Bottoms

More coverage of the 2009 Tug Roundup in Waterford later, but for now some quick fotos. Maybe the focus on flatbottoms aka platbodems in the sixth boro has influenced my perception, but bottoms were as much a thread this year as noses, last year. Of course, tugs dominated: near to far in this foto: Shenandoah, Empire, Benjamin Elliott, Margot, and Cornell . . . all of which you’ve seen here before. More on them soon.

Grand Erie, an Erie Canal tug–yes, it is–began life as Chartiers, an Ohio River USACE dredge tender in 1951. Get it . . . dredging . . . bottom?

Without the usual W. O. Decker selling rides, folks wanting to see the waterside could catch a half hour on this canalboat. Anyone got an update on Decker? Will it reappear next season?

And then there is Lois McClure, a replica of an 1862 canal schooner barge, with obvious mixed European heritage. Tug C. L. Churchill appears off the port stern quarter.

As tender atop McClure‘s deckhouse is this upturned birchbark canoe.

Complementing all my thoughts about undersides and bottoms was this T-shirt, modeled here by the ubiquitous Karl, who traded a Harvey shirt for a this one from an itinerant dredger crewman.

Until we see fotos soon, you might not believe that Stuart’s mini-tug SeaHorse has a flat bottom. More pics soon.

And since the bow pudding must transform this machine into a tugboat, I can add this to the pattern . . . a very flatbottomed jet-driven tug allegedly named Urger 2. And speaking of Urger . . . .