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I took all these fotos this morning. First, here’s the ashoremost portion of John B Caddell in the parking lot waterside of Edgewater Drive, roughly across from the Clifton*** Staten Island Railroad stop. After being delivered from RTC Shipbuilding in Camden, NJ in mid-December 1941, she has come to her end. Most of her life she delivered petroleum products, not water. Click here for a foto of her at work in the sixth boro six years ago.
Looking eastward, one might imagine a beautiful day under dramatic clouds, with the current pilot boat New York in the spotlight, in
an otherwise unusually empty Upper Bay.
An especially clean street here belies
debris left strewn on the street showing how high the surge rose and
leaving behind vile stuff like dozens (!) of vials of blood . . . with recognizable names on them!
Alice Austen house, about a mile farther south,
was spared, but just.
Neighbors on lower land began the cleanup.
And the Kills and Upper Bay, devoid of traffic, had a few vessels checking navigation channels.
Has anyone gotten “aftermath” fotos of Binghamton to share? Here, here, and here are my fotos of that vessel post-Irene.
To reiterate, I found the scattered vials with blood along Edgewater Drive very disturbing. I called 311.
From a mariner’s perspective whose truck got flooded while he was working afloat, click hawsepiper here.
For a report on the storm from a high-rise over the East River, click here for Vlad and Johna’s blog.
*** Six months ago another vessel washed up on another beach called Clifton here.
Foto below was taken on this date last year . . . October 30, 2011, the morning after last season’s ONLY significant snowfall in/around the sixth boro.
And a sad series here . . . alongside the red vessels John J. Harvey and lightship Frying Pan . . . Bounty at Pier 66 Manhattan in late June 2009. RIP Bounty and
those lost with her.
As of 0800 today, four cargo vessels cluster in the general vicinity of her sinking. Coincidence?
In the large funnel area off the sixth boro, the seas are unusually empty. Maersk Misaki continues to zigzag (Is that called stemming in this case?) as she has for the past 24 hours.
Around Manhattan, 0800 AIS also shows pilot boats and larger passenger vessels keeping out of harm’s way in the stream.
Ditto Upper Bay and Newark Bay and adjoining waterways. No Staten Island ferries run at this time.
Updates when safely procured. From the news . . . with all their errors, John B. Caddell ashore in one of my “offices.” As I understand it, John B. Caddell has been idle on Staten Island since being sold foreign about two years ago.
Has anyone seen condition of Binghamton? I just got this info/foto from Paul Strubeck. Thanks, Paul.
Also, here’s bowsprite’s drawing of Bounty from three years back.
Foto by Hugh McCallion. Pier 25 Manhatan. Three hours til high tide and not much pier left for Pegasus and Harvey to rise.
Also pre-high tide on Rockaway, and water washing sand over the boardwalk onto Shore Front Parkway, finally justifying the name “sandy.”
Thanks to Hugh, Pam, and Barbara for the fotos.
Prayers for safety for all.
Fotos from Barbara at Rockaway Beach around 100th Street here. Emergency message to folks on the boardwalk: “Go inside, and no surfing.”
From Gary, East River looking toward the mouth of Newtown Creek and
toward the 59th Street Bridge. No movement.
And finally, from L’amica dalla torre di orologio . . . Hudson River . . . looking toward the Statue of Liberty, who probably wishes she could hunker down behind her pedestal. Geometrical structure to the left is the floating Battery Park City Ferry Terminal. I’m not sure what contingencies exist for it during a surge, since it’s basically a hull.
Currently Captain of the Port has order vessels of a certain tonnage to leave the docks, as it’s safer for them to hang in the stream than stay affixed to a rigid structure. So cruising in the North river now as sightseeing vessels,
and the Sandy Hook pilot boats!
That’s the Erie Lackawanna Terminal Tower/Hoboken Terminal in the background.
USCG . . . off to respond to a recreational vessel that’s dragged its mooring?
And finally, back to Rockaway . . as nightfalls.
Many thanks to Barbara, Gary, and L’amica for these fotos. The worst is yet to come, I fear. Stay inside and away from the tongues and talons of water that surge in.
And this just in . . . video from helicopter of USCG rescue of folks from HMS Bounty.
Call this “images taken under the overcast skies prefacing Sandy’s arrival.” The first two here were taken by JED in Norfolk on Friday, Oct 26 while Sandy was off Florida. Remember Norfolk Rebel from the Schooner race here and in the Flickr show along the left margin?? JED got these under leaden light.
Bay Queen . . . . need to find out more about her.
Saturday, October 27 midday. I took this from Penn’s Landing in Philly looking toward Camden. It’s Jupiter. I took previous fotos of Jupiter and other old East Coast tugs here two years ago… including one of Rose, currently waiting to be scrapped! Junk-rigged schooner is the 48′ Summer Wind, recently also in the Great! Chesapeake race. Not to be confused with the 101′ Summerwind.
Also Saturday midday, Sea Pearl at the dock in Camden as seen with Moshulu to my back. As of this writing, Sea Pearl is still at that same dock.
Saturday 1600 hrs . . Camden waterfront looking toward Philly. From l to r, you catch some details of USS New Jersey, Moshulu, and Olympia. Doubleclick to enlarge.
Sunday 1800 hrs. With one exception, there are no cargo vessels in the major port areas of the 6boro. The exception in lower left is CSAV Itajai.
Sunday 2230 hrs. An outbound exodus, although the three blue arrows . . . Aidaluna, Carnival Miracle, and Explorer . . . all cruise ships . . . might experience some seasickness?
Sunday 2300. The tanker Noreaster–an appropriate name for a vessel in this storm–is still zigzagging offshore as of this morning.
If you want real-time views, check this webcam. It’s mounted on Staten Island, southwest portion of the Upper Bay, ie, about a mile north of the VZ Bridge.
And a possible victim of the storm: HMS Bounty, abandoned a hundred miles off Hatteras, as reported here. … Now believed lost with some crew missing. Scroll thru here for some of my fotos of Bounty.
Stay safe. I won’t go down to the water until after it lays down.
Sandy? Of course, if you live inland from a beach, you may be scoured by the stuff.
These signs appeared along the NJ Turnpike today.
I had to return to the sixth boro from a little time spent in Philly. I saw Lois Ann L. Moran (2009, Washburn & Doughty) pass quite close to Penn’s Landing, but she was way up by Fishtown by the time I could grab my camera.
High Roller (1969, Jakobson) passed also, but the light hardly allowed Roller‘s brilliance to show. Scroll through for a foto of High Roller and her siblings with unique names in a post I did here over two years ago. The dome is the Camden aquarium, where some float-through-and-over-anything hippos live.
Two weeks ago, these small craft bobbed resplendent in summery sunny, but now a storm that should be called stormy or squally or even super-tempestuous dulls their colors.
For now, get to high ground; otherwise, batten ’em down. Dog’em. Double’em up.
All fotos today by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s some sixth boro area tempests of past years. As I post this (1700 hrs), Queen Mary 2, Maersk Kentucky, and Yasa Golden Dardanel are among the last large vessels leaving boro6 for the safety of sea.
gCaptain comments on vessel heading counter-to-trend with paramount urgency . . . here.
This looks like but is not a “scull-vaults-palms” foto. guess the location?
Here’s a bit more context. Answer follows.
Different context . . . know this vessel and location? Given the five boros’ idea these days for a BIG WHEEL on the waterfront, these things are recyclable!! You can buy a preowned wheel or even rent one. Who knew!?@!! Also, note the stealthy one hoping to catch a ride on the floating pier?
Vessel is Geo Caspian, and AIS says therefore this must be Cape Town.
Here’s Colin from Cape Town on what she does: “Geo Caspian finds out what rock is on the bottom of the sea in order to have a better idea if the rock is likely to be oil bearing or not. She tows up to 16 wires and microphones and compressed air guns behind the ship and banging off with the guns a bit underwater and collecting the echo reflected from the bottom of the sea. The whole spread of cables astern can be up to 8,000 metres long and to get it to be wide as well they have foils in the water to spread the wires apart. There are also “birds” connected along the tubes which carry all this stuff.The birds are able to move their wings so as to guide the instruments up or down deeper and are controlled from the ship. A lot of this stuff is in plastic flexible tubes which contain light oil of the correct specific gravity to neither sink or pop out on the surface. All this stuff is controlled with large winches in the stern and there are compressors there as well that produce compressed air at a very high pressure which is fed to the compressed air guns to make the noise under water. The ship is guided by satnav as to where they want to survey and the information gathered goes to head office by satellite as well as being stored on tapes to be flown back when the ship enters port.”
Also in Cape Town at the moment is CS Leon Thevenin. She replaces CS Chamarel, which was lost off Namibia in August 2012.
The four Cape Town fotos all come from Colin in Cape Town. Colin and Pamela Syndercombe sent along info and fotos of the move overland of the South African steam tug Alwyn Vintcent; click here for the latest newsletter on this project. The top two I’m using thanks to Maureen, who got the fotos on the scull on the Tiber in Rome. Last spring Maureen sent these intriguing fotos from Venice.
For info on a manufacturer of big wheels . . . a la Staten Island, click here. Click here and scroll all the way down for pics of big wheels in different cities.
All manner of small vessels traverse the waters of the sixth boro. Twin Tube is truly one ageless fixture of the harbor. If I did photoshopping, I’d have the boom dangle something tantalizing over the Statue’s upstretched hand.
Annie G II . . . makes me wonder about Annie G I. Here she
stands by as crew perform some truck task over on the west side of Governor’s Island. I’ve enjoyed watching the derelict buildings on the Island disappear. A largely unseen harbor project farther south (sorry no pics from UNDER the sixth boro) has been the tunneling of a new deeper “water main” (p. 7 ff) between Brooklyn and Staten Island.
A small USCG boat stops for maintenance on the red 32. Unfortunately, I was on a vessel headed away from the buoy, and a few seconds after I took this, one crewman stepped aboard the buoy, on the other side.
A small USACE vessel speeds to the southeast past Robins Reef Light.
John P Brown pushes fewer than a dozen of the mere 1500 cars per year across the harbor, the miniscule fraction of merchandise that travels between NJ and parts of NYC on non-rubber wheels.
A small fishing boat crosses the bay under the cranes on hovering over Bayonne.
St Andrews runs light past some unidentified tugs obscured in the fog. I spent July 4 docked near St Andrews.
New England style fishing boat heads out of the Bronx while Fox Boys (I think) pushes some scrap probably toward Jersey City.
In fading light, HMS Liberty heads for the Kills. I’ve often wonder what the HMS stood for in this case. . . . Is the H his, her, or something else . . . .
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who wonders whether Sandy will be sandy or just windy, snowy, rainy, . . . tricky . . . .
I first used this title over five years ago here . . . back when I still put captions underneath fotos. My preference now is to put captions above because of how you need to scroll down to read a post. Sorry about the confusion.
SeaEden . . . sounds like it’s designed to make crew think conditions are idyllic . . . .
Foto comes from bowsprite . . . Dole Colombia. . . as blotchy yellow as a banana skin.
Adriatic Wave . . . movement of water or shape of energy or a social trend or a hand signal?
Asian Grace . . . as I pursued her a few weeks ago, I wondered what she was . . . Little did I expect a RORO, here assisted into the port of Wilmington by a tug mirage that appears to float of the water with a ball-shaped hull. Tugs might be Sonie and Sally.
Grand Champion . . . makes a recently stripped bicycle racer come to mind.
High Seas . . . looking calm. I’ll be there’s no vessel named “international waters,” although I once saw a rowboat with mare liberum painted on the bow.
I’ve never seen a vessel–not even this one–sans name. Actually this is Atlantic Pearl.
What attracted my attention to Himalaya was the spare prop, but the name memorializes a place as far from sea level as is possible.
Here’s a shot showing Puffin and Huffin together.
Ah . . . hand signal . . . so that’s how one might do the Adriatic Wave?
With the exception of Dole Colombia . . . all fotos by Will Van Dorp.
This is the 98th installment of this title. If you’ve any ideas about what I might do with the 100th, let me know. Of course, I could just let it pass by . . . randomly.
All these boats have some things in common, like . .. they passed through the sixth boro although in all types of weather/light in the past week or so. I’l let you know what I’m thinking at the end of the post.
Miss Yvette, 1975 built in Houma, Louisiana (LA), here attending to Kraken.
Freddie K Miller, 1966 . . . Madisonville LA.
John P Brown 2002 Morgan City LA
Atlantic Salvor 1976 New Orleans.
James Turecamo 1969, Waterford NY.
Pegasus 2006 Tres Palacios TX
Pathfinder 1972 Houma LA
C. Angelo 1999 Lockport LA
Margaret Moran December 1979 Morgan City LA
Miriam Moran November 1979 Morgan City LA
And another thing they all have in common right now is that
they all work in trades other than directly pushing oil.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’d love to hear ideas about the “Random Tugs 100” post.
Unrelated: I read this line yesterday about a withdrawn lawsuit between the NY Port Authority and a Canadian steel company: “The deal means the lawsuit will be dropped and the steel for the [World Trade Center] tower antenna can set sail before Canadian shipping channels freeze over in winter.” Here’s the rest of the article. But it made me wonder . . . by what vessel . . . barge or ship . . . will this steel arrive in the Upper Bay. Anyone know? Here’s info on the fabricator of the antenna.
And a Q . . . has anyone seen evidence of construction of the crane(s) to be involved in the Bayonne Bridge raising? I’ve heard rumors, but not read or heard anything authoritative.
tugster: a waterblog 
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