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Quick post, fotos shot in Cincinnati from the –I kid you not–Purple People Bridge. “Northbound” refers to traffic direction, not mine.
I’m not sure what’s in the barges, covered as they are.
Cincinnati and the Kentucky environs certainly will get me back as a return visitor. More on it later.
Squarish pushboat. Notice crewman hanging out on starboard rail.
Laura Elizabeth registered in St. Louis. No links here, no research. Check comments for Jim’s info on the vessel in the first of the Ohio River series. Thanks, Jim, and cheers. We’re headed for Louisville.
Photos, WVD.
To get to Pike Island locks from sixth boro by water, you need to either “do a Water Horse” or travel thousands of miles around Florida, thru Gulf of Mexico, go up the Mississippi as far as Cairo, etc. Or drive a car west for about six hours, which is what I did. By the way, W. L. H. Moon’s “water horse” was a C-Dory that left from the Elizabeth Marina right across from Howland Hook. Below, watch the mast with radar sweep and searchlight.
It’s Brenda Rose, and yes she did!
And having risen, the throttles gets pushed forward. She sounds like an accelerating locomotive,
pushknees jamming against the barge,
she moves her load just barely through the floodgate structure
and upriver toward Pittsburgh.
Any ideas what the sections of cylindrical vessel might be? And Brenda Rose . . . her homeport and other vitals?
Photos, WVD.
William Oscar (W. O.) Decker, the restored tugboat operated by South Street Seaport, is available for charter. I wrote about it here last year. We crossed paths in Kingston Memorial weekend Saturday night. Here she’s docked beside Mathilda, shorepiece of Hudson River Maritime Museum in Kingston, NY.
Mathilda dates from 1898; Decker from 1930. Both originally used steam power; Mathilda was never converted. Other connections between Mathilda and Decker . . . at South Street Seaport exist.
Decker slipped out of Rondout Creek with little more than a horn blast Sunday morning. I heard no line commands.
I recently saw an issue of Lekko, whose website I urge you to check out. The explanation I got for the title is this: “Lekko” is the spelling of the line command Dutch dock workers (my ancestors) “heard” as English sailors were leaving the dock. Maybe there’s another magazine called “kastof.”
To round out this post, here’s Crow headed north off Yonkers. Mathilda, Decker, and Crow–built 1963 in Brooklyn–are each spaced about a human generation apart.
Crow works for Port Albany Ventures, owner also of the mystery tug in Random Tugs 17, identified by Harold E. Tartell, who also supplied the close-up below, as Herbert P. Brake. Check out this link to learn of Mr. Brake and materials he used to construct this push boat. More on Brake in this really interesting blog.
This is a post that wants to go on and on. Alice, for example, is in Marseille. Yeah! and I”m outa the sixth boro and may/may not post from the Ohio River. On verra.
No more sails using this jib.
All these shots were taken in a 24-hour period recently, the one above and all those below.
Four kids in this small sailboat seemed to cut dangerously close to Buchanan 12 pushing eleven gravel barges toward Haverstraw. By the way, at 3000 hp, the big Buchanan 12 generates less horsepower than the MK V (Mako’s) featured in Speed and 1 and 2 posts, not torque, just horsepower.
Lettie G. Howard sails past the Hess tanks in Edgewater, NJ. Check this link for a 1989 shot of Lettie!
Pride of Baltimore 2 with only the topsail set takes passengers toward Ellis Island. Check this in case you wonder about the 2.
Clearwater sails northward toward Tappan Zee Bridge. The festival this year coincides with the solstice in case you’re not going to Coney Island.
Mystic Whaler heads past Storm King toward West Point. Support your local sail.
At last, on Sunday, the NYTimes has a Fleet Week article, which devotes a few paragraphs to the speedy vessels below and their capabilities. Watch the accompanying NYTimes slideshow, which devotes more than a third of its fotos to tattoos. Is this reinforcing stereotypes? Info on another Times article at the end of this post.
Landing ramps on the sterns of these MK 1’s show no names. Foto thanks to Gigi. More on Gigi soon, I hope.
Speed at rest nestles beside cutter Ida Lewis, named for the so-called bravest woman in America..
They rafted up facing the Statue and then zoomed northbound past the CRRNJ station. Would you believe 50 knots+ propelled by twin 2285-horsepower diesels?
Unrelated to these vessels, the Times ran another article on services for mariners yesterday. This one profiled Herb Reiss, a godsend to mariners ship-bound during their brief stay in the our fair harbor. A slideshow accompanies this story as well.
Photos, WVD.
Back in the late 1980s a friend and I drove northeast from the “top” of New Hampshire to get away and enjoy seeing the magic of Quebec. Following the southernish bank of the St. Lawrence on Route #132, we stumbled onto a maritime museum whose marquee then was a superfast experimental Candian hydrofoil, the FHE400 Bras d’Or. You must check out that link at least.
My reaction to the hydrofoil may have been similar to what the crew of the sailboat below left felt when something rushed by yesterday. I know it’s here with Fleet Week, I saw one of these here a few years back, it probably lives in the bowels of Kearsarge . . . but what is it? How fast does it move? Is it an MK V.1? Oh, that’s the Liberty Science Center in the background.
More speed–while heading toward Haverstraw Bay later yesterday this speedride passed us. Why would a Seadog boat–living in Chicago and Maryland–be headed up the Hudson?
And finally more speed, it tops 57 mph and has some formidable equipment. I’d never seen it til last week and only barely did then. Zoom. Oh, those are radiation sensors embedded into the windshield.
First two fotos thanks to John Dupee . . . barges and cranes can be beautiful as well as functional
and tireless like this tow at daybreak approaching the Williamsburg bridge with a light dusting of snow.
Barge Hartford, pushed by Juliet Reinauer, has two feet of freeboard, and later will look like
Lisa, light and exposing the architecture of her stern.
A spud barge pushed by a truckable tug I can’t identify is about to be eclipsed–except the spuds–by a light barge pushed by Melvin E. Lemmerhirt.
I’ve neglected barges . . . so a few more with unlikely names.
The name Alfalfa confounds me, as would Sandy Hook if I was unfamiliar with local geography.
More soon.
Photos, WVD.
First, a correction in yesterday‘s post: it was not the Harvey doing the water salute. It must have been Fire Fighter. Second, I waited til the Times arrived today to post. Still, nothing about the warships in New York until E15 (i.e., 63 pages in!!) where I read third item in “Around Town” on the “Spare Times” page . . . “daily ship visits…” It names no ships. A less proficient reader might even think that “visits” in the phrase was a verb, as in what a or the daily ship does. Yet, in an ad on p. 3: Tiffany & Co. offers an “anchor diamond pendant in platinum, $2800.” My read here is . . . the Times‘ll take the advertising $ for a product timed for profiling during an event the paper doesn’t acknowledge. Ho-hum!
Below, cruiser Monterey (CG- 61), named for the 1846 battle, approaches the Narrows two days ago. In 1846, Polk was President, and the trigger for war was the infamous Thornton Affair. Monterey was built on the Kennebec in Maine.
I couldn’t begin to identify items on this superstructure, but I like the gray inflatable.
Another Canadian vessel is the frigate St. Johns. On its afterdeck is the Sea King helicopter that can land there in conditions up to 20-foot waves!
A final shot of the Kearsarge . . . Oops, she moves so fast that neither the McAllister tugs nor my camera could keep up.
Finally, here’s a retired government ship emerged behind a port building on Imlay Street in Red Hook Brooklyn. More later. Some of you know this vessel, but no… it has nothing to do with this other Red Hook submarine.
About the Times . . . I confess I am a subscriber.
Photos, WVD.
Oh.. the things you see when you look . . . a half dozen warships enter the sixth boro, and the New York Times mentions nary a word, has not a single foto! I just went through all 80 pages–twice, and unless my eyes fail me, nothing. Any sixth boro water stories? Oh, yeah, a feature on a world-class rower in the styles section. Styles?!
Here’s a link that tells all the Times doesn’t about Fleet Week 2008. Kearsarge (LHD-3) stood off Wednesday morning right outside the Narrows. McAllister Sisters stands by. Naturally, John J. Harvey stands by too, with its own air support.
The first vessel in was cruiser Leyte Gulf (CG-55) complete with air support, or at least people with better camera angles than me. Leyte Gulf, southeast Philippines, saw a key WW2 sea battle.
When destroyer Nitze (DDG-94) steamed in, she left a massive wake.
The first of three Canadian vessels escorted in was the frigate Toronto (FFH-333). Notice the red dot on the stack?
It’s a red maple leaf, of course.
Kearsarge received a 17-gun salute as she entered and then returned the greeting. I whispered a prayer for any weak-hearted, unsuspecting driver crossing the Verrazano when Kearsarge fired her first shot directly beneath the roadbed.
And thanks to Bernie Ente, here’s Kearsarge in the North River with all accompanists.
Dedicated to all who served and who still work on the sixth boro. Happy National Maritime Day! More Fleet Week fotos soon. Got good ones you’re willing to share? Email me.
Photos, except Bernie’s . . . WVD.
Random Tugs 16 ended with a mystery vessel on Long Island Sound. Harold Tartell and Greg Walsh separately identified it as Peggy Winslow now hailing from Falmouth, ME. Thanks! The fotos on Winslow Marine‘s site remind me of coastal New England. Thanks to Harold for the foto below and the next one, which
shows Peggy Winslow in her first life beginning in 1970 as Mister Chris, then out of Port Aransas, Texas.
Moving a light barge under the Brooklyn Bridge Sunday was the best-named tug I’ve seen in a while: Outrageous, out of Philadelphia.
Outrageous is my term for what’s happened in Red Hook in the past few years, reacted to in this You Tube clip. See the film maker’s myspace here. … not to malign the truckable tug working there recently. I think it’s Big K, but I can’t confirm that.
Two minutes later this “pickup-truckable” tug appeared; judging by the bow gear, it’s a floating forklift bearing some semblance of Ikea colors?
To end this installment, a mystery tug, headed Sunday morning past the east side of Bayonne making for the KVK. Anyone know it?
Photos, WVD.
tugster: a waterblog 
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