You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2014.
Vessels are just machines, but I prefer to anthropomorphize them, and thus miss them when they go. On this transition day, I want to acknowledge some vessels that I’d come to enjoy seeing but will now transition away .
Scotty Sky is a Blount design, launched as L. G. Laduca in 1960. I took the photo in January 2011. Click here for a photo of this vessel operating on Lake Erie.
Patrick Sky is also a Blount design, launched as L. G. LaDuca II in 1966. Click here for info on her other names and identities. Both were built for West Shore Fuel of Buffalo, NY, and named for the family of company president, Charles G. Laduca. Click here to see a 150′ version of these Blount boats. Click here to see an interesting but totally unrelated and now scrapped vessel called West Shore . . . fueling a steamer with coal.
Capt. Log is the smallest and newest of the now timed-out single-hulled tankers in the sixth boro. Click here for the recent Professional Mariner article on this vessel.
The three above vessels are still fully functional tonight, phased out notwithstanding. Crow, seen here in a photo from September 2011, was scrapped this year in the same location where
Kristin Poling, another single-hulled tanker seen here in a photo I took in March 2010, was scrapped two years ago. Click here for a number of the posts I did on Kristin.
Out with the old . . . in with the new, mostly because we have no choice, as time sprints on.
All photos here by Will Van dorp.
I borrow this title from an event I’d love to see more photos of, an art trip marking National Maritime Day in May 1987 and reported on here and here. What better way to leap into the future with blasts from the past, borrowing again.
My purpose in this post is to inform about a unique celebratory event at the Pratt campus in Brooklyn that will not be repeated after this week, Wednesday December 31 late into January 1 wee . . . Here are the directions: “There will be two gates open, one on the corner of Dekalb and Hall Street; the other is the main vehicle gate on Grand and Willoughby Aves. Grand Ave does probably not show on maps because there are super blocks on each side of Willoughby. Once on the campus head for the smokestack or follow the noise to the calliope. Closest subway stop is Washington\Clinton on the G train. Get out at the Washington end of the station. One block along Lafayette , turn left around the church. One block down Hall Street you will see Pratt Institute.”
Here and here are previous posts I’ve done on the whistles Conrad Milster has at Pratt.
Here are some of my photos of steam whistles, my tribute to steam . . .
aboard Belle of Louisville,
at the Pageant of Steam,
and all the rest at the Stoom fest near Rotterdam this past May. Like the 1930 steam tug Roek.
Or the 1933 British Navy torpedo recovery vessel Elfin.
Yes, that’s a child playing on the torpedo.
Or the 1893 Pieter Boele . . . a steam tug with a bowsprit.
Or the 1915 Hercules.
Dress warm and come bathe in the sound and steam hooked up by Conrad Milster at Pratt. I’ll see you there.
All Most photos by Will Van Dorp. The photo above is by the inimitable bowsprite, who captured steam and cold water rituals here 4 years ago.
The photo below shows a vessel with a quite rare place of registry . . . Washington DC! How often do you see that on a stern? More on that later. These photos were taken about a week ago, and have since scattered to the seven seas.
Florida has an unusual wheelhouse although it has to have great upward views . . .
I was surprised to learn Balsa 87 was built in 2012, given its design and small size.
Bonny Island . . . offloading
salt? Before Christmas it was in Savannah . . . now it’s–like me–is in the sixth boro.
Bright Hero has since moved from Savannah to New Orleans.
This one’s for bowsprite . . . who sometimes is afflicted with the same type of misperception as I am . . . Not surprisingly, this name has been given to many vessels, but this Ocean Pearl is currently departing Delaware Bay.
UASC Shuaiba has since traversed the Panama Canal!
And that DC-registed container ship . . . it entered Savannah escorted by Florida and
and –15 hours later–departed with Savannah as escort.
Washington Express . . . a great name.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
The first two photos above were taken from Mariner’s Harbor, Staten Island on Dec. 17. The next three were taken inbound Savannah, GA on Dec. 20. The last one is Dec. 21 . . . As of today–Dec. 27–I’m wondering where Maersk Denpasar is . . . All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I didn’t understand the name Bulldog until I put together the fact that the University of Georgia team mascot is Uga, the bulldog. And there have been Ugas going back for a long time. Google it.
Meanwhile, I’m hoping to get from the #4 US port for volume to the #3 port by the end of Sunday. All photos here by Will Van Dorp.
Georgia. Peacemaker. What a name . . .! If only we all agreed on what that would have to be . . . . Happy all-the-holidays in all the languages. I like this one I learned from frogma: mele kalikimaka. Or this one I made up: mare. eek! charisma’s.
Type peacemaker into the blog search window for some info on her Brazilian provenance.
More photos here from the 4th largest seaport in the US. The top photo above–if you didn’t recognize it at first–shows John Parrish, whom I saw in the sixth boro back in May of this year. Type Random Tugs 128 into the search window to see it.
I hope to be back in NYC by December 28. Happy all the holidays until then.
To see the four Savannah posts from almost five years ago, type “savannah” into the search window on left side of the blog page. It hardly seems possible that a half decade has passed since the last time I was here.
Anyhow . . . on the road and enjoying seeing these Sun, Moran, and Crescent tugs . . . and all the rest.
I gave up sending Christmas cards quite a few years ago, but I do put up a holiday post. I look for festive scenes, and this year my pick was not on a creek upriver, or on a barge on the river. This year’s does not involve Rockettes per se . . . . But right here on our very own Richmond Terrace, I did chance upon what might be an end-of-year dance. I think bowsprite started it and she just charmed the red-clad deckhands
into life! Whatever bowsprite did, the deckhands mimicked! I was so spellbound that I put down my camera and just watched, entranced.
Seriously but not too seriously . . be happy with yours and what you have.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who wrote this version of 12 ___ of Christmas a few years ago and made a modest proposal here after an inspirational trip to Gloucester. If you need some late gifts . . . or early ones for any event in 2015, check out bowsprite’s online shop here.
Half Moon . . . is heading from the erstwhile new Netherlands to the old Netherlands soon.
Click here for other Half Moon tugster posts from the past few years.
Here she was with Rana Miller and the Waterpod.
Once settled in in Hoorn, her immediate home waters will be Markermeer and after that IJsselmeer. I took this photo looking out over the Markermeer half a year ago. To the right is Hoorn and to the left is Enkhuisen. For the connection between the small city of Hoorn and the rock at the tip of South America, click here.
Some years ago, bowsprite and I started a blog called Henry’s Obsession . . . about the voyage of the original Half Moon. It’s a blog . . . so it’s in reverse chronological order.
One more photo . . . taken by Bernie Ente some years ago . . shows her deep draft and
used with permission here.
tugster: a waterblog 
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