Here was 18.

The following two fotos come thanks to Joseph Graham, a New Yorker who pilots a Kirby boat among various ports in the Gulf and on the Mississippi.   Study the six tugs below  . . . yes six.  Recognize the one on the left?

Sure!  It’s Odin, featured here and here and many more places.  Right now she’s in the vessel equivalent of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, in Kirby’s reserve yard in Houston.    Odin . .  you’re not forgotten!

Notice anything unusual about this staple?  It may be common elsewhere, but I’ve never seen one with a stainless steel insert. This foto comes compliments of Allen Baker;  here’s one of his many fotos on this blog.  And the vessel . . .

is three-year-old Delta Billie, 6800 hp and built in Washington state.

She was docked here on the San Francisco Embarcadero . . . below the Tower there named for “Firebelle  Lil’ Coit.”

And finally, from Lauren Tivey, whose foto of a lion figurehead on a Shanghai barge appeared here a year and a half ago,  a fisherman working on Er Lake in Yunnan . . .  using

these birds we know well in the sixth boro.    I love the paint job on these fishing boats.   Quiz:  Can you name three of the six major rivers that drain Yunnan province?

Poor foto . . . I took on Sunday, but I was fascinated by this KVK cormorant struggling at least two minutes to swallow this sea robin.  Cormorants must have throat tissue like a rubber tire!

The rivers flowing out of Yunnan–which borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam– are the Irrawaddy, Mekong, Salween, Red, Pearl, and Yangtze.

Thanks again to Joseph, Allen, and Lauren for use of these fotos.

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