Winds of February

Gusts last Saturday were over 40 mph, but work on the harbor, as always, went on.  Here Joan Turecamo pushes barge Bridgeton upriver between the Battery and Ellis Island.

Might that barge be loaded deep with coal?

Notice the whitecaps all around Joan Turecamo, built north of Albany in the last years of the Matton Shipyard, possibly the penultimate vessel out of that yard .

Aegean Sea (1962, ex-Francis E. Roehrig, Jersey Coast, John C. Barker)   pushes up river.

Driftmaster heads south, and from this vantage point, you can see into the hoppers where

debris it fishes out of the sixth boro gets stowed.  Driftmaster dates from 1948, but I can’t locate its place of construction.

Virginia (1979, ex-Bayou Babe) shuttled between shore and the “mat-laying barge“.

In the distance, the long, low James Turecamo assists Pati T Moran and barge Charleston into the KVK.

Also, way in the distance . . . the new dredge in town . . . one I’ve never seen closer up than this:  Atchafalaya, one I hope to meet again on a less windy day.   Maybe she’s in town for repairs?

All fotos taken by Will Van Dorp last Saturday from a lower Manhattan cliff from which much of the sixth boro can be seen in a single glance YET little or nothing of its complexity can be divined.  Like my attractive muse, the sixth boro does not give up its secrets at a finger’s snap or with any degree of haste.  Any attempt to unlock the story or tales of the harbor with a single key is like trying to catch the wind.