Sixth Boro Random Delights 7

Actually, this is a reprise of a post I did earlier this week . . .  Ferry Coursen carried trucks. 

Mary H pushed a creek-size barge.

Winter fishing continued apace aboard Eastern Welder.

I got a close-up of Mary H.

Brendan Turecamo headed out for an assist.

A slightly different angle on Sorensen Miller shows the yellow as strapping.

More shots of John P. Brown moving railcars over to New Jersey.

A Moose boat on patrol barreled right at me.

Hunting Creek got light at the mooring.

And a USACE boat practiced bathymetry.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  For fotos of Hamilton (ON) harbor delights, click here.  Here’s more info on the 1935 tug he shows.  It’s for sale for less than a loaded Escalade.  Unrelated . . . another blog I read these days is Ohio River blog with good inland rivers fotos here.   And since I’m all over the place today . . .check out this Flickr page by Guillermo Barrios of southern South American tugs and towboats.  And finally  check out these fotos of the old bridge in Bucksport, ME.  I haven’t crossed that bridge–about to be demolished– in over two decades . . . .

Names 16

If I go cold-sixth-boro-turkey and don’t inhale the harbor air or take in the sights steaming in from all corners of the globe, I get jittery, feel constrained.

There’s lots that fires up the imagination for me, but what really stokes my machinery is

the names.  Following is a list of names I’ve seen on on East Coast US AIS the past few days  .  . . some in far-off places but what evocative names!!  I’m NOT talking yachts.  These are container ships, tankers, and bulk carriers.

Red Lily, Angelic Power, Tango Sea, Atlantic Tramp, Silver Soul, Ivory Girl, Pink, Billion Trader, Romantic . . .    Wow!!  There’s nothing routine or lackluster or sinister about those.  Who in a company comes up with these?  I’d love to hear what “off the air” commentary gets expressed about these names.  What is the most memorable vessel name you’ve ever seen?

Do you have any favorites?

Meanwhile . . . 8000 Miles Away 3

The Atlantic is a huge place, and this vessel is currently northbound in that expanse.  And where would that put them?

Off Namibia.

here leaving Cape Town last weekend.  Click here for the map, and here for the kapteines-logg, complete with pics.   See the huge blue wall along the portside of Sørlandet?

It turns out that this 85-year-old ship stopped in the sixth boro in 1981 and 1986.  Click here for a video of the vessel headed for Chicago in 1933!

The “blue wall” is Colossos . . . although I’ve no idea what it’s doing down in Cape Town.

All fotos thanks to Colin Syndercombe.

Does anyone have fotos of Sørlandet in the sixth boro in the 1980s?

Sixth Boro Random Delights 6

Forecast for the morning after the Oscars was for some sun, which I sorely needed.  And who’s out . . . William Oscar aka W. O. Decker, for starters.

CCNI Aquiles and Dallas Express at Global . . . and a Moose boat racing toward us.

I couldn’t quite figure out what Sorensen Miller‘s load was.   In the background, that’s the Newark Bay Bridge, which doesn’t make it on my fotos much.

Virginia Sue was fishing off Clermont.

John P. Brown moved nine (?) railcars from Brooklyn to Jersey.

Clipper Legacy arrived here yesterday.

Shawn Miller‘s pushing trucks around again, this one  all ready for the mid-March holiday.

Taurus light moves past Christine McAllister.

And . . . let’s conclude with another shot of William Oscar, wherever it may be heading.

All fotos this morning before the clouds moved in . . . by Will Van Dorp.

Oscar

Those film awards started in 1929.

William Oscar Decker was launched in 1930.

Every day should be Oscar day and every night . . . Oscar night.  And the winner is  . . . W. O.!  Shouldn’t there be a George Stanley statuette front and center of wheelhouse?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  Foto #1 taken in September 2010 in Troy, and the other two taken in July 2012 in the East River.

WLV-612 Redux

Sometimes serendipity smiles on me.  Like yesterday.  I’d left quite early for an event and saw this red dot on the horizon.  If I hadn’t seen the vessel before, I might have thought it a phantasm.  But four-plus years ago, I’d even gotten a tour of WLV-612 . . . a vessel so exquisite inside now you have to take your shoes off, not for security but just because the floors  . . . are gorgeous.

 

This is the Norton Point Light . . . technically the Coney Island Light at Norton Point.  Vessel in the distance is Rotterdam Express.

Not a rock and a hard place . . . but a bridge and a parachute jump . . . .

As if on someone’s invisible cue, the sun broke through overcast sky for about 30 seconds just

before she passed under the VZ Bridge and

crossed paths with Mediterranean Sea heading out to pick up a barge.

To repeat myself . . . if I hadn’t known Nantucket was spending winter in the sixth boro doing events, I might have questioned my perception or sanity, but

knowing that she’s around still did not diminish

the sheer joy I felt seeing her.  My afternoon definitely picked up after this.   Is that Pati R. Moran?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  And truth be told, seeing this reminded me of a song I loved as a youth growing up in what today would be called an fundamentalist immigrant place.  Tennesee Ernie Ford version and church version.

Going Once . . . Going Twice . . .

Thanks to Mai for catching this auction notice . . . for John B. Caddell . . . to the highest bidder . . .  with a $25,000 minimum. When I saw the notice, I went through my archives of this tanker delivered  just six days after the day of infamy 1941.    JBC enters the Buttermilk,

All these fotos were taken between five and eight years ago.    JBC in Newtown Creek.

JBC in the Arthur Kill passing London Express and MOL Experience.

Newtown Creek again.

High and dry at Caddell’s Dry Dock & Repair and

showing off her wheel.

And finally . ..  thanks to Richard Wonder, one of my favorites . . .  JBC heading into the KVK as seen from the Bayonne Bridge.

The auctioneer clears his (her??) throat, raises the gavel . . ..

Barge Bows

Five years ago I did this post about barge names.  Here are some bows I’ve looked at recently, including this one that speaks to winter in the sixth boro.  When I started looking up vintage, I was surprised.  RTC 61 launched from Rhode Island in Sept. 2010.

RTC 103, same provenance, June 2009.

RTC 502, Texas, March 1976.    Notice the Vane barge with yellow trim between RTC 502 and the red ship?

Coincidentally, Magothy is pushing Doubleskin 502, July 2008 out of Jeffersonville, Indiana.

Doubleskin 31 . ..  Baltimore 1999.

DBL 140 . .  Wisconsin December 1999.

The hull looks different full v. empty.

Scrap scow SMM 203 . . . I have no clue.

All fotos taken in recent weeks by Will Van Dorp.

Junk to Gold

Take some tarnished classics, remnants of what once had to be signed for to get out of the show room and then got driven for tens of thousands of miles for all manner of purposes from commutes to dates to   . . . other assignations.

until it’s just a bucket of bolts.

“I’m gonna junk it,” they say, and it ends up here

or here.  Then it’s sorted and baled

and loaded onto barges for the ship docks.

and loaded into beauties like Crown Mina for

transformation into some form of currency in places like Canakkale, Turkey.  But I’ll need local assistance for fotos from there.

All New York fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s hoping for fotos from Canakkale.

Pilot No. 1

Since noon it’s been raining, but the sunrise brought this sequence:  CSAV Romeral outbound for Baltimore and one of the most beautiful work vessels of the sixth boro inbound.  Also, that’s Vane’s Magothy in the distance.  And for outatowners, way in the distance is Coney Island, home of the mermaid parade on the summer solstice.

Pilot No. 1 New York first splashed into the waters in May 1972.

She’s 180 feet loa,  gorgeous, and “related” to a good dozen varied regulars in the sixth boro.

Here she passes between  European Spirit and Fort Wadsworth light.    Given that New York comes off a Great Lakes shipyard

in the tiny town of Marinette, Wisconsin . . .

she shares that Green Bay/Lake Michigan place of origin with

Vane’s Brandywine and three Staten Island Ferry vessels (Spirit of America, Marchi, Molinari).  See tugster posts features the following Marinette constructions.  Katherine Walker, Apache, Jennifer Miller, and Ellen McAllister.  Here’s Marinette’s current website.   Here’s Strong, another Marinette product I never expect to see, but clearly a forerunner of the Brandywine type tug.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who would love to see contemporary fotos of the vessels built in Wisconsin that made their way  into the navies of Vietnam, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Here’s my post-Sandy New York Pilot No. 1 foto.