Other Watersheds 17B

You know from the previous “other watersheds 17” that this is the Amazon, so look at the color of the water.  If you want to read a scholarly article–albeit an old one–check this one out.   If you want to see satellite photos of the mouth, where this silty freshwater mixes with the ocean, click here. Keep in mind that way upriver, freshwater from the Amazon also fails to initially mix with freshwater from its tributary, the Rio Negro.  The non-mixing phenomenon can also be seen where the Ohio and the Mississippi meet, seen here [scroll].

Recall these photos were taken by my daughter, and I’m glad she took photos like this one below.

One town where she stopped was Mazagão Velho Novo. 

I find the lines on these Amazonian boats quite unusual, although I’m thinking they must be of traditional Portuguese design.

My daughter was studying marketing of forest products, including wood.

Small local farmers brought their crops to market by small boat, so she took photos like these to document what appeared on the docks.

I’m not sure what the bundles of sticks in the foreground were, but bananas are familiar, and these nuts are.

The dark fruits are açaí, a palm fruit.

I wish I’d gone along with her on this trip, because these boats are intriguing.

RORO of an open sort traveled the big river.

As you’d expect, larger cargoes moved on barges pushed by tugs like this,

like Milton Cesar, and then cargo ships travel a thousand miles up the river  to Manaus

necessitating big tugs like Merlim and Excalibur, which curiously list

port of registry as Paranaguá, 2000 miles away as the birds fly.

All photos thanks to my daughter.  Since she speaks Portuguese, maybe she’d be interested in returning there as my guide.  This may be the last post for a while.

Random Tugs 377

Other than ice water or a cold shower on a hot day, what’s more refreshing than than looking at some tugboat photos taken at dawn?

Can’t you just feel the cool morning air?  In winter, we might bemoan the temperatures  usually lowest at sunrise;  in high summer, it’s the most peaceful and comfortable time. 

Let’s just follow these two tugboats as they pass . . .

You’ve seen them both before.

 

J. Arnold Witte seems to be keeping very busy since she got here not even a full year ago.

Rhea I. maintained her name although now operated and owned by Centerline, the lion logo line. 

J. Arnold‘s scow is running low in the water.

All photos, WVD, who might be out of touch for a few days and will likely not post this on FB because of the absence of WiFi in the southern wild.  He will, however, be taking lots of photos.

Other Watersheds 17 A

I don’t need to use a paternity test to prove that my daughter is in fact my daughter.  You can tell by looking at her travel resume.  Some years ago i thought I’d lose her to this country because she kept extending her stay.  Granted she was there to work, as I can claim for most of the exotic places I’ve been.  If I told you these were her sleeping quarters, might you guess where this watershed is located,

or even which waterway had her sleeping on a hammock?

Here’s a closer look at the water, and the sights

along it. Guess yet?

And yes, she took photos of commercial traffic. 

The next set I really appreciate although light was fading.  Below, let’s start with a [dark] bow shot, and then a series that you can mosaic in your mind. 

That’s a trailer loaded with propane canisters.  There’s a clue:  Muricituba is a town in the state of Ceará, which happens to be nowhere near this waterway.

That’s a long barge, with quite a few tractor trailers and 

and pieces of construction equipment, all heading upriver and pushed by 

a tugboat [rebocador] named Iguana.

And the watershed is . . .  the Amazon.  All these photos were taken upstream of Macapá, her departure point.   The photos were taken in 2010.

 

Random Tugs 376

I am way out of the boro again and hoping to leave the bayous in the desired fashion.  So yes, the robots are back on the button, sticks, and levers.  The robots seem to love posts like this, random collections of mostly tugboat traffic,

like Ava escorting MSC Christiana out of the port, while

Timothy follows.  MSC Christiana is currently following the West African coastline, east to west.

Durham must have been working all night and was entering the Kills from the Upper Bay.

Vane’s Brooklyn was eastbound and met

Mister T.

Andrea went to rejoin her barge, and

Jordan looks resplendent in her new livery.

We started with Ava, so she makes the last image as well,

standing by as Mustafa Dayi waits, anchored in a location where container ships rarely do.

All photos, WVD, with posting by the tugster tower robotic team!

 

Summer Sail 4B

I’ve compartmentalized my photos from the Pioneer sail the other night, in part because in a short two-hour sail there was so much to see.  For starters, Stephanie Dann had earlier just rushed eastward and came back with Cornucopia Destiny, a dance partner on her starboard side.  I can speculate about this, but I don’t know the details.

As we headed into the Buttermilk, we met Susan Rose AND

Jordan Rose, ex- Evening Breeze and Evening Star, respectively.

This sweet downeaster passed.

I suspect Jordan came along to assist 

Susan into the notch.

Meanwhile, a ways down the piers, Stasinos Jimmy and currently still Evening Tide were rafted up for the moment.

Whatever brought Jordan to the Red Hook piers, by the time we had sailed passed the gantries, she was overtaking us.

On the return, as night began to fall, we met Thomas D. Witte and

then her fleetmate Douglas J.

At this point, my photos were pixelating, but I still managed to get Eastern Dawn, heading back to the “barn” at dusk.

All photos, WVD, who has handed the keys to the tower over to the robots again for a while.

 

Summer Sail 4

Here are previous iterations of this title.   Of course, many options exist for getting onto sixth boro waters.  One delightful way I’m most familiar with is aboard schooner Pioneer;  get tickets here.  Enjoy these photos, mostly taken from the cabin top starboard side and outboard the foremast earlier this week.

Soon after leaving the pier, we passed a 1920s schooner Pilot repurposed as an eatery/drinkery on the Brooklyn side, Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park.  More on Pilot and its owners here.  Click for more on the rest of the fleet and their restaurants.   Pilot came into the sixth boro as Highlander Sea, towed by Jaguar.

Within minutes of leaving the pier, four sails were set and we made our way south;  the engine was shut off as soon as it was no longer needed.

Looking astern toward Red Hook container terminal, I noticed a tugboat following us.

You would not expect an 1885 schooner to have anything other than traditional sails.

Without engine against a flood tide, we rounded Governors Island and got as far south as we could before entering the shallows off Bayonne, and we tacked and started out return to Manhattan.   With the engine silent, it was a magical sail.

 

Although other schooners like Clipper City take passengers to sail the harbor, Pioneer is by far, by very far, the oldest . . .

As we made our way back to the pier, night was falling, and we dropped sail and motored back under the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

All photos, WVD, who invites you to come sailing while the summer is here.

An invitation:  Any group of friends want to all sign up for an evening sail, say in early August while the days are still longer than later?  Either Pioneer grads or tugster folks or Pegasus alums or any other bond?

 

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 15

At least two other dredging projects are happening in the sixth boro simultaneously.  The one in the Buttermilk Channel  came to my attention because of the following two photos taken by Captain Malcolm of  schooner Pioneer.

Neither this tug–Miss Gloria— nor the dredge were ones I was familiar with. Miss Gloria is a 2003 Rodriguez Brothers tug operated by Marquette, and plenty of other Rodriguez boats work the sixth boro, and Marquette boats have been here before as well, mostly involved in dredging projects.

Malcolm’s photos intrigued me enough that I decided to come out for a night sail on Pioneer;  it had been far too long since I last had done that, especially given Pioneer‘s role in my starting this blog to begin with:  I’d been volunteer crew on the schooner before I started the blog, had taken lots of harbor activity photos, and then created this blog as a means to share those photos. 

Here’s a one-photo digression then for a photo I took more than 16 years ago from another vessel of Pioneer–black hull–and Adirondack sailing together in the Upper Bay at dusk. Although both are schooners, over a century of age and shipbuilding materials development and some very different history separate them.

To return from this digression, the following photos I took of the Great Lakes D & D dredging in the Buttermilk, photos i took after Malcolm suggested I put my feet back on Pioneer‘s deck. More photos of that lovely evening to follow.

I also have not shared photos I took of outstanding GLDD equipment I took in March. Click here for a January 2022 preview. 

Miss Gloria was elsewhere, but Smith Predator, who’s been doing dredge spoils runs the past few weeks, was standing by as a dump scow was being filled. I’d seen Smith Predator on AIS, and with a name like that, it had attracted my attention, but to date, I’d not gotten a good clear photo, only very distant ones.

 

Thanks to Captain Malcolm for the first two photos and the suggestion to come sailing;  all others, WVD.

More photos from the Pioneer sail to follow.

Retro Sixth Boro 51 B

Ten years and two days ago, I heard Urger had arrived in town and had rafted up to Pegasus,  so

I had to come down in the late afternoon and shoot this, setting sun just post-Mahattanhenge notwithstanding.   While there, I was asked to take close-up photos two days later of Urger at the Statue.  “Sure,” I said, “as long as you provide a boat I could do that from.” 

Upon a decade’s reflection, I regret we could not have arranged to get photos of Urger with more vessels in the sixth boro, especially with the larger tugboats of NYC 2012, to show difference of scale. You know what they say about hindsight . . . .

When I showed up at Pier 25 on July 14 at 0800, City of Water Day, the light was much more favorable.

Captain Wendy was cleaning up the wheelhouse, and

bosun “mean Mike” was atop the wheelhouse polishing the brass. Happy b’day, Mike!

Once the Atlas Imperial was warmed up and lines cast off, we headed over to the Statue, where

we figured out our position relative to the 111-year-old NYS Canal tugboat, and many photos were taken.

Then the intrepid crew and boat made their way over to Governors Island, where several thousand City of Water Day visitors

toured Urger, a sign I thought that the tug would go on forever, making history tangible, bidding downstaters to come upstate to that waterway that was Urger‘s home turf surf. It was a pleasant thought, and Urger did go on for the next five years.  Now . . . she ‘s in Onondaga County hamlet of Lysander, waiting.  My most recent (May 2022) Urger photos can be seen here.

All photos, WVD, who posted this montage together the next day.

Stay tuned . . . more July 2012 posts coming up soon.

The 2022 City of Water Day–July 16– website can be found here.

Helen’s Last Waltz Redux

If it seems I’m doing a lot of redux, etc. these days, my explanation is that 2012 was a great time for my being out there taking photos.  It was entirely by chance that I walked past this scene on July 17, 2012 before 0900.  I can’t even remember why I was there.  Now it matters no more because as soon as I saw this, scuttlebutt told me what was happening.  A towline on Helen‘s stern after all those years meant

she was moving.  I raced around Peking to get a different perspective.   She was indeed being towed out and made fast to the car float with the green spud.

I saw McAllister Responder there, but I had’t figured out why, yet.

After spinning around (does Decker have z-drives?!!)  [just kidding], deckhand made up head to head with Helen on Decker‘s port side, and

began to move astern.

At the same time, Responder crawled astern on the far side of the opening.  Now it wasn’t until today, studying these photos, that I noticed the crewman about midships on the stern deck.  Would that have been the late Capt. Brian?

But as I said, I hadn’t noticed that person until today. He shows up in another photo. 

Once Decker had Helen out of the “anchorage” enough that Responder could take Helen alongside, Decker threw off her lines and

 Responder took over as dance partner for the the 1900 Helen. Notice the crewman on the stern deck?

Away they went on

might have been Helen‘s last transit of the Buttermilk channel.

All photos, WVD, who last posted photos of Helen here half a year ago.

One of the photos from this July 2022 event was memorialized here, I’m happy to report.

 

Stephen Reinauer

What’s wrong with me that after all these years and thousands of posts I’ve still to do one focused solely on this boat! 

She dates from 1970 and the long-lived Exxon fleet, and her lines are beautiful. So many of the dispersed Exxon fleet still toil on, especially in the sixth boro.

But Stephen . . . I’m not sure what she’s like to work on, but she always a pleasure to see for this bank sitter.

 

Excuse the blurry photo from September 3, 2006 . . . the tugboat race, I recall being astonished by the height from which the deckhand tossed the line, missing the cleat in this case. By the way, dimensions on the boat are 100′ x 31′ ….

Looking at the photos above and below has me wondering whether she’s had her pin arrangement modified in the 16 years between those two photos.

She came into IMTT the other morning to give Ruth M an assist.

 

 

All photos, WVD.