Note to Kees Kuyper . . . “your foto on page 18 here of New York from the bridge of Blue Marlin is fabulous!  Please take more during your stay in New York.”

Note to all blog readers . . . scroll through to the top of p. 18 to see Kees’ foto.

What follows is another assemblage of fotos from yesterday’s unproductive loading of tugs and barges onto Blue Marlin, a few repeat fotos enhanced by Rod Smith of Narragansett Bay Shipping.  Thanks, Rod.

Gabby Miller and (?) Nicholas and crews at 5:38.

Heading for Blue Marlin at 5:39.

Blue Marlin and “floating cargo” at 6:32.

Fog has partly  lifted by 6:43.

Blue Marlin crew climbing the port aft “tower” at 6:52.

A closer-up of crew going aloft.

Crewboat bring the towline “on deck” at 7:01, and

beginning to make fast at 7:02 to Maverick (ex-YTB 801 Palatka, launched 1969).

Dace leaves the notch over behind Maersk Matsuyamato ogle the scene at 7:09.  By the way, outatowners . . . the land on the other side is Bay Ridge Brooklyn.

Pilotboat Yankee rushes by at 7:17.

Elizabeth McAllister (1967, ex-J. A. Witte and Fournier Boys), which we imagined would be bringing out some barges, arrives on site by 7:25.

With the loading “scrubbed” for the day, Blue Marlin‘s workboat voyages over to the bow at 7:49,  and

by 8:30, the stern has clearly risen at least 10 feet.

By 8:39, Blue Marlin has swung with the ebb, as Staten Island ferry Alice Austen arrives through the Narrows.  Now if you know anything about the ferry routes, this is unusual indeed, but Alice Austen may just be a contrarian ferry.

At 8:46 in the distance Maryland heads out the Narrows to bunker  cutter moored in Gravesend Bay, while a night heron (aka “big pella’) contemplates.

this loading attempt.

By 11:07, more of Blue Marlin has re-emerged, and by mid-afternoon Monday, she has repositioned over to the mooring it occupied earlier off Owl’s Head.

And the suspense goes on.  And if anyone wishes to confide in me info on the day and hour of the next attempt, I’ll be watching.  Oh, discretion and circumspection are my creeds.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who would love an email from Kees.

Unrelated:  For a slideshow from National Tug Day in Maassluis, Netherlands, birthplace of the Dutch towing industry, click here.   Fotos are copyright of Frans de Lijster and Willem Kruit.

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