You are currently browsing the monthly archive for February 2023.
It’s a 24/365 proposition for a petroleum hub. Here Potomac stands by while
DoubleSkin 58 lighters Kuwaiti crude from Odori.
Tanker Boxer settles in with assistance from JRT Moran and
Jonathan C Moran to hold her in place while dock lines get set out. More on the line boats doing their part in a future post. I’m intrigued by Boxer as a name for a tanker.
Meaghan Marie assists as Philadelphia eases
DoubleSkin 503 into a west end dock at IMTT.
For a time, I thought Genesis Vigilant and Justine McAllister were drifting
randomly in proximity to each other, but when the Genesis tug moved into the notch to make up to GM 8001, it was clear there were an assistance plan.
All photos, any errors, WVD.
Coincidental, here’s what I found when I looked up the term “odori.”
Here are previous “moving fuel” posts.
Here’s a photo I caught back in December in Boston harbor. That’s Miss Yvette pushing a barge that’s just lifted a “briefly immersed” Massport vessel into the air. It had taken me a while to put together that this is the most recent livery for the previously very red Miss Yvette.
The plume rising from the small tug alongside was very impressive.
From eastriver, here’s an update on MV Merlin Banta, a 1946 vintage Mississippi River line haul boat that has to be one of my all-time favorites. Back in 2014, I did a post about her here.
This sentiment from eastriver: “Hadn’t seen her for a long time. Was worried that some heathen had scrapped her. But here she was yesterday, in the River at Bringer Point – with a new paint job!”
Also from eastriver, a quite chunky small tug pushing this crane barge.
It’ll remain nameless because we just don’t know.
And finally from Tony A, it’s Hercules, a Miami River tugboat in the dredging trade.
Previous P and L tugs like Rikki S have appeared here.
Many thanks to eastriver and Tony A for use of these photos.
See the name on the life ring?
This new arrival steamed along the East River just in time to make the posting deadline. Recognize it?
It’s so newly named the name plate has not yet caught up. Some hints? She was built by American Boiler Works in Erie PA in 1956–and completed at Matton Shipyard on the Hudson– as ST-2118 aka Guilford Courthouse. I believe the veteran tug wore gray until 2001.
So where does Joanne Marie come in?
She’s a new Stasinos boat, and will soon be looking great in their livery, which coincidentally
she seems to already partly wear.
All photos, any errors, WVD. Welcome, Joanne Marie.
For a page on Birk’s database I’d not discovered until today, check out this long list of veteran tugs.
Many thanks to Steve Schwartz for reminding me of still another vastly different type of February sail. In this post, enjoy photos from over a decade of “hard-water” sailing.
Why retro? I took this next batch of photos in 2010 and 2011 in different locations in the Hudson Valley because ice boating conditions don’t form each year.
I learned that ice boating was on back then by word of mouth from these folks . . . you may
recognize some of them: John, Christina, and Bonnie.
Since ice boats are not used each year, they can last a long time . . . some of these over a century old, explaining their vintage appearance.
They sport classy, antique names too.
Ice Queen and these other names here conjure up another time; beyond Ice Queen are Whirlwind and Ariel….
For more posts about February sails in 2021 and 2011, click here,
or here.
Bowsprite’s video here taken during the sail below shows the exhilaration of the moving and then the pain of crash . . .
All photos, WVD, who points you to ice boating–hard water sailing v. soft water sailing– close to the sixth boro here and in other parts of the US here.
But wait, note the * in the title; this is not all retro. Rather, it’s hot off the press . . . or rather super-cold through cyberspace, here from Steve Schwartz, Brian Reid, with credit to the fine folks at the Hudson River Ice Yachting blog, enjoy these very recent photos and the blogpost they come from.
Again, many thanks to Steve for the reminder, the Brian and the others at the Hudson River Ice Yachting Club and blog
For an hour-long video on the sport, click here.
February sail will mean vastly different things to different folks. For some, it’ll mean curling up with an inspiring sailing story like this one from Small Boats Magazine written by a retired USN sailor and partner rowing and sailing the 17′ dory he built down the Mississippi, camping on sand bars along the way.
For others, February sail means celebrating the completion of a 8.75″ model of a 12′ 6″ cat boat, approximately 1/22 scale. Steve Turi writes as follows:
“Finally done! In the early 1990s Lynn and I visited a Beetle Cat boat shop in SE MA. We smelled the cedar sawn for the planks. We saw them steaming oak to bend into ribs. I tried lifting a used boat onto the car roof with no success. I had to settle for promotional literature and plan sketches.
When we got home I used the sketches and cut out a boat-shaped block of balsa on the band saw. I meant to use the block as a form to shape individual ribs and then planks to shape the hull. Far too ambitious I realized and put the project aside……for thirty years.”
Note: Steve’s models have appeared on this blog previously here.
“In 2019 I took that balsa block out and began tinkering. Here I am, finished tinkering. At last! I didn’t intentionally “weather” the model but in the course of building it got beat up enough to make it look like it was sailed long and hard.”
I think it’s a beauty, a work of love.
And an aptly named one also.
Then again, February sail might mean basking in a location where February is warm, like the Bahamas. Don M wrote recently as follows: “I am anchored in Mayaguana as we get pummelled by 20 knots of wind in an anchorage that is open but for a reef keeping most of the sea at bay. I looked up this beautiful boat I saw here and found your posts about the schooner. She is a beautiful boat. Interestingly she has three masts now. Haven’t seen sails up so don’t know if the third mast is functional or just pretty. “
Thanks to Steve and Don for sending along these photos and stories, and to David for the story about his Mississippi adventure.
For everything and more you ever hoped to know about Beetle cats–named for the Beetle family–click here.
For model ships in bottles, click here. For RC models of tugboats click here and .. oops! looks like .. I’ll have to complete that one soon, like for tomorrow.
If it seems I have a dirty lens, I don’t, but this winter has been a season of the good light and my schedule not coinciding. No matter . . . the subject just looks grayer than I’d like much of the time.
When this ULCV arrived the other day with Mary Turecamo as one of the assists, I was reminded of how high the deck is on these ships, and they’re getting ultra-larger and higher. In this post, Mary’s upper house was way above deck level on the tanker.
Will this nose be superseded by Marco‘s style of nose?
Janet D was sharp, but note how hazy the distant shore is.
HMS Liberty is appreciably closer than Barney Turecamo, and therefore is sharper, until
Barney gets closer.
Enjoy these others: Jillian Irene,
Horizon’s Edge (a newby in the boro?) and Regulus,
Schuylkill,
another shot of Liberty,
Crystal Cutler and Patricia E. Poling,
and finally Margaret.
All photos, WVD.
A year ago I posted some photos of Charles Burton in the last days before being painted anew. She still had the Vane Brothers livery although the blue V on the stack had been removed.
This past weekend I caught the same boat, now called Helen, in the distance but from roughly the same angle. This Helen might be a replacement for Helen Laraway, another CMT tugboat that Ive not seen in a while.
She had CMT Y Not 5 on a wire and was heading for Salem NJ, where she currently finds herself.
I’d wager that means she’s loading a half dozen thousand tons of sand.
Helen is a slightly larger boat than Daisy Mae, another CMT boat that has made that sand run as described here.
All photos on a foggy Monday, WVD.
The photo below is from May 2011, a really long time ago, I concluded after looking through the archives. I believe that is the first time Sassafras appeared in tugster, and if she were a land vehicle, I’d want to check then odometer . . .
as I saw her yesterday, appearing also for the first time here . . . George Holland.
Sassafras became George Holland way back in 2019, but since she’s not in the photo archives, I just didn’t get a photo of her until yesterday.
It’s only paint and ink showing ownership, but different paint gives a whole new look,
just a fog versus sunshine does.
Welcome George Holland.
All photos, WVD.
Previous “uncrewed” posts can be found here. This post is used with permission from https://lemarin.ouest-france.fr/ I’ve added that publication to my blogroll. Google helps you translate.
The images below show what that publication calls “le drone Drix,” a drone developed by exail.
This surface drone has been traveling the Bay of Biscay this month studying the interaction between dolphins and their prey. It’s part of what’s called Delmoges, expanded as shown in this link.
Part of what interested me about this article is that the French use the word “drone.” This sent me in search of the word’s derivation and I found it reflects back to WW1, bugs, Dayton OH, and the bee world, as seen here.
Many thanks to the editor of LeMarin Anne-Laure Grosmolard for use of this article. Credit for the photos is Bernard Jégou.
A few photos from the recent week . . . like Cape Fear heading over to Gowanus Bay and
Miss Madeline coming from there, passing the KV buoy and
more . . ..
Notice anything unusual but entirely understandable about the photo immediately below?
The barge is the 80,000 bbl Edwin A. Poling and the
tug is Saint Emilion, usually mated with barge A87.
All photos, WVD, who will be inland and rolling on the rails most of the month of March….
tugster: a waterblog 
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