And more surprises . . . this is a major wake raking the bank of the Harlem River!

This foto hangs at the Ear Inn.  I liked the image until I noticed that this hair product advertisement uses a wrecked ship and locals looting supplies from said wreck.  Now imagine a business did this today . . . .

A vessel aims to maintain equilibrium and productivity despite wind, cold, and isolation;  arms spread here do what mine attempt while crossing a narrow gangplank.  Life is full of such risk-takings.

I’ve used some of these White, GA,  fotos before, but part of what attracts me to the car is the art of Jacek Yerka.

This foto accompanies a story in Yerka’s book with Harlan Ellison called Mind Fields, with over two dozen such images accompanied by short fiction.

Here’s another, marking the beginning of the calendar phase called Aquarius, what this post is really about.

Happy birthday, my fellow-Aquarians.

Laura K Moran, 2008 built in Maine 87′ loa and 5100 hp here escorting in Ever Devote.  Below her is Caitlin Ann, built in Louisiana in 1961.  70′ loa and 2400 hp.

Vane’s Bohemia and Quantico Creek differ in many respects:  2007 v. 2010, 4200 v. 3000, Louisiana v. Maryland, and 96′ v. 90′ loa.

Below them, escorting Dubai Express,  is James Turecamo, 1969 built in NY, 92′ loa and 2000 hp.

Greenland Sea, built in Louisiana in 1990, 4200 hp and 112′ loa.

Below her is Barbara McAllister, 1969 built in Louisiana, 100 loa and 4000 hp.

Charles D. McAllister, 1967 built in Florida, 1800 hp and 94′ loa.

Margaret Moran, shown twice escorting Cosco Tianjin, 1979 built in Louisiana, 99′ loa and 3000 hp.

Two former SeaBoats tugs are now Mediterranean Sea and Weddell Sea, both built in Massachusetts and powered by 4500 hp.  Mediterranean Sea (110′ loa)  was launched in 2004; Weddell Sea  (105′ loa) launched 2007.

Finally, it’s Nicole Leigh Reinauer, Alabama-built, launched in 1999, 119′ loa, and 7200 hp.

All fotos this week by Will Van Dorp.

I’m happy shipping companies use nomenclature, real names, rather than numbers or alphanumerics.  Actually, vessels do have IMO identification in numeric form, but they also have names, naming conventions that evoke other times.  I love the classical names.  IMO 9324215 is also Golden Venus.

9289518  ?  . . . Ajax sounds better to me.

I don’t even care about the number:  NYK Daedalus suits me.

CSL Atlas . . . fine.

And I love this classic . .  a foto of a banana boat offloading in the sixth boro and taken in 1960 by William Rau and passed along by Thomas Flagg . . . Eros!  I love it.

Here’s an enlarged portion of the shot.  Notice the wooden covered barge in the foreground.  The harbor 52 years ago looked quite different.

Now . .  the same name on a fiberglass motorboat . . .  nah!  Here it seems tacky.  Pop culture references might be better for pleasure boats, like

this . . . I love it!

Except the classic from William Rau, all fotos by Will Van Dorp.

So here’s a question prompted by the Chinese new year:  I cannot recall seeing a large vessel passing through the sixth boro bearing a name with the word dragon in it.  I can’t.  Maybe you can.  A case in point is this foto taken yesterday:  a Chinese-operated container vessel although built in Japan, named for a major Chinese city.  As it passed, I was moved . . . a formidable vessel, a huge water-snake, a contemporary dragon.

 If you’ve taken a foto of a modern vessel with “dragon” in the name, I’d like to hear of it.  Upon more reflection here, I realize that over four years ago in Greenport, NY, I saw a green tug called Dragon.  The registry shows the Gladding-Hearn vessel still operates by that name.   Can anyone pass along a recent foto?

It’s definitely land-based.  But I thought I could have some fun creating

some alternative-powered shipping, like a wind turbine barge  DoubleSkin 303.

How about a Jane A. Bouchard with a huge air prop, or

this on an extra-tall Quantico Creek?

Ditto Greenland Sea?

Or a turbine atop the tower of the newly-minted Mediterranean Sea?

Closer up, this is what the hub looks like.

Some of the parts are US-made;  others come from Austria.  Here are some introductory  technical details.  If I read Leitwind’s homepage correctly, this is their first turbine delivered to the US.  Here are even more technical details, again from a New Jersey publication.

Northern New York state has a surprisingly large number of such turbines, as documented in tugster here, and “salties” have been delivering components into the upper Midwest through the St. Lawrence and into the Great Lakes, as Marlene Green, shown here . . . although I caught her running empty.  The five states that currently have the highest percentage of their electric power generated by turbine are:  Iowa, the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Kansas.  Atlantic City has five turbines.  Are there others in NJ?  And Staten Island . . . the idea of wind turbines atop Fresh Kills has certainly been discussed.

As of this writing, I’ve not seen any NY papers mention the Bayonne tower.  Hmm.

Oh, the first “skyscraper”  was Latting Observatory, standing 315 feet.  To learn more, click here.   This bit of erudition comes compliments of Tom Flagg, who is also responsible for this great but maybe slow-loading document of the bygone era of marine rail on the west side of Manhattan.  Thanks, Tom.

Ken of Michigan Exposures took this one up in Bay City, MI, a hundred plus miles northwest of Detroit.  Any guesses on the vintage of this attractive tug . . .55′ loa x 12′ ?  Answer follows.

Staying with vintage Great Lakes tugs, this foto comes from Jason LaDue, who recently sent these fotos from upstate.  The foto below was taken in Oswego, NY, in late 1998.  Three tugs had been sold south by Great Lakes Towing.  The tugs below are from RIGHT to left, Gull (1952 ex-Jennifer George, Galway Bay, Oregon), Sea Tractor (1951 ex-Messenger, Patricia Hoey, New Hampshire) and the one I’ve called Grouper, whose entire saga you can find by using the blog search window to the left.  Gull and Sea Tractor were both built in Louisiana at Alexander Shipyards.

At this point these fotos were taken in December 1998, all three tugs were headed south, but Grouper has never left the Erie Canal yet . . . in the past 13 years.  Did anyone catch Gull and Sea Tractor coming through the sixth boro in early 1999?

Here’s Gull working the icy Great Lakes as Gaelic’s Galway Bay, and

Sea Tractor in the same green as Patricia Hoey. Note the wheelhouse design of Patricia.

When these tugs had first come to the Great Lakes, via the Mississippi/Chicago River, they looked different.  Tug on the far right is Messenger, before becoming Patricia.

Which brings us to the present.  I’m told that Gull was scrapped last year in Virginia/Philly (?) as American Pride.  Anyone have other fotos?  Here are two by shipjohn.  Thanks, shipjohn.

And Sea Tractor (then called Shark) was reefed a year and a half ago near Miami’s Haulover Artificial Reef site in September 2010.  I’d LOVE to see fotos of her in her last years, maybe even of the scuttling.  Anyone help?    Here’s a poor quality foto of  Shark being hauled out to be reefed in 255′ of water.

No news currently on Grouper in Lyons, NY, but I wish the restoration of the 100-year old tug success.

Thanks much to Jason and Ken for these fotos.

Jill Marie, 121 years old!!  Built 1891.

16:24 . . .  guided by the new wind turbine, Hanjin Albany and two unidentified tugs catch the beginning of the gilded light. I’m not sure what Hanjin Albany carried in or intends to carry out.

16:25 . . .  in a different area of the Upper Bay, APL Turquoise and Charles D. McAllister (or is it McAllister Responder??) have not quite entered that enhancing light.

16:37 . . . same APL Turquoise and Charles D. (I’ll assume) are now fully adorned in gold.   Solomon Sea pushes a set of scows with golden sand.

Too short this light lasts;  in 30 minutes it’ll be winter night.

16:36 . . . Giulio Verne in a different part of the harbor bathe in lesser amounts of this light.

Solomon Sea‘s sand piles could not be more embellished.

But by 16:42 . . . the brilliance diminishes already unless

here, at 16:42 and beyond Staten Island’s shadow, Samuel I. Newhouse and RBM 45612, still linger in the golden light.

All fotos during this 18-minute interval, by Will Van Dorp.

Wow!  Almost 40 years ago, another 18-minute unit was significant.

Laurie Ann Reinauer  . . . well, I could read the name on her derriere.

But Barbara McAllister I had to guess at.  (Harold corrects me . . .it’s Amy C. McAllister.  Thanks, Harold.) Snow flakes just blocked out the name.

Franklin . . . I know the profile AND can read the name even with my cokebottle glasses.

But I was looking for a good 10 minutes at this right in front of me and did not even SEE it.  No, not Sanko Blossom, but that new feature beyond her . . . that light colored structure obscured

now and again by a squall.  It wasn’t there a few days ago.

It’s good for my self-confidence that I saw the tower yesterday also, and got fotos of the 260′ tower then, over beyond Hanjin Albany.   Otherwise I might have suspected it came with the storm.   The blades weren’t turning, though, in spite of the wind, since it won’t go operational for a month or so yet. 

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s already wondering if Bayonne can be convinced to put bright colorful lights on the tower next December.

Same is true of a harbor; what vessels inhabited it when I first paid attention are no longer here, at least not in the same way.  Take Odin, about which I’ve heard a lot of chatter this week.  Great name.  Perfect candidate for an award for eccentricity, but I smiled every time I saw Odin.   I never saw the closest vessel to her in DNA, the ill-fated Red Wing.  You can tell this is the older Odin because the house rests on a hydraulic ram.

 Here her house has front legs.

Here’s Odin, house down, bunkering a Princess vessel.

Dean Reinauer has also left the sixth boro; she traveled out on the back of Blue Marlin last summer.  Where she is today, I’m SURE she’ll see no snowfall like this, taken a few years back over by Howland Hook.

Ditto Great Gull . . . down in Venezuela . . . no snow.  I recall fondly how excited I was when I first saw Great Gull, turns out built by the same folks who built barges for Europe as part of the Marshall Plan.

And the ORANGE June K.  I know she’s still around as Sarah Ann.  But that original color was almost institutional, almost spring time.

And then there’s Rosemary McAllister, now working on lease down south without her last name and with an all-white stack.    Her christening was a seminal bowsprite/tugster collaboration.

She worked in the harbor for too short a spell, from my POV, before migrating to Houston, but what do I know about the economics.

Scott C is now Weddell Sea.  Dorothy Elizabeth (star  . . . well, an extra . . .  of Carlito’s Way) has now been scrapped.

Finally, there’s Kristin . . . , once with a telescoping house like Odin, now scrapped.

I have others, but it’s amazing how much changes in five years of  observing the harbor.  All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Given my vintage, the sound that personifies change for me is this song by Jefferson Airplane.  

The last time subs appeared on this blog they were antiques, John P. Holland’s prototypes.  The monochromatic tube below encircled by the unmistakeable yellow/orange Edison Chouest tugs 2, 3, and 4 is as far removed from Holland’s vessel as can be.   The “tube” is SSBN 734 USS Tennessee, returning from sea.  I can imagine the crew will be very happy to exit vessel and get reaquainted with the rythyms of day and night.    By the way, the Edison Chouest tugs here technically double as pilot boats.

Surfaced SSBNs returning from or bound to sea all tend to look alike. 

These fotos were taken in the vicinity of Kings Bay, GA along the St. Mary’s River.   They come compliments of

Capt. John E. Dupee, a Kings Bay pilot, the tallest person on the “sail” below,  and frequent commenter on this blog. Last summer in northern Florida I had the pleasure of meeting  John aka JED, who used to work for K-Sea outa New York. 

Many thanks, JED.

Click here to see fotos from the weekend in 2008 that the sixth boro had TWO subs visit.

Less than a half hour after waking up this morning, drinking coffee, reading the paper and wanting to find out who “James H. Thompson” and “Pridi Banomyong”  were, I encountered this page.  Countless times today I met it again.  I support wikipedia’s opposition to SOPA and PIPA and urge you to tell your congressfolk too.   Or at least find out about the issue.

But of course, I’m not darkening this blog.  Especially when I can share such colorful fotos of Sand Master yesterday before the rain.

Sand Master looks a lot like Greenland Sea and Na’Hoku, but  . . .  surprise, each comes from a different shipyard although all at one time belong to Otto Candies.

Sand Master was built by Swift Ships in Pass Christian, MS in 1983.

Amboy Aggregates uses Sand Master in their sand mining activties, and as such, she spends most of its time off Sandy Hook, a presence on AIS but not so commonly seen.

John P. Brown is always a delight to see, as

is Thomas J. and yesterday

was no exception.  It was worth my while to get my feet wet taking this foto.

As I said yeasterday, I got the sense that the flag raising on Mount Hope was a signal for all manner of activity to commence.   Capt. Fred Bouchard moved into the notch of B. No. 275 and  Barbara McAllister (ex-Bouchard Boys) (see the upper wheelhouse on the far side) added her 4000 hp to

Capt. Fred‘s 5750 . . . and the waters started to churn.

Meanwhile, what or who can make the slack waters of the KVK rise up like this?

Barbara E. . . . with her 6140 hp.

Some minutes later, Barbara E. and Capt. Fred Bouchard round the bend to exit the KVK.   Interesting guy, the original Cap. Fred.

All fotos yesterday by Will Van Dorp during less than a one-hour party.

Please do something about SOPA and PIPA.

Unrelated:  Click here for the “hugest” set of links to cruise vessels that I’ve ever soon.  I’m lamenting the loss of life, but I’m not speculating about what transpired off Giglio.  But for an eerie foto of the Costa Concordia appearing to  ”float in clouds,”  click here.  Here’s a portentious video from the vessel’s launch.