Fred “Tug44” Wehner Will Be Missed

Fred left us yesterday, and he will be missed.  Click on the photo below to see the source of this photo and read the context. Fred was a hilarious and complicated guy:  born in Germany, raised in Canada and in the north country of New York State.  I first met him on the Hackensack River in Secaucus, over by Snake Rock.  After he retired and moved back to the north county of “Fort Ed’ard,” I would see him each year at the Tugboat Roundup.  In fact, I alway had a berth on his boat at the Roundup.  

From my perspective, Fred’s opus really was his website, the travels of Tug 44, named for his trawler, and accessible by clicking on the image below.    In this screenshot below, you see only a partial list of his categories.  Drill down to each of the categories, each of which contain almost infinite subsets of information.  

Fred contributed to a number of tugster posts here.  I know there are even more, but I’ve not always been consistent with my tags and categories.  When I thought I knew the canal, Fred showed me there was so much more to learn, leading me to return again and again.

My first email contact with Fred came here in 2007, and our exchanges about the Dutch boat Livet led eventually to my meeting him in Secaucus.

In recent years, Fred had turned to wildlife photography and took many stupendously beautiful photos of “critters” in the north country here.  If this is the only link you look at today from Fred’s site, you’ll be a big part of the afternoon admiring these.   

Blogposts I did with photos I took from tug44 over the years are too many to post, but here are a few:

2014 and before I knew I would crew on Urger.

2013 and again

A favorite is this one from 2009, when I first learned firsthand what craziness ensues when you have a potato gun primed with hairspray and an armory of 50-calibre radishes . . . .

Hilarious, complicated, generous . . .  Fred, you leave a hole in the universe.