Really Random Tugs 20

Here’s a range of photos from the present to the unknowable past.  Gage Paul Thornton . . . 1944 equipment working well in adverse 2014 conditions.   Photo by Bjoern Kils of New York Media Boat.

In 2007, McAllister Responder (1967) moved Peking (1911) across the sixth boro for hull inspection.  Photo by Elizabeth Wood.  That’s me standing on port side Peking adjacent to Responder house.

1953 Hobo races in Greenport Harbor in 2007.

A glazed over Gulf Dawn (1966)  inbound from sea passes BlueFin (2010).

Deborah Quinn (1957) awaits in Oyster Bay in 2010.

HP-Otter and HR-Beaver . . .  said to be in C-6 Lock in Fort Edward yesterday.  Photo by tug44 Fred.   New equipment chokes on ancient foe but no doubt will be dried off to run again.  Compare this photo with the fourth one here.

Unidentified tug on Newburgh land’s edge back in 2009.  I’ve been told it’s no longer there.

Unidentified wooden tug possibly succumbing to time in August  2011.

Ditto.  Wish there was a connection with a past here.

Thanks to Bjoern, Elizabeth, and Fred for their photos.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

 

Small Tankships 2

I should rename this post “Time Warp.”  I started it in May 2008 and this morning–in response to some Facebook exchanges–resurrected it.  Maybe I will begin a series called “Time Warp,” though, and any photos no more than 20 years old–to pick an arbitrary boundary and to keep the series from becoming ancient time warp which could be its own thing– . . . any photos you wish to contribute no more than two decades old would be welcome.   Maybe I gave up on this post six years back because I had too many unanswered questions.

Anyhow, to plunge back in . . . Robert Silva and Harold Tartell provided foto of Manhasset from way back, when it sported a flying horse on its stack . . . .  I assumed this vessel was long ago scrapped.  I’m also assuming the location of this shot can be pegged by the two LNG tanks in the background.

 

Here’s another shot of the vessel (1958) (or 1952) in transition, I presume, sent along by Robert Silva.

Here’s a photo I took in 2008:  a different small tankship Mostank (1950) maneuvers close to a tanker.  I don’t know if Galahad is still in service, and

Here in Arthur Kill to resupply, I suppose,  Mostank . . . M O S being Marine Oil Service.  Mostank shows up as registered until at least a year ago.  Emma Miller now serves the sixth boro.

Here’s where the time warp impinges on this post.  Great Gull was around still six or seven or eight years ago.  Time flies.  The Gull has flown south.

Back then, John B. Caddell was still working.  Is she still intact?

Nathan E. Stewart was still in town and here moving Mary A. Whalen to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The unique Odin still worked here, and

Weddell Sea was still known as Scott C.

 

All photos here by will Van Dorp unless otherwise attributed.

 

 

Exotics 2

Here was Exotics, the first of this series.   Exotics are the out-of-the-ordinary vessels, ones not common to these waters.

The first four photos here come thanks to Kenny Montz, who had his reasons for watching DSV Joseph Bisso arrive in the sixth boro of NYC.   The church in the background is St. Patricks, not St. Louis.

I was locked in at work but watching periodically on AIS, wondering whether such a vessel might be here for Tappan Zee Bridge work?

Click here for info on the addition of Joseph to this Bisso fleet in 2008.  Previous Bisso boats on tugster can be seen here and here.   Maria J is in the background along the wall.

Kenny, thanks much for sending these along.  Former names for the boat are Thresher, Rapid River, and originally, Kathy Candies.

This morning through the sprinkles I caught another exotic, Rikki S, a P & L boat.    In the background, it’s Barney Turecamo.

Again, I’m not sure how long these boats will be in local waters,

or what jobs brought them here.

Thanks to Kenny for the first four photos taken yesterday;  the last four by Will Van Dorp this morning.

 

From the Line Locker 18

Here was 17, a reminder of what this series is about:  I’m avoiding the word miscellaneous.

First, from Birk Thomas . . . a closer-up of another Blount this week.  Doesn’t it share some spirit of 1960 Ford blue?

From bowsprit, who wanted to know why a scalloper was headed southbound along Manhattan the other day, the windy day?  Well, I’m resisting the chance to set up an April Fool’s post . . . it was actually in the sixth boro to escape the stormy seas and 30′ PLUS waves out where it normally works.  Endurance is no timid scallop boat . . .

I’ve been eager to share this assemblage of old calendar, baseball card, and mermaid bottle openers from Greenport, a place with a distinctly New England ship-building history feel.   Are any of these anywhere still extant?  Click here for a photo of a City Island, NY yard that once built them.

Anyone know which sixth boro regular is a triple screw?  Answer follows.

Here’s Bayou Dawn getting some new skin a few weeks back.

I’m putting up this post with my apartment windows open . . . spring has vanquished winter . .  so it’s time for a few photos of winter’s recent oppression.   Ever wonder how the loader gets to the bottom of the hold of a bulker?

Odigitria came here with salt a few weeks back and those holds that were then filled with gleaming white minerals might now be filled with dull black stone now.

As summer gets cooer, I’m imagining doing some research on these boats and the larger tenders.  When I see a buoy boat, I imagine an Elco in industrial disguise.

I took these photos less than six weeks ago, and my finger are only just now thawed out.

Thanks to Birk and bowsprit for the first two photos.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

Let me know what you think that triple screw is.

Time to clear the decks for spring!

By the way, did anybody catch a photo of DSV Joseph Bisso coming through the KVK this morning?

Small Craft 9

Here was 8.

Dolphin III, part of whose story is told in a guest post here, is a vessel I haven’t seen in quite some time, although I’ve been looking in the wrong places perhaps.  A few summers back she was doing some dive assistance in the sixth boro.

Below is a photo of Dolphin III from almost three years ago, the summer she was an ubiquitous feature in the watery boro.

I saw In Deep last summer one time, but never got a photo and therefore never looked it up, or maybe I did look it up and found nothing.  I do forget these things.  Anyhow, this time I noticed the word “Halcrow” just below the forward cain window and found this article about a proposal to spend a mere six billion on the Outer Harbor Gateway.

Is this proposal still in discussion?

Here’s a small yacht I have lots of questions about and no answers.  Some of the lines are a bit reminiscent of Florida Coasters.

See the manufacturer name just forward of the piling?  It seems there’s a whole line of “metro–” designed goods.   Note the engine bracket at the stern?

Here’s a virtual twin but with an outboard and a solar panel.

I wonder what residents think of them as abodes.

And here’s the last entry here . . a dredge tender perhaps?  I don’t recall ever having seen it afloat.  It carried no name although the colors of somewhat like those of Sea Wolf.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Botruc Plum Isle

That’s Hobo on the left. And what is that larger vessel?  Although I was told it was a supply vessel, a little hunting turned up another category, a botruc . . . or bo-truc.

Here, according to the owner, the yellow stripe was added to make the vessel–which has spent most of its life serving the island with the DoHS research facility and NOT the island where I used to live— appear less ominous.

I’ve done lots of posts featuring Blount boats. Click here for the list.

Check hull #94.  This is what Plum Isle looked like in 1963.  It introduces a new word . . . botruc, quite the 1960s word. Here’s another.  Click here for a photo of a vessel with similar lines, the Blount-built Sailor, a lube tanker that worked–or still works–on the Delaware.

So . .  does this new word apply to Rosemary as well?  Bopickups?

And Danalith . . . here headed for Cape Verde, is she a shi-cars?

All photos except the archival one by Will Van Dorp.

Stuyvesant

Know what the “D” on the stack is for?

The Dutra Group . .  . a California company with a vessel bearing quite the sixth boro name.

Click here for particulars on the dredger.

Until two years ago, it belonged to Bean.

Surely . ..  she’s an industrial and industrious vessel.

People Movers 3

Behold ex-LST-510, USS Buncombe County, preparing for a routine landing over in Connecticut.

Bowsprite drew it, so it drew me . . . I had to go see again, even though some years ago I’d ridden her.  If you look at her peers launched at JeffBoat in  late 1943 and early 1944, you’ll agree she’s a survivor.

She follows the route that could have been a bridge from Long Island to Rhode Island!

I believe this lighthouse, passed here by MV John H,  is still for sale . . .

x

Click here to see frogman’s encounter with Plum Gut between Orient Point Light and

Plum Island.

Meanwhile . . .  here’s 495  . . . the water way.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Click here for more info on the Cross Sound Ferry, mentioned here on tugster a few months back in connection with a certain 2003 Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.

Finally . ..  unrelated but very important, vote here as often as you can given all your devices and browsers to get funding for USS Slater, about to come downriver for repairs.

 

Really Random Tugs 19

Name this tug headed for sea as the sunset bathes it in ruby light?

I guess this could turn into a precious materials post.  Hobo, this gold tug at the Costello shipyard in Greenport, appears to have been built 61 years ago by Caddell’s Drydock & Repair.  At this dock, it waits under the protection of this exotic creature of the winds if not waters.

This 55-year old  . . . despite the distant port name carried on its escutcheon, is where?  Check the skyline.

See the Chrysler Building off her port side?  Charlsea is currently in Weehawken.

The ever-wandering Maraki  caught up with Kathy M recently in Eleuthera.

And now . . . back to the ruby-red tug of the lead photo . . . . known as it leaves this port . . .

as Roger Williams, a name soon

to change.  Here she passes Castle Hill Light . . . as I said, bound for sea  . . .

Credits here go to Rod Smith for photos of Roger Williams, Maraki for Kathy M, and all others . . . Will Van Dorp, who is expecting to make a comment about the laurels above the Graves of Arthur Kill cover . . . upper left side of this page  . . . soon.

Thanks again, Rod and Maraki.

Bowsprite’s People Movers and More

Care for a shot of Melville?  ““Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries–stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.”

Paraphrase that a bit, take liberties,  and you might come up with:  “When you gallivant, chances are you’ll end up in the water.”  If Melville were around the sixth boro these days, he might add something about the likelihood of seeing folks with digital cameras and–if among those gallivants there’s a bowsprite–inks/charcoal pencils too.

The whale lives

here, 100 miles plus east of the sixth boro’s easternmost reaches and if you go

up these stairs marked by a rendering of the orange ferry John F. Kennedy, you’ll

see this . . . 38 pieces of bowsprit’s art on display.

The exhibit called “Working Girls of New York Harbor” is up now til the end of May.

And if you feel a thirst that water fails to quench, the exhibit is located one floor above stainless steel vats filled with thousands of gallons of fermenting, living brews.

Here’s the front of the exhibit postcard, with evidence that bowsprite has turned her gaze and inked what she saw in increasingly distant waters.

Oh . .  and the opening’s tonight in Greenport.  Gotta run.   More Greenport soon.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.