Something Different 11

Cold winter waterscapes –like especially hot dry landscapes –delight with the optical ilusions they yield.  Behold Hyundai Glory . . . or maybe just an assemblage of coherent containers hovering together.

Have a look at MSC Catania.   On the left in the distance, notice the very long  arm of the Statue of Liberty, and midway between it and the ship . . . a very tall building in Queens, One Court Square, looking much taller than its 50 stories.

Rosemary Miller ? (center)  meets Torm Aslaug, which triggered today’s series.

Sand Master and sand mining barge nearly spans the Narrows.

Tanker Cape Tallin heads for the anchorage, passing the tops of the towers of Marine Parkway.

Here’s the foto that started the series.  notice two grayish shapes forward of the bow of Torm Aslug?  I could see them all the way from the top of a bridge on the Belt Parkway.

Here, as seen from Mount Mitchill, the highest headland on the east coast south of Maine . . .  you can see the same two vessels–MSC by the color of their stacks–and McAllister Responder.

This is the closest I could get . . . . T-AKE 13 USNS Medgar Evers at the Leonardo docks of  Naval Weapons Station Earle.

East of her . . . I don’t know, but my guess would be a T-AOE.

Any guess on the viewpoint of Manhattan with Hood Island departing back south for more tropical fruit?

It’s taken from the same ridge at Sandy Hook, looking down across the still closed Sandy Hook National Park area.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Second Lives 9

Here was the last time I used this title:  8.

Huron Service used to be Eric Candies.  Look at the lines of her hull and house.   Do they

look like these on Na Hoku?  No surprise . . . Na Hoku used to be Chris Candies.  At least a half dozen other ex-Candies boats work as regulars in the sixth boro.

Now look at the barge on Na Hoku‘s hip.  DBL 85 used to be

Freedom.   Stuff doesn’t change that much;  it just gets renamed.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

And this just in from Birk, another fleet sib, Sandmaster, (ex-Ben Candies).  You recently saw this angle wet here on tugster.

Cheers.

Ceremony and Traffic 1

Between 0800 and 0900 this morning, sunshine poured down onto the KVK, and deepened all the colors.  Sand Master (more of these fotos tomorrow) was positively radiant while waiting–it seemed– for something to happen before it can get into the fuel dock.

Then I saw the “something” as Mount Hope began to inch stern first into the stream.   Laura K. Moran surged from port

to starboard to assist in the rotation, her power and precision captivating me.  But then, way atop the superstructure, movement

caught my attention, a bit of ceremony I’ve never noticed before.  A crewman made the flag fast to the halyard and

ran it up, as if to say . . .  we

are now open for business.  Here  is some of the traffic:  Mount Hope outbound passes APL Japan inbound.

OOCL Nagoya seemed to try to get up on plane, and

in doing so . . .  tailed by Barbara McAllister, deftly carved an arc between the bank and an incoming Affinity on the hip of  Marion Moran.

I then went to my appointment on the land side of Richmond Terrace, noticing from indoors two Ital container vessels (Moderna and another) passed.   Before noon, as I headed back home, I noticed that Oyster Creek with the bunker barge was refueling  Shorthorn Express  north of the VZ Bridge as

(this foto thanks to John Watson) Queen Elizabeth headed into port.  Draw what conclusion you will from the juxtaposition of these last two vessels.

Thanks to John for the foto.  All others by Will Van Dorp, who imagines that without that flag-raising, none of this traffic would have happened.

By noon, bright sunshine had turned to overcast gray and then drizzle.  No snow, though.