Salt 6

Here are segments 1–5.

New York City is one of those places where tens of thousands of restaurants serve food from every imaginable region on earth.  Scroll through the NYTimes restaurant list for a small sampling.   Ditto music venues with sounds of the world.

The vessel below caries a mundane product that also travels from an obscure region.  Guess?

It’s not oil, like the product Scotty Sky delivers.  Oil itself is quite exotic in that it arrives from geological eras in our planet’s unimaginable past.

er . . . make that Patrick Sky.  Sorry.

And Patrick Sky delivered nothng to our mystery vessel, named for a Norse god, Balder.   Either that, or the name derives from a landscape that more denuded now that before . . .  balder?  Actually the cargo comes from a place that nearly a century and a half ago saw a mineral-motivated War of the Pacific.    And the product is  . . .

salt.  New yorkers can pride themselves that their roads, come ice and snow, sport Peruvian salt.

Balder picked up this load in Ilo, Peru.   See her recent itinerary here.

So in a few weeks–maybe–when this salt ends up on streets and sidewalks, pick some unmelted granules up and smell it.

x

You may catch hints of kiwicha and quinoa, and hearing strains of charanga, you might find your feet moving to the beat of a diablada.

And I know it’s all driven by economics, but of course, New York state has its own salt mines.  For Balder in drydock, click here.  For specs on its “self-unloading/reclaimer system,” click here.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Government Boats 22

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?

Three, Then Two

I didn’t take these fotos quite right, but  . . . look closely, on the left side of the foto and the channel are three orange channel markers, as they appeared on October 10.  That’s Bayonne in the distance.  Behind the camera and off the right side is Howland Hook terminal.

Of course Patrick Sky cleared that nearest marker without a slightest scratch.

But a few days later . . . October 14 and after a tip-off, I returned and

only two markers remained.

Of course, Irish Sea and Bering Sea had nothing to do with the lost marker. Nor did Kraken.

But one was gone, vanished, disparu!

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who hasn’t returned here since . . . but might there now only be one?  Click here for some background info on Patrick Sky.  The Kirby unit in the top foto is Beaufort Sea.

Jan Snow 1

In November the winds brewed up a season that has given people of all boros enough snow to raise the stock value of shovel manufacturers:  a crewman shoveling yesterday at the ferry fuel barges.  Doubleclick enlarges.

It covered everything like the  deck of small tanker Patrick Sky,

glazing surfaces on tormented Carina here taking on supplies from the deck of Twin Tube.

McKinley Sea still carried her

snowy trim, and

as did Laurie Ann Reinauer.

Even crew on tanker Lian An Hu cleared sixth boro snow.

And this ferry captain scraped clear the cowl after Newhouse was secured in Whitehall.

More NYC sixth boro snow fotos tomorrow.  For now, the final foto below comes thanks to Kyran Clune.  Guess the ferry and the location?  Answer tomorrow along with another foto of the same vessel.

All other fotos by Will Van Dorp, the morning after a storm that dropped 19′ on Central Park.   Uhhh . . . make that 19″   or it might be enough fell that a 19′ snow creature could be built beside Cleopatra’s needle.  (Nice catch, John!!)

According to NYTimes, January 2011 has already seen 36″ fall;  the previous high was 1925 with 27.4.