that’s where, and headed out as quickly as possible.  But focus on her a moment;  containerships with center houses separated from the engine might be more common in the future.

Here’s how loaded she was when she arrived yesterday, as captured by John Watson.

She departed with possibly fewer containers showing, making this

mardi maigre  . . . skinny tuesday.

Not that only a few containers fit on the vessel.  CSAV Rio de Janiero is post-panamax, i.e., she won’t fit through the current Panama Canal.  To compare her dimensions with a container vessel recently featured here, she has the same beam as APL Indonesia but is 111′ longer and carries 1045 more TEUs.

Right now she’s bearing down on Baltimore, flying into a 25-knot wind.

Here she’s clears Sandy Hook.

Third foto thanks to John Watson.  All others come thanks to Jean Pierre Lailedaigle;  I hope to get Jean Pierre’s fotos more often  . . . .    CSAV Rio de Janiero was launched in 2009 as Medondra.

Unrelated:  Hats off to Rick Old Salt for this post on the crisis PortSide NewYork’s Mary Whalen.    A public meeting to discuss saving her will be held this coming Monday.  See info at the end of Rick’s post.  The folks at PortSideNewYork and Mary Whalen HAVE contributed much to sixth boro cultural programming the past few years, but “homelessness” has reduced their capacity to succeed.  Here’s a post I did on Mary Whalen back in 2008.

Virgin Tugboat 2

Many thanks to Fran Van Staalduinen for snapping these fotos, in a snow storm.  Given the foreground, any guesses on the diameter of the props?  identity of the tugboat?

Would you believe more than  12′ each?  They will be spun by 16,320 hp.  Any guesses on their identity?

Not yet launched, it’s Crowley’s Liberty, second in a series of three tugs.  Fran took these fotos through the fence in Anacortes, WA, at  Dakota Creek Industries.

Click here for a series of construction fotos from tugboatinformation.com.

Many thanks to John and Fran Van Staalduinen, whom I’ve known almost all my life.

Harold Tartell asked that I add the following:  ”Sister Tug LEGACY Is Out And In Service. The Second Tug In This Series Of Three LEGEND, Is Over 90 Percent Complete, And Is Due Out Very Soon.”  Click here, here, here, and here for more info on the Legacy-class Crowley tugs.”

Thanks, Harold.