Half a Day Away

It is the Labor Day weekend, and that means that some folks have to be laboring.  Here’s a roster of harbor habitués who will likely NOT be at the race because they will be doing what they’re intended to do:  tug, tow, assist, etc.

Priorities win though.  Hats off to all crews who need to do regular work tomorrow.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

No Name Fleet 3 Follow-up

Back in November 2009, I did this post and I’ll repost two of my fotos from then, showing a 1940 Chris Craft and a 1939 ACF, slightly tweaked here

and here.

Earlier this week, Darrin Rice got these followup pics.

I find these poignant, yet there is some buoyancy in that

it appears this old vessel is being taken apart with care so that

planks and sections of them can be recycled, evoking what’s happening nearby.   You couldn’t do this with old fiberglass.

Many thanks to Darrin Rice for these fotos.

Here’s a site dedicated to antique and classic wooden boats in varying states of repair.

Here are some tugster posts on projects and collections.

KVK Tourism

And I thought I was a solitary tourist wanting to see the sights here?  I always do bring outatowners here to my “offices” for the scenery.

And to think that he too thought a maritime center devoted to contemporary shipping is sorely needed along the busy channels of the sixth boro.

First, Noble Maritime IS open this Saturday and Sunday, Labor Day.  More than half the fotos in this post are from the well-worth-seeing display called “Tides of 100 Years.”    Snug Harbor also caught some attention in the New Yorker  this week.

The KVK always intrigues and amuses.  Like, this tanker . . . made me think Torm is mini?    No way . . . it’s heavily-laden,  it’s rusty,

it’s orange (or would you call that cantaloupe?).

Over beyond it at Bayonne’s dry dock, USNS Dahl is getting a make-over.

Farther west, Maersk Phoenix is transferring a petroleum product and soon to head into the Mediterranean.

John Noble is the godfather of this blog.  And this exhibit helps you form a fuller idea of the artist.

And lest you think, it’s only his fabulous artwork, it’s more . . . like this manual below.  John Noble had a Jeepster, one of my all-time to-be-coveted vehicles!  See the flickr image to the left margin of this blog.   Anyone remember his topless Jeepster around Staten Island?

And here’s a taste of his workshop . . ..

If you have a chance this weekend or soon, come to see this exhibit.  Spend some time in the museum, and then find a place across the road to sit and watch his inspiration.

Tangentially related:  My Jeepster story does NOT involve John Noble or even NY.  I was born in coastal North Carolina, a marshy farming area where deep ditches tend to outline roads.  My slightly older relatives–who will stay unnamed–used to waterski behind the Jeepster.  Run the tow line from the car to the ditch, where the skiier crouches at the ready hoping to begin the ride before a snapping turtle, alligator, or water moccasin happens along.  Once the tow gets going, keep your skis cranked forward in the ditch, not toward the car.  Can be done. Has been.  Wish I had fotos!

If anyone has Noble Jeepster stories, please leave a comment.

Piers

This post is similar to the Loose Ends 1 post I did about the strip of Jersey that faces Manhattan.

Know the place in the foto below?  It’s changing quickly.  I took this foto yesterday, August 27, 2013.  More on this pier later in this post.

Know this place?  I took this foto July 4, 2012; Maurania III and P. O. Edward Byrne were there for the fireworks.      It’s had many lives and is about to change again.    Pier 57 was built around the time I was born after a fire destroyed its predecessor.

Pier 56 . . .  as shown in this foto by Seth Tane in the early 1980s . . . is now habitat, as shown here.

The top foto shows Cromwell Pier, a place I never visted.   Click here for a great set of memories showing folks who did.

If you used to frequent this section of Staten Island, get down there today if you want to see the last of it.

More piers soon.

Other than Seth’s, these fotos  .  . by Will Van Dorp.

Click here and here for other Weeks cranes at work.

For my favorite bowsprite pier post, click here for some eerie pics.

Half a Week Away

Five (can it really have been that long ago!!?)  years ago I did a series of posts counting down the days til the tugboat race:  three  . . . two  . . . one.  In these I speculated which boats might show. My goal had not been accuracy of prediction, and as it turned out, I was mostly wrong.

This post strives to accurately predict which vessels–some of which have appeared in previous races–will not appear.

Crow will be a no-show.

Juliet . . . disengaged.

Scott C and Dorothy Elizabeth . . . nope.

Ross Sea . . . you won’t see it.

Barney Turecamo . . .  are you kidding?

Black Hawk . . . in the shop on the other coast.  This foto and the one above come thanks to Seth Tane.

Bloxom . . .  ?  All she needs is some good slippery bottom paint and a tuneup . . . bet you could buy her cheap and still enter her in the race?  Otherwise, she’s sidelined for now.

Handy Three came through the sixth boro just over a year ago . . . but she has other engagements this weekend.

Dean Reinauer . . . don’t expect this one, foto taken in a snowstorm the likes of which she’ll never see again .  . in Nigeria.

Rosemary McAllister?  She won’t race,  I’d bet on it.

Labrador Sea?  Reconfigured and reassigned.

Baltic . . . somewhere near the Equator.

Crow again . . . no.  Sorry.  Vernon C . . . no longer in the registry.

Urger?  As a workboat, on Labor Day weekend, she’s laboring.

Rosemary . . . I reiterate . .  she ain’t coming.

Shenandoah?  No.  Tug44 . . .  is that really a tugboat?  Would they actually allow her in the race?

To find out who will be there and to learn how you could even watch the race from a non-racing vessel, click here.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, except the two provided by Seth Tane.

Related:  I know from my analytics that this blog has readers in Nigeria.  I’d LOVE to hear from you, specifically related to the tugboats formerly of New York USA and currently working in the  Nigerian marine industries.

Landmarks 4

Here’s a previous post with this title.

For anyone venturing upriver, no landmark is more intriguing than Pollepel Island, 50 miles north of the Battery.  But it’s changing.   Note this difference between these fotos I’ve taken over the past decade.

2003, as seen from the Channel, looking roughly east. Notice the lower wall and the upper wall with four sides, which I’ll call west, north, and east and south sides not visible.

earlier this August 2013 as seen from Patty Nolan from the same approximate location.  Notice that the upper structure NOW has only a west-facing wall.  Unrelated to this landmark, but you can see the photographer in the mirror.

Here’s an August 2013 closer-up, showing the upper west wall only.

Here are the south and east walls as seen from the land looking west in spring 2007.  The east wall is now all gone, as is a large portion of the south wall . . . here bathed in the most sunlight.

Same vantage point… south and east walls, as seen from MetroNorth train later in the spring 2008.

And another view of the west and north walls from fall 2008.

The island is off limits, but you can get a tour via Bannerman Castle Trust, Inc.

I took the tour yesterday.  Here’s the south wall.  Compare what remains of the stairs here with what you could see in the 2007 and 2008 fotos.  Click here for more before/after views.

Closer-up of those stairs.  Notice the metal tubing near lower right side of the foto?

Here’s that metal tubing, remnants of a drawbridge.

More of the south side.  Bannerman saw architectural cannonballs as his logo, and they are everywhere.

Balls and balls and more balls.

Here are closer-ups of the north and west walls.   Scaffolding will soon appear here, as attempts are made to keep these facades from crumbling as well.

More cannonballs.

Reportedly, these “balls” are cementaceous orbs stuck onto surplus bayonets embedded in the brick.  I can’t verify this story, but Bannermans business was Army/Navy surplus, which his father started while the family lived near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Click here to see a six-minute video of their 1927 catalog;  if you generally click on no  links in this blog, this one is worth it.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who plans at least another Bannermans Island psot soon.

Just a Week Away

. . . the premier marine motor sports event in the sixth boro . . .  the 2013 Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition.

I first attended in 2006, and when I look at fotos for the past seven years, I’m amazed by all the changes I see.    I hope you enjoy this album even if I don’t enumerate the vessels that no longer work here or look as they do in these fotos.

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

What surprises will 2013 bring?  Don’t miss it.  See you there  . . . .

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

By the way, here are some of the competitors from 61 years ago . . . .

How to Swim TO a Helicopter

Actually the key is making it possible for the helicopter to find you.  In some cases, assisting the task of arriving at your location makes the difference between life and death;  things don’t always go so well.  On a windy unsettled afternoon last week I happened to be there when

an obsessively circling C-130 over Oswego’s lighthouse demanded attention.  I wish I’d stumbled onto this scene the day they trained search & rescue with a Reaper drone.   Here’s another link about that drill.

As it was, the helicopter here working with the USCG puzzled me, and

having no VHF or binoculars, I couldn’t tell whether the debris on the jetty was just drifted remains of a Lake Ontario shoreline tree, but

someone had certainly swum to proximity of  rescuer.

In the half hour that followed at least a half dozen “winchings up” and “down” before

it returned to USCG Station Oswego.   Click here for their flickr page.   Click here for info on the blue-yellow structure to the lower left, NYS Derrick Boat 8, the last steam-powered barge (with dredge capabilities at one time) on the Erie Canal . . . maybe even in New York .  DB8 is also known as Lance Knapp, named for a salvage diver.

A half year ago I watched a helicopter rescue drill  here.

All fotos taken within an hour by Will Van Dorp.  Here was my previous swimming post.

PS:  Enjoy the additional fotos below from the Port of Oswego, showing schooner OMF Ontario,  LT-5, and fishtug Eleanor D, and Oswego West Pierhead Light.

Pilots 6

Know what’s different about the foto below?  Want to estimate the vintage of the vessel marked PILOT?

Lots of things maybe, but before I answer that question from my POV here, let me recap.  This is my 2191 post in this blog, and usually I don’t count.  I just add fotos and text–usually with coffee each morning–because it’s fun for me and many of you express appreciation.  But sometimes I do look back, as I did this morning.  In these 2190 previous posts, I have included pilots from the following ports/waterways in no particular order:  Cape Town, Rotterdam,  Panama Canal, Rio de Janeiro, San Juan PR, Miami, Key West, Newport RI, Belfast ME, Astoria OR, Port Huron MI, Lewes DE, C & D Canal, greater Jacksonville FL, Hudson River, Savannah, Charleston, Morehead City, Norfolk, and lots around greater NYC/sixth boro/my home for now.  And this leaves a lot more to find.

What’s different about this post is that it shows the pilot from the POV of the vessel being assisted.  What I enjoy about investing desk hours continuing to post when I could be out–??, dancing, flying a kite, studying Portuguese, ……–is that I find out interesting stuff.  Like . . . what do you know about this waterway?

Well, the Sabine-Neches Waterway might not be my first choice for the next place I’d like to plunge into for a swim, but it’s “top-tier” from a economic/strategic POV.

Click here to enjoy more fotos from the SNW.    Here’s some info from the Sabine pilots.

Many thanks for these fotos from a mariner who asks to remain uncredited.

Sabine Pilot is 29 years in service, off the ways at Breaux’s Bay Craft in 1984.

PS:  Please get in touch if you’d like to share fotos of pilot boats serving more ports/waterways.

Unrelated:  Here from 2012 are more fotos of KRI Dewaruci--reported as demasted off Australia recently—in the sixth boro.   Here is a sketch of the replacement vessel, on the drawing boards long before this incident.

Summertime Blues 1

… as in “ain’t no [time] for [them] as well as “ain’t no cure for them.”  Here’s to all ways of getting on the water for fun . . . aka whatever boat’s your float!  So here’s an idea:  send me your best “beat the summertime blues” fotos  and I’ll post them.  I have some from you already.  Fotos should be your own, and I’ll choose ones that are focused, well-composed, . .  and at least 300k.

In not too much time we’ll be dressed for iceboating, cowering in a dark four p.m. corner out of the icy gale rather than basking in seven p. m. sunwarmth, stepping carefully on icy surfaces, dealing with frozen equipment, and  . . .

Here are some recent rec-boats I’ve taken fotos of, starting with a Manhattan  smartboat . . .

a green flash,

a rising Nimble from Michigan,

a Trophy fishing (?) in Susan H‘s net,

a Nordhavn 35 negotiating the last lock before Lake Ontario,

passing the corn barge (two up) and English River,

an elegant wooden Owens  half a century young,

Valentine the Nordic Tug 35 from Morro Bay, CA,

(A parenthetical note:  When I asked the owner if he knew Fred of Tug44, his response was, “Doesn’t everybody?”)

Bernadette a Trumpy “houseboat,”

and of course my conveyance in Guanabara Bay, where technically it is winter, Do Surf, with a tiller to steer her by.

So no matter what your float to beat the summertime blues and no matter where you float on any part of the +70% watery parts of the globe, if you feel like it, send your pics and I’ll choose what to put up, as I have before.

Here and here are some of my previous fotos of folks plying the waters for play.

Unrelated:  Dewaruci–a visitor to the sixth boro in summer 2012–has been dismasted off western Australia.