Pegasus, Lincoln Sea, and DBL 140

As I mentioned before, the other morning brought clear bright light, along with the biting temperatures and wind.

Given windy conditions, assistance was everywhere.

I forgot to check where Lincoln Sea was arriving from, but she was headed for IMTT.  Alongside DBL 140 was Pegasus.

Sharp morning light makes for crisp shadows.

 

 

As Pegasus moves on this part of the assist, Sarah D has completed her task and moves out of the way.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Sarah D 2

Here was the first post of this title.

Yesterday was cold but also windy, and this allowed me to see Sarah D in a role I’ve not posted previously for this boat, although she’s no doubt specialized in the assist role earlier in her career.

Above she approaches the dock on the port side.   The flag direction shows she’s in the lee.  At the hose rack, she drops back and

moves to the starboard side, as Mary Turecamo moves Tennessee into the dock.

 

 

She holds the barge here against the wind and current until all lines are made fast.

This stretch of the KVK was quite busy, so more on the other traffic tomorrow.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who loves this cold clear weather, even though he puts lots of chemical heat packs in his pockets and boots on days like this.

Containerless

Quick post today . . . MSC Tamara left the sixth boro today apparently empty, St. John NB bound.

Jonathan C saw her out, and of course

there might be containers deep in the cells, but she looks empty.  She was launched in 2008..  I’ve seen her before, but I don’t believe she’s ever appeared on the blog.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who wonders what the story is.

What I Saw But Missed 2

Here was the first use of the title.

I took the first four photos here on May 25, 2018 in Washburn WI.  Don’t know where Washburn is?  It’s near the SW end of Lake Superior, just south of Bayfield, and I was searching for fish tugs, i.e., focused.  I recall noticing the masts and that pinky stern over beyond the boat in the foreground.

The mast rake and size was familiar, as were the ratlines.  And the stern lines .  .  . truly unique.

I even walked over there and thought the details of the bow . . .  what I call the head rig . . .  was something I’d seen before.

I recall the words “Thomas Colvin” bubbled to the surface of my brain.  But I saw this before 0800 at the start of a long day that would involved a car trip to Sault Sainte Marie, i.e., lots of miles to gallivant safely while seeing the most interesting sights. That trip ended and led into another in my picaresque journey through this part of my life.

And then yesterday, the social media entity I call “bookface” popped this photo to the surface as having been posted 11 years ago, exactly.  Indeed that was me, slouching way back into a pinky stern, keeping my feet clear of any adjustments the tiller man needed.

And a friend wrote to ask, “and where is that boat these days?”

I was busy at that moment, so only later in the afternoon did I get back to the question.  Since google helps answer a lot of such questions, I consulted it and came up with Rosemary Ruth Sailing Charters out of Washburn WI. At first, I regretted having been through Washburn twice in May.  How could I not have seen it, I wondered.  That led me to go to my photo library . . . thinking I’d seen it and it hadn’t registered.

But there she is, in plain sight, close enough that I could have touched it.  For photos of this delightful small schooner, click here.  For photos of her high and dry from 12 years ago showing the weld signature that I should have checked in Washburn, click here.   For photos of me on the tiller, click here. Then owner Richard Hudson (click on his tag at the top of the post)  put her on the land while he got Issuma, a sturdier schooner. and sailed tens of thousands of miles touching four continents and crossing the Northwest Passage.  For some of those photos, click here.   See Richard’s own blog, as his journey continues, here. For some video, click here.

Thanks to bookface and thanks to Tom Briggs for asking her whereabouts.

Plethora of Cranes

I’d say a “dance of cranes,” but then you’d think of the plumed type.  So plethora will have to stand in.  If you look at any links in this post, check out this one from November 2007, where the gantry cranes appear to tango . . . or duel with booms as blades maybe . .  .

Suddenly I had cranes on my brains, like these shoreside ones around the slight bend from Matthew Tibbetts.

Or these over by USNS Pomeroy, which last had a rehab in February 2014.

Busy discharging salt with clamshells are the shipboard cranes on Sinop, and then

there have recently passed lots of cranes on barges like this one moved by Emily Ann and

whose logo I don’t recognize,

this one pushed westbound by Joyce D. Brown and whose logo I’ve

not noticed before either,

and this Weeks 524 around sunrise moved

by Susan Miller.

And to close this post out, this endangered crane, ice-encased and non-functional on a 6-above days.

All photos taken in 2019 by Will Van Dorp.

More cranes from 2010 here,   and from 2009 here  and here  and here.

That’s enough for now.

 

 

 

 

Government Boats 50

Here are some previous ones.

I caught TS Kennedy anchored in Stapleton yesterday, and

soon thereafter she heaved up anchor and headed for sea . . . for home.

Meanwhile, FS Primauguet, allegedly from Reykjavik, arrived, maybe to check on the current status of this monumental French gift to the people of the US. This is an anti-submarine frigate with a towed array sonar.

She got this far sooner than I had expected.

A few weeks ago, I caught USCGC Seneca (WMEC-906) off Orient Pointe . . .

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who chalks these up to just documentation.

 

NYK Crane

When the almost 20,000 hp team is assembled this way, it means one thing.

Sometimes it’s a big bright bird in flamingo, but other times it might be a dark bird.

Kirby went in first,

followed by Miriam. This one’s a crane, dark like NYK Blue Jay is.

Click here (and scroll) for the anticipated seven other bird names in this series of 14,000 teu ULCVs.

James D. and Joan stayed on this side  .  . .

 

 

I’d love to see NYK Crane side by side with NYK Daedalus, as shown here in 2008.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who forgot about time today.

By my interpretation, this ULCV is propelled by about a 38,000 hp engine. But NYK Eagle has a different and more powerful engine.  I’m not sure my interpretation here is correct.

 

 

 

One Boat Six Decades

Many thanks to Lee Rust for working with the two photos immediately below, showing a boat frequently featured here.

Photo to the left was taken near the elevators in Manitowoc in a slip now filled in and frequently piled high with coal adjacent to Badger‘s slip. In the 1959 photo, the tug was owned by C. Reiss Coal Company. The tug had recently been repainted and repowered (1957).   Badger gets regular maintenance, so a similar treatment of that vessel would not evoke the same emotions.

Technically, the two photos above were 58 years apart, so I added the two below which I took in Lyons NY earlier in 2019; hence, six decades apart.

 

Thanks to Lee and Jeff for providing these photos.

Unrelated:  Check out freighterfreak’s photos from Duluth here.

Anyone have similar juxtapositions of a single vessel or vehicle across time, please send it in.

Ice and Fire 3

If you haven’t heard, a serious fire broke out on St. Clair last Saturday night in Toledo, OH, actually the eastern industrial suburb called Oregon, where a number of lakers are in winter layup at the CSX Torco dock.  Torco expands to (TOledo ORe railroad COmpany).  These photos were taken Monday or Tuesday, to the best of my knowledge, by Corey Hammond, a friend of a friend.

Some basic facts: St. Clair is a 760′ ore boat operating for American Steamship Company, or ASC, launched in Sturgeon Bay WI in 1975.  She transported diverse cargo with a capacity of 44,000 tons.  It appears the fire is now out, but investigation has possibly only just begun.  No one was injured.  Adjacent vessels –see Great Republic below–likely sustained little or no damage.

I never got photos of St. Clair underway, but here is a blogpost by a friend Michigan Exposures. 

To me, besides being tragic, this is a cautionary tale, an illustration of the fire triangle. If you wonder about the value of fire drills, here’s a good reminder of what happens in a fire and what science undergirds fighting one, with analogy provided by Ernest Hemingway. 

I’ll mostly let the photos speak for themselves.

 

 

One node of the fire triangle mentioned above is fuel.  Given the other two nodes–heat and oxygen, materials not commonly thought of as fuel do burn and fast.  Here’s a demo in  residential setting, well worth a view . . . how fast a fire spreads in one minute.

Vessel farthermost ahead is ASC’s John J. Boland, smaller than St. Clair. 

 

It looks gutted and heat deformed.

 

Boatnerd also has reportage on the St Clair fire.

There will be followup stories.

Many thanks again to Corey Hammond and Tim Hetrick for these photos.

Here are previous tugster posts called “ice and fire.”

 

Small Craft 19

Here are previous iterations of this title.

Well, in fresh water like the Upper Saint Lawrence, they look like this, from a photo by Jake Van Reenen.

In salt water, even small outboard work year round.  There are boom boats,

patrol boats,

more boom boats,

clam-digging boats,

small island supply boats,

fishing boats,

police boats,

. . . and 29′ Defiant boats.

Top photo credit to Jake;  all others by Will Van Dorp.