Dawn 2023

I made my way through all the weird car wrecks on the Belt Parkway this morning to get to my cliff just before sunrise.  A small bulk carrier headed to Gravesend Anchorage while a tanker was anchored farther out. About those wrecks . . .  three multiple-car collisions in same-direction lanes between Woodhaven and the VZ . . .  what is it about impairment and driving that people don’t yet know!!?

Motorboat Yankee headed out to the mothership. 

Miss Emma McCall was just off the USCG quarantine station. 

 

From a different perspective, this is bulk carrier/general cargo vessel Meloi anchored.

When the sun rose, it painted ABC-1 and pilot boat New Jersey in light. 

Philadelphia and 

Josephine waited to rejoin their barges. 

Sunlight began to hit the tops of the cranes on Castlegate, a bulker with Chilean salt. 

All photos, WVD.

Salt 15

Salt 14 dates from November 2017, with previous installments going back to 2009, when bulk carriers could not yet dock at the current location of Atlantic Salt aka “the salt pile”.  As of this time, there’s not much of a pile at the salt pile.

With our mild weather for the early part of this winter, no salt resupply happened until recently.  Strategic Unity brought in a load,

which she discharged using her own buckets. Those are big buckets though.

Then Katerina brought in a load.  Katerina left port last night.  I forget which, but one of these was from Mexico and the other from Egypt . . . imported road safety product.

Meanwhile, Pacific Talent is still here, from India.

She lightered in the anchorage

discharging off both sides

for a few days.

 

before moving to Duraport, where she is currently.

All photos, WVD.

 

Retro Sixth Boro 34 b

This secret lake had great ice for these old boats like Ariel, Ice Queen, Whirlwind, Genevieve, and others.   I was asked not to tell then, and by now I’ve forgotten exactly where this Shangri-la was, but

the ice boating was ideal.  Has anyone heard of Hudson River Valley ice boating happening this year?  The temperature is perfect, but that doesn’t always mean the ice surface is.  I checked here and it doesn’t look favorable.

Evrotas was getting an assist from Amy C McAllister.  Evrotas is currently St. Eustatius-bound from Texas.  Amy C is in the Mariners Harbor yard, and I’ve not seen her in a while.

Amazing, which has to be one of the most amazing extraordinary names for a bulk carrier, was discharging salt.  Currently she’s anchored off Gelendzhik in the Black Sea.  The ice of February 2011, the heat from oil, and the need for salt of the roads interrelate.

Then, as now, the sixth boro was busy with (l to r) dredge New York, GL 501, MSC Yano, Horizon Discovery,  K-Sea’s Maryland, DBL 17. I may have left someone out there.  To choose two of these, the originally Esso Maryland is now Liz Vinik.  Horizon Discovery was scrapped in Brownsville in February 2015.

Ipanema heads out to sea in the rich morning glow.  She may have sailed into her sunset as Norsul Ranaee, unrelated to this photo.

Irida discharges salt.  She appears to have been scrapped.

MOL Partner is inbound on the Con Hook range. That’s a GLDD mechanical dredge at work and (maybe) some Bouchard tugboats in the distant left.  MOL Partner is passing the Aleutians between China and Tacoma.

We leave it here.  All photos from exactly a decade ago, to the month, WVD.

 

Christmas Eve 2020

Having seen the forecast for December 25, I did my watch on Christmas eve.    These are the latest sunrises of the entire cycle . . . photo taken around 0745, and the sky was still reddish and offering very little light.   Fort McHenry and survey boat Christina cross. Yes, Christina . . . namesake you know who. 

Diane B was pushing John Blanche deep in the water with heating fuel.

Fort McHenry passes my station.

Ocean Endeavour was heading in ahead of the strong winds . . . or maybe just to be at the dock for Christmas.   Note the Staten Island ferry off her starboard and a tip of Twin Tube off port stern.

 

By now, it’s a little after 0800.

Twin Tube is the ultimate sixth boro Christmas boat;  there’s no Santa or reindeer, just a competent captain and enough horsepower to get alongside ships.

The reindeer . . . they’re atop the tarped salt pile.   Santa may have abandoned the sleigh, however.

All the above photos were taken before 0900.  The photo below. . .  it’s W. O. Decker, currently getting work done upriver, but ensconced between Wavertree and  work barge Progress a few years ago . .  .

All photos, WVD, who wishes you all Merry Christmas and gifts of life, health, and happiness however you find it.  And one more . .  . bravo to the Normandy crew for the decorations.

Salt 14

As seen from Richmond Terrace, it’s a like a faucet …

Zoomed closer in and seen from this side, there’s a swirl to the flow.  We’ve seen sweet commodities;  now we’re at salty ones.

Guess the world’s leading producers of salt by monetary value before getting the answer, clicking here, where you’ll find that not all salts look alike. Any idea where this salt comes from?  Answer follows.

You can also quantify by tonnage, as seen here. One of my biggest surprises this summer hinged on seeing Manitowoc leaving the Cuyahoga laden with salt mined from beneath Lake Erie! 

Self-unloaders like H. A. Sklenar involve fewer parties and less time in port.

She certainly spent a short time in the sixth boro.

You could almost see her rise from the water.

So . . . the source of this salt is Mexico.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, with cooperation from Brian at Atlantic Salt.

By the way, VSCL expands here, with some photos taken at sea.

 

Salt 13

Here’s the whole series.  The different colors in the pile reflect trace minerals from different global sources.

Anyhow, the latest salt ship came in yesterday at sunrise.  I’d come to my spot early in hopes there would be enough light when TTM Dragon arrived , but I was wrong.

James D. Moran worked the bow as the line boat stood by.

 

Pilot on the bridge wing calls the shots, and

when the signal is given, mooring lines are ferried to

 

shore and looped over the bollard.

When it’s all fast, James D. and Margaret Moran  prepare for the next job.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Congestion 3

Here  are the two previous posts by this title, and more.

Juxtaposed boats invite comparison, allow perception of subtle difference, here between Marion and Doris.

It also gives a sense of the random traffic patterns, here about to pass the impatient Peking are (l to r) Michael Miller, Charles Burton, and way in the distance Robert E. McAllister.

Here , a few seconds later, Charles Burton‘s barge CVA-601 is about to obscure Chandra B–on a ship assist?– and Miriam Moran.

 

Here, from l to r, it’s Sapphire Coast, Charles Burton, Evening Mist, Ellen S. Bouchard, Robert E. McAllister, Scott Turecamo, and Erin McAllister.   

And a quarter hour later and from a different vantage point, it’s Stena Companion, Cielo di Milano, a Miller launch, Maersk Phoenix, and NCS Beijing.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Backing Down Heina

“Backing down” is a term I’ve heard used to describe a ship assist in which the tugboats control the sternwise movement of a vessel away from a dock.  Most of the work here seems to be tide current driven, if I saw it right.

Let’s pick this up at 16:28 hrs.

The evolution waits for incoming traffic, in this case Seoul Express, which I watched getting backed down half a decade ago here and here.  Margaret Moran was involved that time as well.

At 16:49, Seoul Express, accompanied by Kirby Moran, is passing and Margaret throttles up, catching

the attention of a crew member on the superstructure of Seoul Express.

 

 

By 16:51, Heina is well away from the dock, and now

James D.Moran needs to get the stern out, but I’m not well placed to capture that.

Margaret moves around to the bulb.  I love how the load markings mimic the tug profile.

By 16:58, Heina is at least two ship lengths east of the salt dock, and

by 17:07, Heina has begun to rotate counterclockwise in preparation to head under the VZ Bridge out to sea.  By now, she’s south of the Bahamas.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, to whose untrained eyes this all seemed to evolve with masterful control.

As to the meaning of “heina,” try this.

Salt 12

Icy roads are here again.  Well, even if they’re not–not yet– in the downstate area, New Yorkers place a value on being prepared.  You might call that a NY value, but I’m not going any further there.  And more accurately, preparing for the future is a universal value.

And in this season, bulkers arrive with beautiful names like Lake Dahlia and with holds filled with dozens of thousands of tons of “de-icer,” this load being off a desert in Chile.  A previous ship had come from this part of Mexico.

In less than a handful of hours after “all fast,” clamshells start discharging at the rate of 30 tons per scoop.

Two operations happen simultaneously . . . cranes empty the holds and

loaders fill the trucks.

When that ice starts coating the roadways,

you and all the others thousands of drivers have a lot

better chance of staying on track to

your intended destination.  The photo below suggests it’s coming time for another truckster post.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

Many thanks to Brian DeForest of Atlantic Salt.

 

 

Random Tugs 153

No, I haven’t left the sixth boro.  Just yesterday I crossed paths with Allie B here at Atlantic Salt, purveyor of a safety product and patron of the arts.

It took a gray day for me to notice that the house colors along the KVK are reminiscent of those in coastal Canadian maritimes towns.  Allie B has been one of my favorite tugboats since I saw her depart on her epic tow here and here back in 2009.

Then I passed Evelyn Cutler, here with Noelle Cutler at Caddell Drydock.  Those are basic Wavertree masts in the background.  I first saw Evelyn

in red.

Here’s a first good photo of Dylan Cooper, the Reinauer tug that arrived in the sixth boro later last year.

 

I hope to get another of her here in a few years when that bridge is completed.

I believe Eric is the newest of McAllister tugs in the sixth boro.  And yes, here Eric is using her 5000+ hp to assist Atlantic Star, ACL‘s brand spanking new CONRO vessel into port yesterday on her maiden voyage.  I hope to have a post dedicated to Atlantic Star completed for tomorrow.

Eric is a product of the same Rhode Island shipyard that produced Dylan Cooper.  In the distance that’s one of ACL’s previous generation of CONRO vessels, Atlantic Concert.  Here’s an entire post dedicated to Atlantic Concert from 2009.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, with thanks to NY Media boat. 

And yes, I still have more of Barrel’s vintage USACE photos to share.