Retro Sixth Boro 50 A

June 2012 was pivotal for me. A photo sent along by a friend alerted me to Canal commerce–Canadian corn– entering the US at Oswego, a place I knew something of from my youth.

If that was a spark, then the breeze that fanned it was an invitation to do my trial article for Professional Mariner magazine, which led me to Kingston NY, the mouth of the Rondout, and a project involving use of a half century old tug Cornell to do TOAR signoffs. My most recent article in the magazine came out today and can be seen here.

On that assignment, I was privileged to have a mentor, Brian Gauvin, do the photography.

Other big events for June 2012 included the movement of shuttle Enterprise from JFK airport ,

ultimately to the Intrepid Museum to be

hoisted onto the flight deck as part of the display, now covered.

My daughter went off to Brasil (again) and the Amazon, leading me to go there myself a year later, fearing she’d never return because she loved it so much there.

I’d given her a camera before she went, and was rewarded with some quite interesting photos, like these small motor boats that looked almost like slippers …

with straight shafts coming straight out of air-cooled engines.

During my trip up to the Rondout, I stopped in Newburgh, where replicas of La Niña and Pinta, crafted using traditional techniques on the Una River in Bahia, Brasil, attracted crowds, one of many stops along the great loop route.

Other festivities on the Hudson that summer . . .

included the sails and music associated with the Clearwater Festival, and of course the small boats moving in some of the venues.

Patty Nolan and Augie were the small tugs, and of course the sailboats including Mystic Whaler, Woody Guthrie,

and of course the sloop Clearwater. The Clearwater organization will not be doing a music festival in June 2022. Mystic Whaler is now working in Oxnard CA at the Channel Islands Museum.