Do Leap

You’ve probably seen some version of the “what I really do” meme.  I’ve seen some good ones on Facebook.  If you want to use the template, click here.

But . . .   being a person who can’t exactly follow the drum beats of others, here’s my version.

What my mother thought I do.

What bowsprite caught me do.

What some friends think I do.

What my parrot (Nigel) thinks I do.

What I wish I could do . . . if not everyday,  then at least twice a week . . . and what kind of access I wish were possible.  The foto shows John A. Noble.

What my grandchild thinks I do.

What I think I do . . .

What I really do . . . at least on rainy or very cold days off.

Happy Leap Day!  

In case you’re wondering about the second foto from the end, that doorway with the gothic window is part of new construction at the KVK eat/drink/foto spot formerly known as R. H. Tugs, which I’m eager to see reopen.     A friendly conversation with the new owners the other day confirmed they understand the attraction for many of us of that location.   I use their door here as a generic portal, a pathway between one world and another.  What I am gratified to hear some of you say is  . . . my obsession as illustrated by this blog . . . helps you understand some of what you see in the harbor and draws you in to observe more carefully.  Wow!  Thanks.

Fantasy 2

Whatzit?  What has dawn revealed coming into the sixth boro?

The logo on the stack should identify it.  Less than two weeks ago it left Bremerhaven.  Click here for some good shots of German tugs hauling it out aka ausdocken.

Thanks to John Watson for catching it with his eyes and camera.

Thanks to perspicacious bowsprite for catching it with her ears first, then eyes, and camera.    She telephoned me and I too telephonically heard the horns blaring out “New York, New York.”    Port Canaveral, do you have a theme song it will play upon arrival there in late March?  For one of bowsprite’s cruise ship renderings, click here.

Oh, the surprises of the sixth boro!!

For Fantasy 1 on tugster, a non-Disney Fantasy, click here.

Related:  4000 passengers!!!   Also, it’ll travel to personal Disney cay!!

Rounding Bergen Point 1

That bit of land on the upper right of the foto is Bergen Point.  The shadow I hope you recognize as my favorite bridge, and the Sunday morning light plays with the water, bridge, and the pinkish

bulbous bow.

Here, at 10:14 the tug is 1967-built Charles D. McAllister, featured in countless posts in my archive.  Note the boxes on deck of fastening hardware

to keep the stacked containers securely lashed together.

Note Charles D. again, as it assists the 902′ loa x 105′ Zim San Francisco in rounding Bergen Point.   In the distance on this side of Shooter’s Island, a yellow-fronted Vane unit stands off.

Behold the nostril!

Complementing Charles D.’s effort, it’s Maurania III starboard stern quarter.

Zim San Francisco rounds safely despite the general gustiness.  Once a safe rounding is confirmed,

10:21 a.m.  Charles D. spins around, racing back to the west end of the KVK to assist the next vessel westbound under the Bayonne Bridge, while Brendan Turecamo heads over to the Arthur Kill for an assist there.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Footnote:  last Sunday I took fotos of APL Indonesia as it exited the east end of the KVK for sea.  Last night . . . i.e., seven days later, I took this “screen grab” of the same vessel standing off the Panamian port of Colon waiting to enter Manzanillo port!!

Mary Whalen Needs Help

I’ve mentioned or featured Mary Whalen in tons of posts. Click here for the archive.  Over five years ago the blog called “A Brooklynite on Ice” did my all-time favorite post of the vessel and PortSide NewYork here.    “Brooklynite on Ice” title captures her dilemma  . . .  “613 Tons of Homelessness.”

She’s twisted and turned in the currents too long, her viability as a fantastic asset to sixth boro education and culture trifled with by her lack of easily accessible-to-the-public dock space.  Befriend her on Facebook to see all the good things she’s been doing with that medium, and then

Please  help MARY A. WHALEN & PortSide NewYork

The promised “real estate deal” aka “dock space” fell through and she needs a new home and some fundraising fast. Here are three possible ways to help.

1) Come to a meeting tomorrow Mon 2/27/12 6:30 p.m.  Info here.

2) Submit a supportive comment here.

3) Donate via PayPal here.

Other People’s Fotos 13

I was delighted to learn that Birk Thomas had taken these last week.  They are golden hour fotos of a highly unusual transit up the East River.   That’s Queens on the left and a varying Manhattan skyline on the right.

In the past, this blog has published fotos of  covered submarine parts headed south to Newport News, like here and here . . .  ( read Les’ comment in that first link) but Birk caught the uncovered and partially assembled cargo headed north toward Connecticut.

A large part of what motivated me to start fotoblogging the traffic in New York harbor, which I started to call the sixth boro, is the diverse and intriguing traffic on the waters.  No single person I met knew the whole story or appreciated all the details.  New York is no simple river town where one person could sit on the bank and see everything that passes.  So to all of you who’ve collaborated on this tugster project in some way, I really appreciate it.

Here, in Hell Gate, Birk Lyman and Sea Shuttle look to be a whole different tow, given that the late afternoon sun is now behind the camera.   Here’s my first posting of  submarine sections on tugster almost three years ago.

Many thanks to Birk, who started this amazing resource.   Lyman belongs to Gateway Towing based in New Haven, CT.  Check out the Gateway Towing page.

Here and here are two previous “submarines in the sixth boro” posts.

Other People’s Fotos 12

All fotos today come from Isaac Pennock at various Canadian shorelines along the eastern Great Lakes.  And an interesting set of vessels this is.  Take James A. Hannah, foto shot in Hamilton.  Look at her lines.  You’ve seen a sibling of this vessel here before.    Recall Bloxom here and in the graveyard here. More on James A. Hannah and siblings at the end of this post.

This foto of M. R. Kane was taken in Toronto.  Kane appeared in the sixth boro on this blog three years ago in a foto Bowsprite took from her cliff.  Finally . . . a closeup.

Wilf Seymour foto was taken Port Colborne.  Seymour is Port Arthur, TX-built in 1961 and some of you may remember her as M. Moran!  Here are more specs from the McKeil Marine site.

Salvor is Long Island-built former Esther Moran. Salvor, delivered in 1963, was hull # 417.   To add some context here, K-Sea’s Maryland was also built  at the Jakobson yard in Long Island, hull # 406 and delivered a year before Salvor.

There’s not much to see here, but I believe–Isaac asserts– is the Australian-built, Canadian-flagged K-Sea tug William J. Moore, taken here in St. Catherines.  I’ve never heard of this vessel. I quote from Birk and Harold’s site:  “at one point she was dubbed the largest and highest-horepower tug in Australia.”  Who knew?

I located this image in the photo archives of Marietta Manufacturing.  Taken on May 20, 1944, it shows LT-650.  Bloxom was launched a month later, same location, as LT-653.   Two years later, LT-650 was sold to China, and current disposition . . . I’ve no clue how to trace.  Is there an US Army tugs-in-China expert out there?    James A. Hannah was launched a year later–July 1945 as LT-820.   Fleet siblings of James are David E. Hannah and Mary E. Hannah, respectively LT-815 (April 1945) and LT-821.  David E. appears to have been out of service since 2009, somewhere near Chicago.  Birk and Harold have her series of names listed here;  one of those former names was   Kristin Lee Hannah, shown here, although the date of build listed as 1953 is wrong.  Click here for a 2009 article on the demise/auctioning off of Hannah Marine.  I’d love to see a current foto of David E. or know her approximate whereabouts.

Many thanks to Isaac for these fotos.  Also thanks to the Point Pleasant (WV) River Museum pointing me in the direction of the Marietta Manufacturing photo archives.

Spring at South Street Seaport

A year ago I was pessimistic and wrote a bleak post and made this offer.  I have now officially passed some benjamins.   Last Saturday I went back to the South Street Seaport Museum and the new life excited me.  First, there’s this new blog, which I hope continues.  My friend John Watson, volunteer at the museum for decades and frequent contributor on tugster, has been responsible for many of the fotos.

Then, of course, volunteer spirit at SSSM has been irrepressible.  On Saturday February 18, over two dozen volunteers doing winter maintenance worked on or in four of the vessels at least.  A year of idleness has allowed rust to invade everywhere, rust that needs to be busted.

Hammers, chains, power grinders . . . whatever would combine with sweat to prep for rust inhibitor and ultimately new paint was pressed into service. I even set down my camera a few hours and assaulted some areas of rust, just because I enjoyed it.

Leaks were stopped, even if only with temporary fixes for now.

Hatches were sanded and painted.

It’s no simple cliche that rust never sleeps, and big projects like Wavertree require huge infusions of cash and effort to hold off the ravages of time.   But the spirit of volunteerism is also indispensible.This googlemap view shows where all the current museum vessels used to park.  Can you name them all?  Some may still go to better places.

Ambrose and Lettie G. Howard often docked in the open space here;  they are off-site for repair and refurbishing before they return.What really impressed me was inside Schermerhorn Row.  Floor 3 has “Super Models,”  ship replicas from the collection, smartly displayed.

It also has “Bottled Up,”  miniature vessels in glass.  And if you want to see how ships navigate the bottleneck, you can find a display on that too.

Contemporary hand tools are used rust-busting the ships outside, but Floor 4 has “Hand Held Devices,” an installation of scores of historic hand tools, some of

which you might not recognize, but

then there’s an interactive display that can

help with that too.

Floor 5 has “Coffee, Tea, Fish, and the Tattooed Man,” all

tributes to trades that once transacted just outside the building on the docks.

On the way back down, stop again on Floor 3 for a set of Edward Burtynsky‘s stunning fotos of shipbreaking in Bangladesh.

But don’t take my word for any of this. There’s more than I describe here.  And more to come . . . like the re-opening of some form of research library . . . .   Become a member.  Come and visit.  Stop by and bust rust.   The barge name here describes what’s happening at the Museum.

South Street Seaport is once again

alive!  My fotos don’t really do it justice.  Bravo to all who made this happen.

Second Lives 10

Huron Service used to be Eric Candies.  Look at the lines of her hull and house.   Do they

look like these on Na Hoku?  No surprise . . . Na Hoku used to be Chris Candies.  At least a half dozen other ex-Candies boats work as regulars in the sixth boro.

Now look at the barge on Na Hoku‘s hip.  DBL 85 used to be

Freedom.   Stuff doesn’t change that much;  it just gets renamed.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

And this just in from Birk, another fleet sib, Sandmaster, (ex-Ben Candies).  You recently saw this angle wet here on tugster.

Cheers.

Mardi Gras 2

Ooops . . . I used the title “mardi gras” three years ago, so I’ll add “2” today, but it’s Fat Tuesday, and where is this eponym of a city synonymous for festivities of the day?

Why, the sixth boro  . .  that’s where, and headed out as quickly as possible.  But focus on her a moment;  containerships with center houses separated from the engine might be more common in the future.

Here’s how loaded she was when she arrived yesterday, as captured by John Watson.

She departed with possibly fewer containers showing, making this

mardi maigre  . . . skinny tuesday.

Not that only a few containers fit on the vessel.  CSAV Rio de Janiero is post-panamax, i.e., she won’t fit through the current Panama Canal.  To compare her dimensions with a container vessel recently featured here, she has the same beam as APL Indonesia but is 111′ longer and carries 1045 more TEUs.

Right now she’s bearing down on Baltimore, flying into a 25-knot wind.

Here she’s clears Sandy Hook.

Third foto thanks to John Watson.  All others come thanks to Jean Pierre Lailedaigle;  I hope to get Jean Pierre’s fotos more often  . . . .    CSAV Rio de Janiero was launched in 2009 as Medondra.

Unrelated:  Hats off to Rick Old Salt for this post on the crisis PortSide NewYork’s Mary Whalen.    A public meeting to discuss saving her will be held this coming Monday.  See info at the end of Rick’s post.  The folks at PortSideNewYork and Mary Whalen HAVE contributed much to sixth boro cultural programming the past few years, but “homelessness” has reduced their capacity to succeed.  Here’s a post I did on Mary Whalen back in 2008.

Outs and Ins

There are ports and bottlenecks, and the sixth boro is surely a port, not that within it bottlenecks do not exist.  Yesterday afternoon I caught Charles Island headed for sea, and ultimately Ecuador . . . so it’ll pass through that bottleneck called Panama, which has so frequently preoccupied me these days.

Zim Luanda also departed yesterday, bound for Savannah.

Meanwhile, an equal number of vessels enter port, the sixth boro, our enormous honey pot.  Like this one, huge but fairly empty.  This foto of CSAV Rio de Janiero –and the two after that–come compliments of John Watson.   CSAV Rio de Janiero leaves here (probably tomorrow) for the Mediterranean.

Also, new in town and caught by John’s eye, it’s USNS Grasp T-ARS-51.  Possibly in town for maintenance?  And while I’m on the subject of sharp eyes and unusual craft, check out Mage’s report from San Diego, featuring USS Peleliu LHA-5, Navy dolphins, and an unusual vessel that defies my ability to identify it.  Any help?  Ooops . . . here’s Mage’s link.

And finally, arriving this morning, Polish-built Ice Pearl, vintage 1980.

To a casual observer of the harbor, a lot of vessels come in, park, and then leave.  They all do, but some areas of the sixth boro ARE designated anchorages.  This explains vessels like Pacific Quartz (recently arrived here from the Arabian Sea) and Avonden.  Tug Mary Gellatly (1978, ex-Capt. Jentry, North Star, North Service) leaves her dock and heads north.

Thanks to John Watson for the three fotos in the middle;  all others by Will Van Dorp, who’s happy to find others too could while the time away doing the Otis Redding thing on a bay, any bay any day.  Just think, what if Otis had started waterfotoblogging!!!