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Late tonight I anticipate strolling through Penn Station as part of my transit from work to sleep; usually I run, but on Halloween it means the parade has wound down and that all types of creatures will inhabit that transit ecolabyrinth. Halloween in New York and most places in the US produces a mix of the grotesque, macabre, sexy, and just plain bizarre. This post is intended to mirror the spectrum of the menagerie I expect to see tonight. Meanwhile, to see Halloween aboard MV Algolake, go to their Faceboook site.
Start with the raised Helen Parker, which capsized and sank off Manhattan earlier in the month. These fotos come thanks to Jerseycity Frankie. No one was physically hurt, although
feelings certainly suffered. Here’s more on the story.
Halloween critters in Penn tonight will be diverse, hard to identify. Any thoughts on this foto I took yesterday?
Seatrout . . . here she be! I’ll bet they don’t serve smoked salmon on board.
Taken yesterday also . . . right near where some fisherman pulled out a 37″ striper. Guesses?
Misplaced oculus?
It’s Tsereteli! Enjoy these other manifestations of the Georgian sculptor. He might write his name as ზურაბ წერეთელი . . . that kind of Georgian.
In any parade, some costumes are simply unidentifiable by the uninitiated. Like this, which stands as a piece of post-industrial sculpture just behind the A&P in Bergen Point Bayonne, between Elco Boat Basin and the old Esso yard. Can anyone identify its former use? Speaking of the old Esso yard, here’s an old piece of British newsreel showing response and cleanup after a quite tragic June 1966 tanker collision and explosion there. Here’s the NTSB report.
Here’s a foto I took yesterday, tribute to the surprise pre-Halloween snowfall. APL Qatar was about to be backed down for departure for sea. More fotos of Qatar soon.
OK, this was a season and a half ago, harbinger of a pre-Samhain snowfall. Get ready for indian summer. Beginning of summer 2011–Coney Island style–was documented here, here, and here.
Finally, here’s another shot from the Lady Liberte parade. If you haven’t done so already, check out bowsprite’s reaction . . . at least . . . to this vessel being in town. “Lightship” just doesn’t have the energy of the name for this class of vessel in some other languages: for example in Danish, it’s a fyrskib. See fyrskibs and much much more here.
Top two fotos come from Jerseycity Frankie . .. all others by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s last year’s Halloween post about a trip to Issuma. Issuma today is off Alaska after having sailed east to west across the Northwest Passage!! And I could have taken a leave and gone with . . . ah silly me.
Latest word on MV Algolake and the Great Lakes in general, looks like I’ll spend Thanksgiving with my sister in Michigan, after stopping briefly in Toledo and Detroit.
Join me in wishing the crew fair winds and safe sailing aboard their vessel Algolake launched 35 years ago yesterday. I mentioned my Facebook link with Algolake here more than a month ago. Boatnerd has more than a dozen fotos and all the specs here. As of this posting, the vessel is in the middle of Lake Superior, having departed Thunder Bay, ON laden with coal, Detroit-bound.
Their Facebook page results from the efforts of 1st Mate Brian McAlpine, 2nd Mate Frank Julian, and C/E Stefan Danielski. Their stated goal is as follows: “to present life on board the Great Lakes cargo ship seen from crew perspective, without embellishment and glorification.” In the past month, their FB site has included portraits of the nearly two dozen crew aboard the vessel, nicely done, I might add.
MV Algolake has a self-unloading system, which has evolved from a prototype nearly 100 years ago, allowing discharge of up to 6000 MT/hour. Crew size is 22, including three cargo-handling “tunnelmen.” I’d love to hear more about the duties of a tunnelman.
Average load size is 27,000 to 28,000 MT. Loa is 760.’ Typical cargoes are coal for power plants, metallurgical coal for steel plants, grain, iron ore, sand, gypsum rock, aggregates, potash, slag, AND especially important this time of year . . road salt.
Here she discharges road salt in Duluth. Two of the Algoma Central fleet may operate through the winter–assisted by icebreakers if necessary– delivering salt from Goderich, ON, to Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Buffalo . . . ports not involving locks.
After unloading coal in Detroit, she heads for Toledo to load Virginia coal for for Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie, ON; then in ballast, she heads for Duluth to load Montana (low-sulphur) coal for a steel plant in Hamilton, ON. The season ends around Christmas. Ships are then laid up, deck crew paid off, and engines overhauled by engine crew.
And could Algolake return to the shipyard where it was built 35 years ago in Collingswood, ON , you ask? Uh . . no, the Shipyards is now a condominium complex.
So if you do Facebook, you might befriend M.V. Algolake, and wish them a one-day-belated happy 35th launch day. All fotos were taken and copyrighted by Stefan Danielski. Many thanks to Stefan for helping with this post.
Imagine what we’d do with trucks if the Great Lakes were not navigable?
Elapsed time from the first to last foto in this batch is five minutes . . . what it takes to travel from the Erie Lackawanna terminal south to the old NJ Central Railroad Station. Know what this gray vessel is? Doubleclick enlarges.
For a sense of what the Jersey City waterfront looked like a half century ago, see wavz13’s fantastic set of flickr fotos here. The yellowish cube on the right side of the foto (stern of vessel) is a Holland Tunnel ventilator. A matching vent on the Manhatan side of the river can be seen on wavz13’s foto.
All these fotos come compliments of bowsprite; I’ve always felt blessed to have her eyes on the sixth boro at times and in places mine are not.
Long a fan of landing craft, bowsprite “loaded” different aspects of the 2011 JC waterfront onto the LCU.
Carrying the Hyatt here is LCU-2011 Chickhominy, the number NOT indicative of the year of launch/delivery, which was late September 1990.
Click here for close-ups of the vessel.
Where it was headed that day–mid-September I don’t know. My guess is that it started in West Point, but that’s just a guess. Google shows it in various places along the Atlantic seaboard in the early months of 2011.
Many thanks to bowsprite for this set.
This just in: an exemplar of French femininity is occupying Bedloe’s Island, and has done so for . . . 125 years!! And today . . . something just had to be done about it. Rubber bullets? No. Tear gas canisters? Nah. Ghostbusters? Daryl Hannah?
Bring in Aphrodite, former motor yacht of a Wall Street financier. And as a testament to the tension between Liberte and Aphrodite, keep a fireboat near by.
Bring in bright lights to shine in the occupier’s eyes.
And when things begin to smolder, Hornblower Hybrid notwithstanding,
turn on the pumps, all
the pumps, and
intimidate with the largest vessel in that part of the harbor following an erratic course.
Cool it down with tens of thousands of gallons per minute.
Well . . . actually . . . let me join . . . bonne anniversaire, Mademoiselle Liberte, she who never sits down at her job. I’m glad you’ve faithfully occupied that island, once used otherwise, all those years and spawned replicas all over the world.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Notice who is and is not represented in the parade.
Ooops! I forgot, click here for “torchcam” and see things from the enlightener’s point of view.
The almost-identical Vane tugs come in two sizes . . . externally distinguishable by the height of the upper wheelhouse.
Contrast the tower of Bohemia above with that of Sassafras below. Some I hear call the Bohemia etc. as the 4200 series and Sassafras the 3000 . .. as in horsepower.
Elk River and Oyster Creek . . . size?
Bohemia and Sassafras (?) again.
Anacostia . . . size?
Patapsco . . . size?
You were right if you grouped Patapsco and Anacostia with the 4200s, and the other two with the 3000 series.
I wonder about the communication going on here . . a line of kayaks heading up the river as Elk River is attempting to turn to port aka “to the left”.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Click here for more info on the Vane tugs.
There’s RORO, like GIGO. And check out the red cargo in roughly the center of this foto . . . a garbage truck on its way south. Guess that makes this vessel a GTOGTO. Doubleclick enlarges.
Honestly, can you place “basseterre?” It’s neither a slur nor a flood plain.
This 1979 vessel, named for an obscure island in Norway–note the Norwegian port now painted over–reminds me of Grey Shark.
Basseterre is the capital of the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis (FSKN). And I digress, but FSKN with twice the area of Staten Island has fewer inhabitants than Staten Island did a century ago. FSKN population density today is 424 people/square mile; Staten Island today . . .
7587 people/square mile! Do you suppose the person in yellow farmer-johns is just out fishing, or might he have another transaction with Lygra ?
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated: what’s floating toward Hawaii? See here. And what’s swimming in declining numbers here?
Can an ocean-going tug like Hoga, hero of Pearl Harbor, get to Little Rock? See here.
I’m just back from a long day at work, a day that started with–oh Lord–APL Cyprine, she of the curious name.
Next came the throbbing urgency as Catherine Turecamo spun SN Azzurra on its axis before it left, bound for sea and then for Antwerp.
Tugs passed in the dawn, but it was
Nanticoke that really focussed the morning light.
All fotos this morning by Will Van Dorp.
I took six of these fotos with my camera and four with another, given to me, that costs three times as much as mine. Can you distinguish which is which? I realize I might NOT YET be able to get top performance from the second camera. Or maybe in this format it’s impossible to distinguish one from the other . .. because they’re like oil and oil. Or like these two tankers, contorted together like slugs in love. Ever seen slugs in . . . love?
Mahanadi Spirit gets assisted from her berth by
Charles D. McAllister, spun counterclockwise and
sent out
to sea with additional assist by Maurania III.
Next to move was Chemical Pioneer, with the same
assist team.
A bit later, sibling tankers came in to the dock. Noble Express came in followed by
Silver Express.
Docking looked like this, one vessel almost merged with the other.
And can you tell which fotos were taken with camera A and camera B?
Answer is down a bit.
Slugs in love . . . I first saw it waiting at the commuter rail station a few weeks back at 6:15 am, thinking I should have had more coffee . . . .
Please . . . some feedback. Be blunt and frank about the quality of fotos on this blog. Pass the link onto any professional photographers even. I’m re-examining my aesthetic. And after seeing slugs in love, I can handle anything, even dragonfly love.
Answer: The first three were with my usual camera, then three with camera B, then two one with mine, then one more with camera B, and the last two were with mine. The two cameras in question were mine (SP 590-UZ Olympus) whose weight and zoom capability I love and a Sony Cyber-shot DSC R1.
is a 45-year-old hottie. Just look at the heat shimmer enveloping her.
She first appeared here in 2007. I’ve also referred to her “bucket fenders” aka training wheels here.
This may be repetitive, but Ellen was built in 1966 and rebuilt in 2007.
When watching assist tugs like Ellen, it’s hard for me to avoid anthropomorphizing. Ellen strikes me as a hunter who always returns with her quarry.
Note the position of her bucket fenders in relation to the flare of the ship’s bow.
If it is about hunter and prey, these Sea-Land Racer crew seem not displeased to be captured by the likes of Ellen. I’m guess Racer carries an all-US crew.
I understand. Fotos by Will Van Dorp.
A sign of changing seasons for me is . . . this weekend . . . staying in, getting in touch, catching up, following up.
Exhibit A: Daniel DiNapoli, built in Stamford, CT at Luders Marine. I took this foto about six years ago, used it in the first full month of this blog but never named it here. The vessel came up in a conversation this week with its former name Spuyten Duyvil and its legendary captain . . . Before that, this vessel of timeless beauty was False Cape and YT-164, built 1941. Has anyone seen her recently? I’m guessing she frequents the north shore of Long Island, a place I know as little as Polynesia.
Exhibit B: Foto thanks to Jeff Anzevino and taken last weekend in the Potomac off Alexandria, VA . . . Bourne has some squatters who feel comfortable enough to build some sizeable nests on her.
I’m guessing she’s idled by litigation. The Washington Post took notice already a year ago, as evidenced here. I want to know why she’s wearing USACE colors, more clearly seen here.
Exhibit C: Thanks to John Wark, the next three fotos show the “graveyard” on the Arthur Kill, fotos all taken in September 2000. The foto below show the yard “north” from Hila.
Using Hila again as the axis, see the vessels here looking south. For more of John’s vast archive, click here.
Finally, Exhibit D: I dropped the line on the mighty The Bronx, as she looked a few years ago and
as she looked to my camera in early September. The “twenty-five-footer” was built in 1952 at Island Dock company. Thanks to Robert Apuzzo for the “before” foto showing Viking in her deshabille disarray.
Fotos as credited.
Related: Has the Bronx-built Hoga aka YT-146 already made its way to the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum?
Unrelated: Enjoy this archive I stumbled upon today.
tugster: a waterblog 
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