Just to contextualize this, here’s Random Ships 16 and 15.  Below is one sight that thrilled me yesterday . . . Orange Star.  Nice sternlines, eh?  Just over three years ago, I took fotos of Orange Star, a different and older vessel by the same name.  If you open only one link in this post, open this one for the 2008 version of Orange Star.

This foto taken from more than a mile away shows Barrington Island leaving Red Hook bound for sea with the assistance of Margaret Moran and an unidentified Moran boat.

These Brazilian juice tankers HAVE to be the most beautiful large motor vessels (IMHO) anywhere: immaculate exteriors exuding sublime colors and hues, bespeaking what I imagine are gleaming stainless steel interiors redolent of citrus.

Bulker Medi Antwerp passes Conti Benguela on its way to sea.  The fact that “benguela” appears on a tanker speaks to the success of offshore drilling there.

A new word for the beauty of these tankers?  Try pulchritudinous!   No, really . . . that’s a good thing!  Even the old Orange Star may have registered a old, worn out, tired feeling to itself or others,   but she was always pulchritudinous to my eyes.  Orange Stars to me . . . I view as resplendent as the day they came off the ways.     A statistic for the volume of Brazilian juice:  (2007)  It produces 53% of all orange juice consumed in the world!  For more statistics like that, click here.    I do–I admit–recognize the problem of getting staples like orange juice from a continent away;  maybe I should move to a place where I can grow my own oranges, lemons, mangoes . . .?

Here Medi Antwerp (recently in Chile) passes between the salt pile and Bow Sun  (less than a month ago passed Cape of Good Hope!).

Back to these juice vessels . . . their charms disarm me.  Now here I could have taken a closeup of this structure, starboard side of where the pumps and controls must be, but I didn’t think to do it.  Anyone explain the device below the crane and abaft the horizontally oriented tank?   Next time I’ll try to keep my analytical wits about me and not go all aflutter.

Overseas Kythnos, Korean-built and launched last year, has a great slogan painted along the top of the house.

All fotos this weekend by Will Van Dorp, who readily admits to having an orange juice drinking problem as well as eye problems that sometimes let me see what I want to.