From the Line Locker 31

See the note at the end of this post.

Traffic in the harbor of NYC, aka the sixth boro, has a lot of unpredictability.  I tend to do a fair amount of categorizing in this blog. 

For example, this was a surprise.  Usually this vessel–Admiral Richard E. Bennis–shuttles the river between Haverstraw and Ossining,

but here it must have had business in the Upper NY Bay. Bennis had a distinguished but tragically short USCG career.

A more typical sixth boro scene is this:  Jonathan C assisting an 8200 teu Maersk ship out to sea.

The only markings on this ferry is the name, Schuyler Meyer.  Its namesake had a storied life, but my favorite stories relate to his 1991 saving and reimagining tugboat Urger.  That story is mentioned in this article from a few years ago.  It’s expanded upon in Riverhorse by William Least-Heat Moon.

In the warm months, lots of small boats take fisherfolk out to hook what’s schooling.

More containers come into the port escorted by James D., a Moran 6000.

Joyce  D. moves a small deck barge to a shoreside project somewhere.

Andrea takes bunker fuel to a recently arrived ship.

Explorer-class CMA CGM Amerigo Vespucci comes in at dawn . . . hazy dawn, with at least four tugboats getting it around Bergen Point.

A warm morning brings an NYPD launch out about

the same time as this small dragger (?) explores the outside of the channel as CSCL Brisbane comes in.

All photos, WVD, of this place that always has a rich variety of traffic…

Now if you have a few free hours, go sit somewhere near the bay, dangle your toes in the water if you like.  Or, read tugster.  Or, a new option has presented itself:  watch this new high-res harbor cam sited near Lehigh Valley Barge 79 aka the Waterfront Museum.  Or  . . . do all three at times you can.  Waterfront Museum does their cam through “stream time live”, where you can also pay attention to shipping at points in the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, and Alaska.

And if you can and if you feel like, send some $$ in the direction of the Waterfront Museum.

I’m preparing a “road fotos” post from last week’s gallivant, but along the way, I walked along a portion of the Lehigh Canal.