My intended title here was something like “….so I thought I’d get out early this morning and take some fotos of the harvest moon setting, but the morning arrived all foggy in the sixth boro…” but that would have been been too long, even though everything I just said is true.
Practically the first thing I saw on the KVK this morning intrigued me, after a summer of seeing houses, bridges, and more*
I wondered. It looked like an industrial park building was eastbound on the KVK. Hunt Girls: the boat name charmed me too, since it sounded like the message the “voice in my head” first told me when I was an early teenager… to talk with them, of course. Imagine a work vessel named “cherchez les femmes.” Vane’s Bohemia had a rumble seat view of the tow.
I wondered what other tows might be forthcoming: foggy days–as Stephen King knows well–always usher in the unlikeliest visitors.
*More earlier includes the power plant ventilators that Bowsprite captured below earlier this week. It looks like either Crow or Cheyenne and Margot.
St Andrew–the sixth boro’s resident Oregonian– never quite caught my attention as it did today, seen here full frontal.
Out of the mist came Donal G McAllister, usually based in Baltimore. By the way, I finally tracked down Rosemary McAllister; it seems she runs for G & H Towing, a Houston company, now under the name Rosemary.
Here, in close quarters, APL Arabia is flanked by Barbara McAllister and Thomas D Witte.
Alexandra, the LaFarge barge, is positioned by Turecamo Girls alongside and Mary Turecamo, in notch.
Timothy L Reinauer and Ellen McAllister wore a conspiratorial air as they held this formation westward along the KVK.
Huron Service passes an unidentified safety-colored survey boat a half mile east of the Bayonne Bridge.
I later learned that I would have heard and then seen OSG Vision if I’d stayed at the Kill for another half hour. Oh well, then I would have missed this terrestrial apparition below. This intimidating sight pulled up behind me in Elizabeth, NJ yesterday as I went in to work!!! Why on earth would a battlefield-ready Ford 550 bear NJ plates and cruise that modest-size greater sixth-boro landing!?
I wondered if I’d slipped into the twilight zone in which maybe this blog and my Babylonian Captivity one had merged, as in dreams, especially ones during a full moon.
But I made it back to tell the tale and post the fotos… Will Van Dorp.
Nothing was injured while researching or writing this, but I did discover a kindred Flickr account.
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September 25, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Daniel Meeter
Will, are you telling me the Rosemary McAllister, which I christened (right?), is no longer a McAllister?
September 26, 2010 at 3:05 pm
tugster
‘fraid so … i wonder if there is a dechristening ceremony …
September 26, 2010 at 5:42 pm
Mage Bailey
Catching up after my hospital stay. Your blog always delights me. I do wish one day you would tell us about barges. 🙂 The one you share with us today looks as if it were once a ship.
September 27, 2010 at 9:08 am
Deb dePeyster
I love these photos in the fog.
There is something so beautiful and melancholy about them.
Thanks for identifying the power plant ventilators towed and pushed by Crow/Cheyenne and Margot. I saw them go down the river from my deck and wondered what they could be.
I called a friend who lives just south of me and he went out and took a photo at (the former) Greendale Station. This is mile marker 110 (from NYC) on the RR line and just opposite Catskill.
The payload must have come from GE.
September 27, 2010 at 1:33 pm
eastriver
Extremely confusing, re Rosemary.
Was assisted twice by her last week, big surprise when she pulled up and I recognized her. She was painted in Bay Houston livery (http://www.bayhouston.com). She is probably there under long-term charter, as has been the Shannon (McAllister) which is painted in Suderman & Young livery (http://www.sandy-tugs.com/index.html).
Both these Houston/Galveston ship-assist companies are privately owned, but managed by the same corporate entity. I never knew the name, but it seems to be this G&H. I have never seen a tug with any kind of G&H colors, either in Houston/Galveston or Corpus Christi.
I do know that the two company / single management system has been effective in a) stamping out any hint of shipdocking competition in those ports, and b) keeping mariners’ salaries at a minimum in those companies. Spoke to a Houston pilot who had worked for Bay Houston prior to piloting; his captain’s pay was what we paid an AB at that time.
Very complicated, down there in Texas.