Bertha’s Present

Sunsets can gild and indemnify the efforts of the day.  A lightship can help safely navigate the impending darkness.

but sunsets can also torment.  Although it’s the last day of September and progress has been very slow in trying to raise the $$ to save Bertha,

there is still time.  Someone must know someone who

can help so that this hull gets completed, surfaces get gets sandblasted and repainted, and all the rest so that

this handiwork will be complemented with

clear views out these lights, and

celebration.

So that these D13000 speak again.

And splash gurgle back out to sea

Anchors lowered

get raised.

Help.

Final foto by Allen Baker.  All others by Will Van Dorp, whose previous Bertha posts were here and here.

Here’s Bertha‘s blog.

Random Ships 27

Here was 26.

China-built 2008 Ranjan and an unidentified UPT tanker.

The only foto NOT in the sixth boro here, anchored in Guanabara Bay it’s Japan-built 1998 Aframax tanker Moscow Kremlin.   Notice the Cristo Redentor statue atop the mountain to the right.

Korea-built 1995 APL Garnet leaving town today. Name the tug off the port bow?  I can’t look at that covering on the Bayonne Bridge and NOT think of a junk sail.

More on that tug later.  Great names here . . . Silver Lining (2003)  and Christina Kirk ( 2010), both Japan-built.

Fiorano (Netherlands 2012)  I wonder what she delivered here . . .

. .  with Petalouda, Japan 2008.

German-built 2007 Norwegian Gem, included here to show scale with respect to a Circle  Line vessel.  I should have looked more closely at the Circle Line.

Amelia Pacific (Japan 2006) and Americas Spirit Korea 2003).   This view of Americas Spirit better shows her size.

Shippan Island, China 2005

OOCL Vancouver, Japan 2006

Najran, Japan 1998, up on plane perhaps?

And last but not least . . .

she with whom I have a long history . . .

Alice Oldendorff, (China 2000) earlier this weekend offloading in Gowanus Bay Brooklyn.   Alice was featured in my first-ever post here.  Click here to see all the others.

So that tug.  I thought it was Ellen . . . but it’s the slightly newer Robert E. McAllister.

Foto of Moscow Kremlin by my daughter, Myriam, whom I thank.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

Related:  One ship currently in the sixth boro that I did not see this weekend was this one by the Kabakovs.

Random Tugs 109 Plus

All fotos here from yesterday . ..

Liberty Service as you may never have seen her.  Here (third foto in this link) she was four years ago.

Ditto Huron Service.  Repainting on Huron seems farther along than that on Liberty.   Here’s how Huron Service looked a year and a half ago.   Get ready for Genesis Energy. 

In the past year, this Pegasus has sprouted an upper wheelhouse;  compare with here.

Welcome to the waters around Houston.  Well . ..  I do mean the 118,000-barrel barge married to Linda Moran.  Uh . . . do tugs and barges ever get divorced?

Trucks on the water pushed by Shawn Miller.

I realized only later that–had my conveyance lingered here–I would have seen Catherine C. Miller push past with FIVE trailers/tractors on a barge.  See her in the distance there beyond the bow of  RTC 83.

Reinauer Twins waits alongside RTC 104 with a faux lighthouse in the background.

Lucy Reinauer–earlier Texaco Diesel Chief built in Oyster Bay NY–is the push behind RTC 83.

DBL 29 pushed (ok, will. . .  open eyes.  thanks for the correction.)  moved alongside by Taurus.  See some of my previous Taurus fotos here and here.

And thanks to wide-eyed bowsprite, a vessel I’ve not seen before pushing stone.  It’s Patricia.  She reminds me of a vessel I spotted along the road a few years back . . . Hoss.

So, this is the “plus” in the title, the group-sourcing request portion of this post:  what company is operating Patricia?

And another question . . . from an eagle-eyed upriver captain.  Notice the weather instruments on this channel marker just off Bannerman’s Island (I am planning to do another post on this unique location north of West Point.) And . . .

here are more weather instruments on this federally-maintained channel marker off the Rondout.  Questions:  who’s responsible for these and is there a website where  the data collected can be monitored?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, except for the last three, which come from bowsprite and Capt. Thalassa.

Speaking of bowsprite, today she’s running Radio Lilac and I’ll be there tending bar.  Here’s something of the inspiration.  Come on by if you have the time.  Teleport in if you’re otherwise out of range.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 10

Welcome to the Inner Harbor of Syracuse.  It used to be said that from the Inner Harbor, you could go anywhere in the world.  Or anyone from “anywhere in the world” could get here.   That’s a bit of an exaggeration;  for example, you couldn’t get here, the Bonneville Salt Flats.  But then again, someone making that claim about the Inner Harbor wouldn’t need to get to this mineral-rich Utah deposit.  Explanation follows.

I ended up in the Inner Harbor in August because I wanted to see the shops

where the Erie Canal tenders had been built.  And I’m still working on that.  But in the process I stumbled upon

an unexpected dredging project, one in the process of rescuing Onondaga Lake–once home of the Solvay Process Company— from status as “off limits” toxicville.

Erie Canal here is today Erie Boulevard.  And the sign above relates the upstate NY location to the Utah western surface deposit.

The cleanup involves Honeywell and Sevenson.

Stop by the visitors center if you are nearby.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Other Peoples Fotos 23

Here was 22.

Fotos today come from David Gardiner and Paul Strubeck.  David took fotos 1 and 3 on September 1 at dawn.  More of David’s beautiful work can be found at DaveGarPhoto.

Paul–who has frequently contributed fotos  on this blog including one of my all-time favorites here–says both fotos here were taken in the Welland Canal.  The one below dates from 1978.

Another of David’s fotos of Discovery Coast.

This one from Paul dates from 1974.

And a half hour before David took the spectacular sunrise fotos in Gowanus Bay on September 1, I took this one of James Turecamo, an indefatigeable 44-year-old.

Many thanks to David and Paul.

GP Update

I took these fotos two and a half years ago . . . February 2011, and posted others I took here.  But last night

I read that the vessel is currently anchored just outside  Murmansk and the crew awaiting

word on which among them will be charged with piracy.

Maybe the crew can seek asylum in  . .  Michigan?

Another unrelated update:  Sailing Cargo . . .  New Yorkers can order Vermont products now to arrive by ship in late October.

For the Birds 7

Credit for this post goes to Rod Clingman, who yesterday sent me info about tree swallow roosting on the Connecticut River.  For info on this amazing gathering, click here and here.

All fotos here are thanks to my daughter, who sent them a month ago already from Guanabara Bay, aka the natural harbor of Rio.    If you’re reading this blog for the first time, here was the last of my posts from Rio de Janeiro aka January river  . . . JR  . . . from last summer.

Enjoy these fotos.   More of them–more tugster like–to come.

By the way, I see gatherings like this from the train over the Meadowlands, but New Jersey Transit never agrees to stop the train and let me go dillydally with my camera.  Imagine their impatience!!

Ah!  shipping.  This foto looks toward the SE.  That the city of Rio beyond the Niteroi Bridge.

This is my daughter’s take on this scene, and of course mine-from last July– was

this . . . two cranes:  Manobrasso 5 in foreground, a 1500-ton sheerlegs (shearleg?) with Manobrasso 4 behind it, a 250-ton self propelled crane.    Here’s a post I did on an even larger crane in JR.

Many thanks to Myriam for all the fotos except my one digression at the end.

Unrelated but direct from the Bronx River where herons and other birds live, a great story about NYC high school students planting oysters.

Government Boats 26

Here were 24 and 25 in this series.  Follow up to 25 is that ex-fireboat Howard W. Fitzpatrick is now reportedly in transition to diveboat on Lake Huron operating out of Southampton, Ontario.

This week in NYC is referred to as UN Week, and I’m guessing this unusual USCG vessel has something to do with that.  Anyone identify what it is?

Another USCG vessel.

Liberty IV

80′ RV Seawolf

48′ R/V Arabella in New Gretna, NJ this past Saturday.  Previous Rutgers-mentioning posts are here and here.

And last but not least . . . Albany’s brand spankin’ new fireboat.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Autumn Sail 10

Here was 9.

It seems that sailing just gets better as summer turns into fall.  Like Pioneer.   Click here for bookings via Water Taxi.

America 2.0

Shearwater

Adirondack

There are also those sailing vessels I’d like to see under sail.  Like Angel’s Share with its twin helms, here

a close-up of the port helm.

Slim Gunboat 6606

with its Marshall Islands flag

Heron . . . which I’ve seen as far south as Puerto Rico.

Clipper City

I’d love to find the time and invitations to sail on all those wind vessels.  But I actually did sail on Pioneer the other day.  Come with the vessel and crew as we leave the pier,

ride the wind in a busy harbor for a few hours, and

then lower sail before returning to the pier.

All fotos taken this week by Will Van Dorp.  Time’s now for me to head out and enjoy more of this autumn air.

Piers 2

Here was the first in this series.  The next five fotos are more of the set from the late 1970s/early 1980s from Seth Tane that I featured in the “fifth dimension” posts earlier this year.

I’d love to find more fotos like this, illustrating a line I’ve heard repeatedly, as variation on  . . . “NYC used to have huge pier fires.”  The smoke here might be wafting over from a NJ pier fires.  I’d also like to hear more about the general perception of piers at that time.

My take is that emphasis in fighting the fires was on containing them, ensuring that they didn’t spread inland.  Piers, aka covered short term warehouses, were transitioning into oblivion or another life as  containerization began to supplant break bulk cargo and moved out of these areas of the sixth boro and airplanes supplanted ocean liners.  Pier maintenance slipped and fires of a range of causes  broke out.

I’ve heard people say . . .  fires burned for weeks.

Demolition reigned.

(I’ve used this foto before.) In some cases . . . in NYC and elsewhere . . . retail areas were built.

The rest of these fotos are from September 2013.  Retail buildings,  parks and residences, businesses sprang up and continue to.  And one of those places, Pier 17 on the East River side of Manhattan is transitioning again.  Bravo to the Demanes for holding out, as Howard Hughes promises to “re-energize” the area.

Pier 57 on the Hudson River side is the venue for a similar makeover.  What was just a plan a few months back is happening now.

Here’s the interior of Pier 57 a few days ago.

You might recall the Nomadic Museum not far from here . . . nine years ago already.

OK, this is a wandering post.  Partly, I wanted to tell a story I heard last week from someone who fought these pier fires thirty years ago.   He related that one aspect of fighting these fires was removing “fuel.”  In some cases what would burn in these long-smoldering blazes was cargo, which would be pushed into the river.  His example was clothing, mens’ dress shirts.  Into the river whole skids of them would go.   And then, as soon as was possible,  many would be fished out . . . because to let them sink would just add to the pollution in the harbor and be wasteful.  I don’t know how common this would be, and I know nothing of the attitude of the merchandise owners or insurers  . . .  The piers were then a very different world.

Thanks to Seth for sharing these fotos.  My apologies if I’ve rendered any story inaccurately.  I’d love to see more of this type of foto and hear more stories.