Kristy Ann: Then and Now

Here’s a shot of a 1962 tug named Kristy Ann Reinauer I took in August 2008 near Howland Hook/Elizabethport

and another in Bayonne in December of that year.

By August 2015, she was waiting to be scrapped.

In late March the 2018 Kristy Ann anchored in the Upper Bay with her barge.

I can’t make out the barge name.

Here’s Kristy Ann light, just leaving the fuel dock.

The new tug is rated at 4560hp and the hull is 110′ x 33.’

Her twin, Josephine, I’ve yet to see close up.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

In Inert, Out Racing

Or, stated less succinctly, March came in like a hibernating turtle, and is ending like a springtime cottontail.

Here’s a March 11 AIS grab.  A circle means a vessel is docked or anchored.  There’s a single vessel underway NE bound on Lake Erie.  It’s a Canadian CG ice breaker.

Below, less than two weeks later, it’s 0700 March 25.  The Soo locks opened on March 25 soon after midnight.  Stewart J Cort  (SJC) was the first vessel through, and it was upbound in ballast.   Here are some tugster posts featuring SJC, a 1000′ ship partly built in the Gulf of Mexico to fit through the St Lawrence Seaway and then added to in Erie PA.

The downbound vessels in Lake Superior over-wintered in Duluth.  The stopped vessels near Whitefish Point in Lake Superior are blocked by an ice “plug” reportedly 20 miles long, 4 miles wide, and 4 feet thick.  The three upbound tugs (aqua green) in Lake Huron are the Van Enkevort ATBs (Joyce and Clyde)  and Samuel de Champlain.

0030 March 28.  The Welland Canal (near Buffalo) has been open for a few days now, and check out all the upbound traffic on Lake Erie.  Ditto, Lake Superior has become quite busy.   The magenta dots are recreational; although some are online, none are moving.

1000 today, March 30.   The upbound (towards the Chicago steel plants) vessel along the east side of the Lake is Stewart J Cort, heading for Burns Harbor IN with her first load of ore.    Of note is the only magenta or “recreational” boat under way.  See it in the middle of Lake Ontario.  This is a vessel to watch in the next months;  it’s Bramble.

Bramble (USCGC WLB-392)  is embarking on a third life.  Launched in Duluth in 1943, she served  in the Atlantic Caribbean, and Pacific, as well as the Great Lakes.  After decommissioning in 2003, she became a museum ship the same year.  In 2018, she was listed with a yacht broker and sold to a private party who is now taking her to Mobile AL, under her own power, to be rehabbed and refitted for a reenactment of her 1957 voyage through the Northwest Passage.  

I took these photos on July 7, 2016, while she was at the Bean Dock in Port Huron MI.

Click here for some predictions for the 2019 Great Lakes season.  Better yet, find some dates that you can witness some of the traffic first hand.

All AIS captures and interpretations and photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

 

Oh! Oleander!

Oleander has been a regular in the sixth boro since 1990.  It’s so regular that I’d not take photos of it, much of the time;  it’s as regular as Staten Island ferries departing on the top and bottom of the hour, as regular as crocuses in spring or NYC Marathons in early November.

Technically, it’s Oleander III, and I’ve been unable to find images of the first two boats by that name, ones that shuttled between Bermuda (BCL expands to Bermuda Container Lines) and Elizabeth NJ.

I took the photo above and the one below on December 16, 2017, feeling sorry for the crewman on that cold day checking and securing the load straps on that trailer.  The photo also shows the limitations of the Oleander III.

On January 02, 2018, I took this photo because of the saltwater ice on the hull.

Yesterday Oleander came through the KVK, and I almost didn’t take photos . . . because it was a Thursday and there would be nothing out of the ordinary about Oleander coming through the KVK.

Except I thought she looked different.  I wondered if my general indifference to something that regular had led me to forget what this the actual vessel looked like.  When I got home, though, I thought I’d look up my earlier photos of the BCL vessel.

Then I realized it was clearly NOT the regular. It’s Oleander IV, technically, and yesterday MAY have been her inaugural visit to the sixth boro.  With a check in the accuracy department of tugster tower, I learned the new vessel only first arrived in Hamilton, Bermuda on March 19, 2019, from Yangzijiang Shipyard in Jingjiang up the Yangtze River from Shanghai, China.   Click on the image below to see the differences in profile as the “old” and “new” pass in Hamilton.  The most significant visible change is an increase in size and “garage space” so that the exposure of cargo as seen in photo #2 above is no longer needed.

 

For a tugster shot of Oleander in 2009, click here.  For more news from Bermuda on Oleander, click here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who learned a lesson about looking but not seeing yesterday.

 

Random Tugs 252

Resolute rotates into the sixth boro now and again;  her truly best and bushiest fendering make her a welcome sight whenever.  I believe this is the last time I saw her here almost two years ago.

Janet D first appeared on this blog here, three years ago.  And here’s something I never realized (or if I did, I’ve forgotten) . . .  she comes out of the same yard the same approximate time as James E. Brown, a slight larger hull but with less horsepower.

Labrador Sea Brooklyn  is a Warren, RI-built tug that I’ve seen wearing four different liveries and initially had no upper wheelhouse. 

Mister T was built at the same yard at roughly the same time as Brooklyn above. Mister T is older by a year and less broad by a foot.  Both 2400hp, a difference is that Brooklyn has pins.

Quenames has worked here for over a decade…

and was more recently joined by Pinuccia.

Unlike Brooklyn above, Elizabeth appears to have carried Weeks ownership and livery for about 35 years now!!  Here’s what her bow looks like out of the water.

All photos and other observations by Will Van Dorp, who has to leave the never-ending story here today and attend to other duties on tugster tower.

 

Diller Island

I walked along the Hudson and past the Vessel the other day because it was flat and scenic.   I also wanted to see what progress was happening at Pier 55, aka on Diller Island.

Beneath, from small boats  .  . . these workers attended to several of the 132 pots that make up the island.

Michael Miller stood by Weeks 526, as

at this moment did  Shawn Miller.

 

Meanwhile, coming upriver was another Weeks crane, the 533,  with Susan Miller on port bow and

Elizabeth supplying power.

 

 

At a certain moment, Shawn departed the 526 and headed over to the Weeks 533

to assist.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who recently saw Weeks and Miller tugs working on 533 here.

 

 

Vessel Commands

Many thanks to you all who reached out about yesterday’s post.  Let me recap what I’ve learned since taking the photos on Sunday and posting them on Monday.  First, the dock has been returned to Pier 66 on the North River, where it seems to have broken loose Friday.  Sunday in the wee hours it was reported–as an unseen but substantial piece of debris– in the wee hours off Caddells on the ebbing KVK, which is even farther west than where I saw it Sunday soon after dawn.  This means it was shuttling with the tides west and east in the KVK.  Since being retrieved by Driftmaster, it was claimed by owners over near Pier 66 and towed back there, reportedly, and not by USACE.

Ironically, I walked past Pier 66 yesterday midmorning, but didn’t notice an absence.  I’ve walked there only twice in the past three months.  Here’s a post I did from one of the walks in late January under the Whatzit title.

There’s that other Vessel along the west side of Midtown, one which seems to be commanding attention and controversy, as here.

I first became aware of the planned structure in April 2017, when I caught and posted this photo of Sarah Ann and barge  under the title Whatzit 36.

Here’s October 2017.

And here’s March 25, 2019.  If we zoom in on the top of the “Vessel,” you’ll see

people who are standing there.

You can offer a new name . . . I’d go with Hudson Yards Carapace, as it reminds me of a metallic carapace of a sea turtle, but I’ll bet you have your own ideas.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who thinks the name “vessel” has to go.

Vessel Not Under Command

This significant piece of floating dock was westbound in the Kills Sunday morning.   It was called in on VHF and via 911.

Even the ducks were distressed.

 

No rudder, no power, not even a captain.

It was a job for Driftmaster,

and she hauled it away.  This reminds me of junk in the harbor waters . . . .

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Really Random Ships 1

Let’s try a variation:  I’ve random tugs and random ships, in which I’ve confined most pics to a single general location and a a single photographer . . . me.  “Really random tugs” combines locations, eras, and photographers.  So why not do the same with ships, although in this case I’ve taken almost all the photos but in a variety of locations and times.

But this first one launches the concept.  What can you surmise or identify about the photo below, not taken by me?  Answer at the end of this post.

Spring brings the Great Lakes back to life. Here is a March 11 AIS capture of traffic on the Lakes.  The “arrows” are US and Canadian CG doing ice ops.  The rivers system around Chicago has some traffic.

The NOAA satellite image below provides the explanation . . .  what looks ice covered IS.  With the Soo scheduled to open on Monday, March 25, icebreaking carries high priority.   Note Green Bay as well.

March 22 marked the opening of the Welland Canal.  The first upbound ship this year was Thunder Bay;  this photo I took in Quebec in October 2017.  The first down bounder through the Welland was Algoma Spirit, but I’ve never gotten a photo of her.

Kaye E. Barker was the first springtime vessel out of Duluth;  I took this photo in the last week of navigation before the Soo closed on January 15.  The Soo is scheduled to open on Monday, March 25.

The KVK is a busy place all year round, although it’s not uniformly busy.  On this day last month, Alpine Maya followed Port Richmond, which  followed Atlantic Sun.

Stolt Integrity here stemmed while waiting to replace the tanker in the distance to leave the berth.

Tankers come in a variety of sizes;  Selasse is a particular small one.

By now, have you figured out that first photo?  I’ll give you a clue:  vessel name is Nggapulu and as of last night she was in BauBau.

Traffic moves at all hours;  night photos turn out quite unsatisfying, but golden hour ones I enjoy.  Can you guess the hull color on this one?

Foreshortening belies the amount of distance actually between the stern of the Evergreen ship and Diane B/John Blanche.

The colorful Stena tankers, bears and all,  seem to appear mostly in winter.

So here you have the answer, sort of.  Indonesia, being a far-flung archipelago supports a ferry system called Pelni, an acronym.  As an example of distances here, find Jakarta lower left.  From there to Makassar roughly in the center is 1000 miles!  Pelni operates about two dozen ferries of various designs.  Ngga Pulu has classic lines and was launched in 2002.

Here’s an English language site about traveling the archipelago.   Restless?  Aye peri!

Many thanks to Hannah Miller for sharing the photo of Ngga Pulu.  I’m not sure how that’s pronounced, but it’s named for a mountain.  Learning about Pelni and seeing this map gives me a whole new appreciation of Dewaruci.

Ports of Western Mexico 2

Here was the first installment of this, and who knows where this will go.

Congratulations to Mage and Linda and anon who recognized the location almost as soon as I put up yesterday’s post.  Les, I don’t have a calendar yet, but I’ve already re-read the Steinbeck and Ricketts log. I don’t know how the restoration of their 1937 boat Western Flyer is going, but here’s a link to follow for updates.    If you have nine and a half minutes, watch this video account of the whats and whys of one of the most influential “science boats” in 20th century western North America.

Let’s kick up from where installment 1 ends . . .  and in Manzanillo, and the 1998 tug Manzanillo.

VB Yucatan is the forward tug here;  maybe someone can identify the others. Boluda has recently begun to provide towing services in the port.

Crossing over into the western inside of Baja, a parade in LaPaz featured very familiar KW trucks like this.

There is fishing, but some fisherman have re-invented themselves in the tourism industry.

 

There are charters and small cruise ships. 

But here’s a gem,

even older than Western Flyer, Ted Geary’s 1924 creation MV Westward and still at work.

Meanwhile, to paraphrase the bards, I’m stuck here in early northern spring with the baja blues again.

Thanks to the mystery mariners for these glimpses of western Mexico.

 

Something Different 40

Let’s leave this as a mystery location for now.

It’s on a list I have for the next year . . .

Here’s the landing craft . . .

Ashore all magnitude of stark beauty awaits.  Follow the cairns to stay on the trail.

 

If you want to guess, some of these photos

were taken from the trail to Steinbeck Canyon.

All photos from anonymous gallivanters for now.  Conjecture is welcome with the huge clue I gave you.

Happy spring.