November 17, 2015

On this date six years ago I had the good fortune of spending the whole day on Oneida Lake on Ward’s Island, a repurposed Electric Boat-built 1929 ferry but then idled by a bridge between Manhattan and Ward’s Island.  The self-propelled ship, once a double ended ferry,  was acquired by NYS for the Barge Canal in July 1937 and repurposed as a crane ship in 1939.   That fully-rotating 65′ crane had lift capacity of 10 tons.

Here are some photos I took back in 2015, playing with different settings on a camera that was new at the time.  Our starting point was just east of lock E-23, technically in Brewerton NY. Temperatures went up to the 70s and there was no wind, a perfect late fall day in central NYS.

The mission was to replace the navigation (summer) buoys with spar (winter) buoys, low-profile, placeholders.

The blue-only photo looks west, and the full color one below looks east and shows the actual red or green color of the winter placeholders.

On the mirror like surface of the lake, there was an illusion of flying over the planet.

The summer buoys were plucked out for refurbishing over the winter.  Once a buoy was plucked and raised, Ward’s Island crew detached the anchor chain from the summer buoy, and tied that chain off to a cleat as the crane operator swung the buoy

Like I said earlier, the calm weather on the lake made for a floating-in-space illusion.

 

Some of the buoys are bolted to artificial concrete islands.

The wheelhouse, along with the whole rest of the boat, spent some time in Lyons dry dock from 2016 until she was reefed in salt water in 2018, where she now lies.

All photos on this date in 2015, WVD.