Something Different 25

I’m told this vessel from bottom of keel to mast tops measures more than 8 feet.  Can you identify its location?  Here’s some more info:  “Marcus T. Reynolds designed the weathervane atop the center tower, a 400 pound replica of the Half Moon, which is 6 feet, 9 inches long and 8 feet, 10 inches tall, and the largest working weathervane in the US.”

The photo above was take in March, and the one below  . . . in February 2017.

It spins with the winds incessantly atop this building and will never make it to the major river less than a quarter mile beyond.  Know it?  It was built for a railroad and now it’s a university administration building.

Here’s a photo I took in September 2012 from the Hudson side.  The weather vane looks like a mere speck.  It’s less than a mile from the northern end of the Port of Albany oil docks.

And here’s the answer.  The source of the quote is here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who has done many previous Half Moon posts here.

 

Random Tugs 197

Kirby Moran here seems to have some symbiosis going on with the gulls,

and Jonathan C comes in for a closer look.

Zachery Reinauer repositions light under the parking lot forming on the lower deck of the Bayonne Bridge.

Diana B moves another load of product, likely to the creeks.

 

Thomas D. Witte is on the paper recycling run, I think.

Does anyone have a photo of her working up in the canals?

I’ve not yet seen Sapphire Coast light.

And finally, the unique paint scheme on Balico 100 

moved into the Kills by Navigator.

 

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Other People’s Photos 58

With apologies all around . ..  I am tardy in posting some of the photos I enjoy getting from you all readers. Tardiness . . . my only argument is that I am very busy with projects that will come out at some point.

Like this one that Ted M sent in response to my Turmoil post some weeks ago.  Jason Reinauer is towing Turmoil–an older iteration– astern.  I believe I saw Acadian Freedom in Chelsea last year, but don’t have a photo to prove it.  Here’s what I did put up from that reconnoitre.

And thanks to Jed, here’s Pearl Coast, taken recently, and

photo 4 MARCH 2017

Pati R Moran, taken not so recently.

photo date 16 OCT 2008

I once had photos of the green boat below and below, but I think I deleted them out of frustration of NOT being able to determine its history.  It stood here in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for a while, but scuttlebutt is that it has been scrapped. These next four photos come thanks to Paul Strubeck, busy with projects of his own.

Can anyone fill in any of the blanks as related to this green boat?

Paul also made a trip around part of Lake Michigan recently and took these photos in Green Bay–GL Texas and North Dakota—

and below the bow of Stewart J. Cort, my guess is Minnesota and Oklahoma.  The GL tugs are really amazing, with combined thousands of years of work.  As to Cort, she’s back at work, bow that the Great Lakes has reawakened.

 

The Maraki crew is underway again also, in the Bahamas, but before leaving panther land, which generated these and these unusual photos, they got these photos of Rikki S and

Jane.

 

Thanks again to Ted, Jed, Paul, and the Maraki crew for these photos.  how does the French saying . . . (mien vast hard due jambs.   eh?)   Wow, that’s what autocorrect did with my foreign language.  I’ll try again:  Mieux vaut tard que jamais.

Helen L. Tracy

A month or so ago, I talked with Don Lake, who wanted to tell me some family history, which I transcribe here:  “My family has been on tugs for many years, beginning with my grandfather, Captain James Lake, who began his career as a young boy on Rondout Creek, NY, in the late 1800s and later moved down to New York harbor where he acquired his Master Mariner’s license with unlimited tonnage and pilotage.  In the early 1920s he was also instrumental in the formation of Local 333 along with Captain Joe O’Hare, who organized the tug boat workers of NY harbor.

I have relatives who worked for M. J. Tracy for many years, an old line company in NY, specializing in coal delivery to the power generating stations in NY and NJ at Con Edison and PSE & G.

There’s a great history of the company in a back issue of Tug Bitts from the Tug Boat Enthusiasts organization.”  [The organization is now dormant.]

Helen L. Tracy has since ultimately been rechristened Providence, and I posted a photo of the boat here a few months back tied up on the Mississippi just around the bend downstream from New Orleans. That is, it is the same boat unless I’m confused here.    Another question . . . what was the connection between Avondale Towing Line and M. J. Tracy Towing Company?  I could call Don, but I’m putting the question out to blog readers.  Here’s what I learned about the photo from the Portal to Texas History.

At times like this I really wish there was a digital archive of the years of Tug Bitts.  Is there any plan to do this?  I’d be happy to contribute some ducats for this to happen, and I’m sure lots of other folks would too.

Again, many thanks to Don for writing and sending along a photo I need to frame.

Here’s more on Rondout Creek, currently home to Hudson River Maritime Museum and formerly headquarters for Cornell Steamboat Company. And if you haven’t read Thomas Cornell and the Cornell Steamboat Company by Stuart Murray, here’s how you can order this must-read.

Click here for a Tracy boat from the 1952 tug boat race.

Buchanan 1

She was working in the sixth boro long before I lived here, as I understand it, a former Department of Sanitation tug. 

And although my “sampling” by no stretch qualifies as scientific, it seems she’s often towing this way, on gate lines. Here and here are some previous appearances of Buchanan 1 towing on lines.

Of course, this method of towing can be seen often enough, like here, here, and here.

Here’s a close up.

And here, from almost exactly three years ago, is B1′s fleet mate Mister T doing the same westbound of the East River.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

From the Line Locker 23

I’ve mentioned before that this is my miscellaneous category, although “everything” you pull out of your line locker or junk drawer is important for something, “miscellany” sounds dismissive.

Here’s how this post  works:  I’ll put in no comment until the second time through.  Starting with the one below, see the man face mostly down in the small craft sculling with right hand.  See the “cannon” forward, recoil preventer in place?

 

Someone’s altar?

I’d meant to include this a few weeks ago, but forgot.

And here . . . notice a splash of color where often you’d just read a phrase like “safety first” or “no smoking”?  Ice waters below and

lock walls here.

“Yes!!   I beat the ship,” thought he.   But why’s he blowing the horn so much, a**hole!!@#, thought he.

And finally . . . ever stop into a Wawa for coffee?  I’ll get back to that.

Reprise time.  See the gun there?  I paced it out at about nine feet long.  It’s a punt gun, formerly used by “market hunters” in a host of flyways, including locally along Long Island.  I finally visited the New York State Museum in Albany recently, and this is one of the displays.  Much more about punt guns and sneak boxes here.

Nearby in the Museum, here’s a sixth boro diorama.  Meseck boats came up in the previous line locker post also. And here’s the Carroll Towing post I’d wanted to include that 1946 clipping in.

And the painting on the forward side of the superstructure, here’s more on that CSL project to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the creation of an independent Canadian confederation.  And if you ever wonder what the francophone Canadians call the “Canada goose,” it’s a bernache du Canada.

And that SUP racing to cross the river in front  of a ship!  It’s that season, and soon conditions like those that created a near-fatal incident last summer will present themselves again.  Don’t be a statistic!  Here’s James Berman’s article from Workboat magazine with the “wheelhouse perspective.”

And Wawa, I’d read this and let it slip through my fingers.  They are having an ATB unit built.  Nah . . . not to transport coffee, which is sold at their midAtlantic convenience store gas stations. I’m wondering what they’ll call it . . . Wawa One?  Wawa Wanna cuppa?  Watuppa?

 

All photos here by Will Van Dorp, who wishes you a happy and peaceful day..

Random Tugs 196

Name that tugboat?

Or this one?

Or these two?  Answer follows.

Enjoy the rest of these for what they are . . .

Bruce A. McAllister above and Fort McHenry below.

Meredith C. Reinauer on a sunny but

cold morning.   Ready for the answers on the first three?

Well, the first was Kimberly Poling, then

Dace Reinauer, which I first saw looking like this.

And finally Emily Ann, which reminds me of an email I once receivedfrom a reader named R. Pena, who wanted to track down the boat to which he owed his life after his own had sunk between Cuba and Florida.  I embed the link to that post here because it’s a story that bears repetition.

And finally pushing New Hampshire around,

it’s Scott Turecamo.  As a former resident of that state, I thought no one ever pushed New Hampshire around!

All photos this week by Will Van Dorp.

 

People on the Boro 21

If you want to see what I’ve done with this title in the past, click here.

I’ll reveal this set of photos without explaining what’s going on.  Check out the six people in this photo.  They divide into two groups by “uniform,” but how are they related?

 

I might add that these photos are shown in reverse chronological order.

 

See the two men (or one of them at that moment) atop the superstructure in the photo below?

Now we’re moving forward in time again.

 

So the two groups of six total men in the top photo have nothing to do with each other.  The ship’s crew wearing orange were simply photographing the bridge work, demolition at this point.  I can’t say if they communicated, but my guess is that at their closest they were within 50 feet of each other.

 

All photo by Will Van Dorp.

 

Océan Blue 4

When I first spotted this, I didn’t quite know what was happening.

 

Cold as it was, I’d put on enough layers to wait.

I’d call it path creating, not path finding,

Ocean Yvan Desgagnes opening the ice for Le Phil D,  a 1961 Russel Brothers Ltd. vessel.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Riverbanks 9

This is looking down an 18% grade at L’Isle-aux-Coudres.  Note the two ships–Algoma Mariner and an orange-hulled bunker called Federal Tyne–in the narrow channel.  The river is much wider on the far side, but shallower.   A photo of Federal Tyne appears at the end of this post. Tide is out.

Tidal fluctuation here is about nine feet.

See the stack markings on that tug?

It’s Felicia, built 1923 in Sorel, and hasn’t been McAllister since 1965.

I couldn’t get into the shipyard here, but I recognized these two boats . . .

Lampsilis (research) and Theodore (relaxation) from

June 2015 in Trois Rivieres and

Montreal.

 

Meanwhile, farther along the riverbanks but clearly for reflection, these shanties

accommodate folks who fish through holes.

Federal Tyne . . . I caught up with her here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

And L’Isle-aux-Coudres, I have to get back there in summer.