Notwithstanding all that . .. sometimes the thought that a day is the first day in the rest of one’s life is superlatively vivid. Enjoy my pics and maybe you’ll get this sense also.
Sunday afternoon, Zhen Hua 10 enters the Kills. Does anyone know if “Zhen Hua” means anything? Note Manhattan and the tip of Bayonne to the left, and tug Brooklyn, Robbins Reef Light, and the boro of Brooklyn to the right.
The new cranes arriving and the bridge their squeezing underneath are integrally related parts of the same story, as . . .
… are the cranes and the dredging equipment in the background. Note tug Specialist in the background
Margaret Moran tends the port bow.
Gramma Lee T Moran supplies the brakes and rudder.
The ship completes its journey of thousands of miles. Is it true that Zhen Hua 10 arrived here via Cape of Good Hope?
On the same theme . . here’s a handsome team of tugs, good paint all around. Working on a tandem assignment?
My thought when I read the name on the nearer tug was . . . this is historic . . . Crow‘s last ride; the Bushey tug might also be in the last mile of its thousands and thousands in a half century of work.
She’s being escorted in by Emily Ann . . .
Crow and her sister Cheyenne DO have classic lines!
Machines on shore were already staged . . . .
while not far away a last spring seal lollygags on some warm rusty metal, once also a brand new machine.
And on the other side of Staten Island rubble of a light indispensable a century ago adapts to a new life as a rookery.
Many thanks to NYMedia Boat.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who will be transiting himself soon. Thursday I leave on a grand gallivant, and in early June–if all goes well– I start a new chapter working on Urger, that handsome young centenarian tug you see upper left at the top of the page.
tugster: a waterblog 
6 comments
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May 20, 2014 at 7:57 am
Rick Spilman
I think Zhenhua is a Chinese first name. Not sure if it has any particular meaning.
Zhenhua Heavy Industries is said to be the largest manufacturer of cranes and large steel components in the world. I think they built the container cranes. They have a fleet of 26 ships and appear to lack in imagination when it comes to names. They fabricated the steel for the new portion of the San Francisco Bay bridge which opened in September of last year.
May 20, 2014 at 10:40 am
mageb
This new journey is going to be very exciting.
May 20, 2014 at 10:42 am
walt
Ironically, the steel for the Bayonne Bridge Project is from China too!
May 20, 2014 at 11:47 am
sfdi1947
ZH-10 had to go around, like so many vessels today, she’s too beamy for “Teddy’s Ditch” and the new canal, though I’ve found no dimensions, will not be able to handle much of the “Super Max” and VLCC fleets, according to what I’ve heard.
Who remembers when we built cranes like those here? And when will our government, “grow a pair” and put a tariff that is equal to the foreign governments Labor and Material Subsidies on imported goods.
“A nation who builds nothing, is nothing, and is regarded as less!”
(Winston Churchill, 1932, Speech to Parliament, Objecting to the Labor Party’s attempt to move the Rolls Royce-Merlin Engine Plant to India.); Winston Churchill, “The Gathering Storm: 1929-1938,” 2nd Ed., Mariner Books, London, BC, 1986.
May 20, 2014 at 3:37 pm
tugster
thanks . . . mage, rick, and walt. by the way, shipspotting has the vessel in shanghai –where the cranes were built– on january 28 and in hong kong on february 17. it’s been a long haul, indeed.
May 20, 2014 at 6:25 pm
Allen Baker
Re: CROW
Seeing CROW underway for her last voyage makes me a little sad. It is almost like a funeral procession afloat.
Farewell CROW!