Pairs in Springtime 9

I don’t care that it’s February, but the number of subsequent days with temperatures over 50 degrees in the sixth bor0 tells me it is spring–or has been.

Notice the difference between Severn and Fort Schuyler?  Here proximity highlights the difference in height of the upper wheelhouse,

but Severn is of the 4200 hp class and fort Schuyler, the 3000.

Ah, the line and boom boats.

Joan is one of the Moran “giraffe” boats and see HR Otter?

She reminds me of the long gone Odin.

 

Here’s a closer-up of the HR Otter, a name that immediately conjures up Kenneth Grahame.

 

Some different pairs are possible here, and they’d be the same.

See the pair there?

a pair of hands.  Is there a word for the painted design centered on the bow of some vessels, like figureheads but not?

Hope they clap for mardi gras!

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Navig8 Grace

Grace is a 113,000 dwt tanker delivered less than a year ago by the Guangzhou Shipyard, north of Hong Kong and China’s third largest city.  

Is this the look of future tankers in the sixth boro?

Jonathan C. assists her from her berth.  I may be mistaken, but 10 years ago, few if any cargo vessels of this size called in the sixth boro.

Ten years ago there were also no 6000 hp assist tugs in the port.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Click here for a Navig8 vessel in our fair port from nine years ago.

Oscars’ Day

It’s a time for the Oscars we know, like W. Oscar Decker, and

meet some we’ve never heard of.  Some have foreign accents like Oskar IMO 7222279.  Click on the photo.

Hans Oskar . .  click on the photo for the rest of these.

Oskar Floa, 

and MSC Oscar.

But my favorite Oscar came from the pen–or voice–of this guy, Oscar Wilde.

Enjoy a few like:  “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”   “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”   “True friends stab you in the front.” and particularly applicable today:  “Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.”

As for the movie awards by the derivative name, I’d have to go back a few years to the first opportunity I would have had to pay attention here.

Two Ships and a Tale 2

I had something different planned for today’s post, but when long-time reader and contributor Michele McMorrow sent along this photo, I was intrigued.  It’s cable layer Ile de Sein, which I’d noticed on AIS off Belmar NJ for some time, but  . .. as they say, I had other fish to fry, or roast.

It turns out Ile de Sein was involved in an interesting if sad project back in 2011.  So a question for the day . . . what’s it doing off New Jersey these days?

Click on the photo below and you’ll see it and lots more on Alain Quevillon’s interesting Flickr page.  I put up the next photos because of a response I got to the posting about CCGS Tracy being for sale.  Ken Deeley wrote that so is CCGS Alexander Henry, and for a price lower than you’d pay for Tracy.  It seems the maritime museum in Kingston, ON included it for a time in their collection but then the museum, in financial distress, thinking to reef it in the deeps of Lake Ontario, learned that it would cost at least $420,000 to do that.    As an alternative, the big red boat will be towed to the Lake Superior port of Thunder Bay ON, near where it was built, to be part of a maritime museum there.  Current, the boat is docked in Picton ON–near Kingston on Lake Ontario–as its fate becomes clear.

Ken also sends along the photos below, taken from the defunct museum’s website, he says.

This outdoor telegraph looks in fine condition when this photo was taken.

Many thanks to Michele, Alain, and Ken for these photos.

The tale is here . . . transporting fuel to northern Quebec by a very long flexible hose.  Go to Leo Ryan’s story on p. 74.  I’ve recently added Maritime Magazine to my blogroll.

Here’s the previous post by this title.

Turning Chembulk New York

This is a maneuver I always enjoy watching.

It’s a case of getting the ship off the dock and rotating it in the desired direction within a confined space, with little room for error.

Not over powering is part of the process, I  gather.

Quick . . . name that tug?

If this is New York, it’s likely one of two.

 

Oops.

As it heads out to sea, the playmaker

leaves the ship and goes off to the next job.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Government Boats 42

Let me start with the oldest ones not yet published.  There’s something timely about Tracy, the vessel below.  I took the photo from mid river between Ogdensburg NY and Prescott ON.  Are you hankering for a project?  Details below.

The next day I got this photo as we entered Oswego.  RV Kaho was christened in this post I did a little over two years before.  Its mission is research on habitat and fish in Lake Ontario.  Here’s an article on that christening that mentions the meaning of the name in Ojibwe.

I shot this last week as it was tied up at the dry dock in Bayonne, and wish I could have gotten closer.  Ferdinand R. Hassler was christened in 2012.  Its namesake is this gentleman, distinguished in two countries.

Line has had light work this season in its role as a 65′ ice breaker.  Here’s an article I did on this 54-year-old vessel a few years back.

I’m not sure where 343 is these days;  Feehan seems to be covering the North River these days.  Click here for photos of Feehan as she transited from Lake Ontario to the sixth boro.

Fire Fighter II passes the hose rack–not water hoses–on the KVK.

And here’s a twofer… a Staten Island ferry and a small USACE survey boat, I believe.

 

So here’s why the top photo of Tracy is timely;  it’s for sale.    The minimum bid is $250,000 Canadian, which is a mere $189,880 US, given today’s exchange rate.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

BOLO Combi Dock 1

This may be the one to look for, the one to satisfy the restless Peking,  transport her back to Germany.

It’s not fake news, but I am speculating.   Combi Dock 1 . . . might be the one, even though it’s currently approaching Singapore.  For more vessels of their fleet, click here.

For some previous heavy lift vessels in the sixth boro and beyond, check out tugster’s  Blue Marlin posts, the Swan posts, Zhen Hua, and the Flinter ones.

If you’re wondering about the title . . . BOLO, see here.

Atlantic Sea

You can call this “three of five,” and enjoy the photos of her predecessors–Star and Sail— here, leaving Sun and Sky yet to come;  the builder is Chinese .  .  .  the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard, an enterprise going back to the 1920s.

 

As Atlantic Sea made the turn into the KVK, i imagined her as an errant passenger vessel;  from this angle, she bears little resemblance to previous generations of container ships.

I wonder if these lights stay on at sea.

 

To see what she looks like below the waterline, click here.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

I’m adding this link after posting because it tells a story I’d never heard:  the sinking of an ACL vessel during the Falklands War here.  It has LOTS of photos. Thanks to RG.  Here are more photos.  And more.

 

Dead Ship

Stuff happens.  Like cars and trucks, ships too sometimes need a tow.  Pretty World needed a tow to the repair facility a few years back.  Here’s Horizon Crusader towed to the scrap yard.  Here’s CV-60 USS Saratoga getting a tow to the same end.

Thorco Hilde found herself at the end of this tow line in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

I caught the tow just as I went for a walk along the water’s edge.

The zoom told me they were surely attached. As of Monday morning, she was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard getting fixed.

The lead tug here is Marjorie B McAllister, featured in many previous posts indexed here.  In this role, she reminds me of some of Farley Mowat’s best, his novels about salvage tugs, a role once played by the tug below, now dissolving in the Arthur Kill, as she looked when I took her photo in August 2011.  In April 1945, the salvage tug below assisted in towing the torpedoed Atlantic States back to safety in Boston for repair and reuse.

Many thanks to Thomas Steinruck for use of the top photo.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

Fishing February

I’ve done lots of fishing posts, mostly about this unlikely estuary, where I’ve never fished.

Here’s Virginia Sue heading past Sakizaya Champion and out

 

the Narrows.  By the way, I’m planning a post on that fort in the distance some day soon.

Dutch Girl is a regular here,

as is the unlikely named but frequently seen Eastern Welder. 

 

Speaking of fishing, here’s my most recent Professional Mariner story on a group of guys who catch-and-release great big white fish.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Here and here are some related posts from six years ago. And why not another about a boat I’ve not noticed yet this year, Miss Callie;  keep in mind, I’ve not been out that much myself.