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Most of the previous birds posts have been in winter . . except this one. I find birds one of the joys of winter. So on the last day of winter, rather than go out and get rainy/sleet fotos, enjoy these.
Two Brants discuss the approaching Hayward and the distancing Prominent Ace escorted in by Ron G.
Mergansers are always a joy.
Here a flock of them discuss the passing B. Franklin Reinauer.
Buffleheads are indicator species for me that winter is upon us.
Mallard female?
It’s time for winter to retreat . . . .
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Actually, this is a reprise of a post I did earlier this week . . . Ferry Coursen carried trucks. 
Mary H pushed a creek-size barge.
Winter fishing continued apace aboard Eastern Welder.
I got a close-up of Mary H.
Brendan Turecamo headed out for an assist.
A slightly different angle on Sorensen Miller shows the yellow as strapping.
More shots of John P. Brown moving railcars over to New Jersey.
A Moose boat on patrol barreled right at me.
Hunting Creek got light at the mooring.
And a USACE boat practiced bathymetry.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. For fotos of Hamilton (ON) harbor delights, click here. Here’s more info on the 1935 tug he shows. It’s for sale for less than a loaded Escalade. Unrelated . . . another blog I read these days is Ohio River blog with good inland rivers fotos here. And since I’m all over the place today . . .check out this Flickr page by Guillermo Barrios of southern South American tugs and towboats. And finally check out these fotos of the old bridge in Bucksport, ME. I haven’t crossed that bridge–about to be demolished– in over two decades . . . .
A quick reprise first: back in Nola, here Connie 2 assists B. John Yeager dock a tow along Algiers. Route 90 bridge in the background.
Here’s the mystery vessel from the last post: the retired MV Mississippi IV in Vicksburg, positioned here in 2007 when an even larger replacement came on line.
In Memphis, it’s Richard headed southbound under the I-55 bridge.
From Fort Defiance Park in Cairo, Il, that’s the Route 60 bridge over the Ohio . . . at the very end of the Ohio. The confluence is behind me. Tug is ADM’s American Pillar. Note the barges and tugs along the far bank.
Less than a quarter mile away, along the Mississippi bank, it’s AEP’s Michael G. Morris. The bridge is the Mississippi crossing of Route 60.
And in between the two previous fotos, here’s the commingling. Notice the Ohio on the left is muddier than the Mississippi on the right. Coming thru is Okie Moore’s Diving and Salvage’s Stephen Foster, pusing crane barges and Captain Val, based along the Missouri.
And finally for now, it’s Gateway Express as seen from the top of the St Louis Arch and
from the St Louis bank.
Many more to come from points in between . . . from Will Van Dorp.
Like a galley or head or deck, the harbor itself needs maintenance of the routine as well as the extraordinary sort. Given the amount of oil that’s found its way into the sixth boro the past two months, the latter sort is going on. The bird sanctuary mentioned in the first sentence of this link is Shooters Island . . whose history I spoke of here about a year ago.
A routine removal of silt from shipping channels is performed by the vessel below–Atchafalaya–as well as Padre Island, which I got closeups of here two and a half years ago.
Here’s shipspotting info on Atchafalaya (1980, Minnesota Twin cities along the river built!!) which I’ve yet to catch close enough for many details. Here’s still another link on Atchafalaya.
Back to a different set of post-Sandy extraordinary cleanups involve this vessel, with the appropriate name Driftmaster . . . not that it drifts around the sixth boro. Rather, it collects and either removes or secures large floating materials drifting in the harbor.
These fotos come compliments of bowsprite. What I believe is going on here is Driftmaster securing floating docks that in the highest of the surge floated right up off the pilings. I’m not sure where this Driftmaster was built . . . It may date from 1947.
Ditto here. This floating dock needs to be locked back into the pilings. The crane barge here is moved around by 1965 tug Harry McNeal. In the bottom foto, notice the square holes through which the cylindrical pilings must fit.
All but the first two fotos (mine) were taken by bowsprite, whom I thank.
A laker (or ex-laker) in salt water . . . now that’s a thought that delights me, although I admit the foto is less than mediocre, but it’s Pioneer. Quite a few salties ply the Great Lakes. Note the characteristic self-unloading gear midships. She looks to be a sibling of M/V Ambassador, which last appeared here about two years ago. Since I took this foto, Pioneer has shuttled up to Halifax and is now southwest bound again, for Portsmouth, NH.
Eddie Carroll, one of the scow’s transporting spoils from the dredging at the north end of the Arthur Kill looks in need of some paint, although the scaly rust does give character.
Here’s the first of recent sights to behold: Meagan Ann towing scow Witte 4001 all the way through the KVK.
Witte 4001 has the cubic yard capacity of at least 40 dump trailers. Mary Alice . . . near the Bayonne Bridge . . . moves a scow alongside.
Weddell Sea pushing 2004 Senesco-built DBL 83 (ex-The Patriot),
sternview of the classic 1967 YTB-793 known to most around the sixth boro as Ellen McAllister,
at least three tugs (I believe . . . Margaret Moran, Laura K. Moran, and Ellen McAllister) and two container ships (Italy Express and MOL Endowment) entering port. As I pot this, MOL Endowment is passing St Pierre et Miquelon, and Italy Express–also Europe-bound–is not that far behind.
another stern view, this one of 1980 USACE Gelberman, built in Arkansas,
Maria J moves a barge over toward the Gowanus, while Lucy Reinauer awaits departure for Baltimore,
The list could go on, but I’m out of time once again.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Click here for some not delightful at all statistics about losses in sixth boro ports as a result of Sandy.
Here was installment #21.
This foto was taken from Front Street in Stapleton, Staten Island. The gray vessel is docked at the pier now used by Firefighter II. What’s remarkable about this foto–I think–is that Hurricane Sandy has brought together here (l to r) a re-purposed C5 and a repurposed C4, two old-fashioned but reborn American built ships. Let’s take them chronologically. The black hull is T/S Kennedy, a C4-S-66a originally built by Avondale Industries as Velma Lykes, has been activated to serve as housing for relief workers. Thank you Mass Maritime. The gray hull is SS Wright, a C5-S-78a originally built by Ingalls Shipbuilding as Mormacsun, was quite some time ago reconfigured as aviation (helicopter) logistics support ship T-AVB-1.
Here’s as close as I could get, and
here’s a view from the south.
RIBs are a common sight here, and
Is this the Moose boat that sank off Breezy Point back in September 2012?
And finally . . . I know Patrick Sky is not a government boat, but she was posing here yesterday with a snmall UACE vessel.
While looking at this list of MARAD design vessels, which include Wright and Kennedy, I notice E. A. Fisher, built in 1963 and donated to NYC in 1993. Of course, I’m new on this scene, but has anyone heard of this vessel? What became of it?
All manner of small vessels traverse the waters of the sixth boro. Twin Tube is truly one ageless fixture of the harbor. If I did photoshopping, I’d have the boom dangle something tantalizing over the Statue’s upstretched hand.
Annie G II . . . makes me wonder about Annie G I. Here she
stands by as crew perform some truck task over on the west side of Governor’s Island. I’ve enjoyed watching the derelict buildings on the Island disappear. A largely unseen harbor project farther south (sorry no pics from UNDER the sixth boro) has been the tunneling of a new deeper “water main” (p. 7 ff) between Brooklyn and Staten Island.
A small USCG boat stops for maintenance on the red 32. Unfortunately, I was on a vessel headed away from the buoy, and a few seconds after I took this, one crewman stepped aboard the buoy, on the other side.
A small USACE vessel speeds to the southeast past Robins Reef Light.
John P Brown pushes fewer than a dozen of the mere 1500 cars per year across the harbor, the miniscule fraction of merchandise that travels between NJ and parts of NYC on non-rubber wheels.
A small fishing boat crosses the bay under the cranes on hovering over Bayonne.
St Andrews runs light past some unidentified tugs obscured in the fog. I spent July 4 docked near St Andrews.
New England style fishing boat heads out of the Bronx while Fox Boys (I think) pushes some scrap probably toward Jersey City.
In fading light, HMS Liberty heads for the Kills. I’ve often wonder what the HMS stood for in this case. . . . Is the H his, her, or something else . . . .
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who wonders whether Sandy will be sandy or just windy, snowy, rainy, . . . tricky . . . .
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.
Here was 20. And below is Wire, Saugerties-based “boat of the year” at the 2012 Waterford Tugboat Roundup. In less than a year, the New Bern NC Barbour WYTL will be a half-century old, although to me she looked brand spanking new.
Note the crane on Gelberman‘s stern: she’s one of several debris-collectors operated by the Corps of Engineers.
Like the “bear boats” I wrote about yesterday, seeing 32-year-old Morro Bay in the sixth boro is another uncommon seasonal indicator; it’s going to get cold soon (maybe) and ice will need breaking.
Hugo started life as an oilfield support vessel, but now, painted gray, works as a weapons-training Naval auxiliary vessel. Homeported near Hugo is Apache, subject of several posts including this one. Recently, Apache has been tasked with a diver-training mission as reported here.
Continuing outside New York, Cheryl B sent this foto along from Grand Haven MI. Vessel 105 is a WTGB that no doubt lay side-by-side in the shipyard with Morro Bay as they were constructed in Tacoma several decades back. Neah Bay is Lake Erie-based . . but from there, the sixth boro is only a voyage away. Any guesses on the red vessel off 105′ stern?
It’s Griffon, which appeared here on this blog four years ago.
The 42-year-old vessel is based on the St. Lawrence, just northeast of the top right corner of Lake Ontario. The “F-word” on her stern has no place on USCG vessels, although no doubt US and Canadian vessels found themselves on opposite sides of these wars of the late 20th century.
HMCS Moncton, last month, was paying a friendly visit to Port Huron MI.
And finally, thanks to JED, HMS Vigilant, a sub that resembles a whale. Read about it here on JED’s site.
Any finally . . . I mentioned earlier that Wire was “vessel of the year” at the Waterford Roundup. Here, with thanks to Brian Gauvin, is a frozen nanosecond of the fireworks show that brought the roundup to a close.
Thanks again to Cheryl, Jed, and Brian. Thanks also to Rick Old Salt for a reality check on piracy.
Small craft to come, but first . . . the missing foto from yesterday’s post . . . how DID the heaving line get through the eye aka “closed chock”? Hope this foto helps; I do believe I see the monkeyfist flying upward from the crewman at the rail; crew on the upper level passed it to the crewman forward of the chock?
It’s been over two years since I’ve used this title. Small craft come in many shapes,
are operated by professional mariners,
respond to emergencies with versatility,
and shuttle specialists between shore and much larger craft.
This one I first thought was transporting booms but now I think had some festive mission, given what appears to be a sizable bouquet over the engine compartment.
They operate for many agencies,
commercial entities,
government services, and
and law enforcement groups.
They work in diverse
weather, all
year round.
Enjoy a few more:
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who apologizes for not knowing who operates some of these small craft.
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