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I sometimes refer to a golden hour, but recently I heard someone talk about the “blue” hour, when the sun is still or already below the horizon. The light is dramatic in both, or through that whole continuum, as seen here.
Fort McHenry heads east . . .
as does Amy Moran, who technically is moving later than the blue to gold but still enjoys the subdued light.
RTC 80 is pushed westbound by
Dace Reinauer.
Treasure Coast waits with its barge amidst the industrial landscape of IMTT.
Viking (sometimes pronounced “vikin“) moves toward the AK with DBL 134.
Buchanan 12 heads for the fuel dock.
Ruth M. Reinauer takes her barge to the AK as well.
Evelyn Cutler moves her barge to the west, and
fleet mate Kimberly Poling crosses the strait to tie up at Caddells.
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Sheesh . . . someone forgot to sweep all the leftover letters from the garage floor after work.
All photos and lack of sweeping by Will Van Dorp.
Navigator looks great in the yellow trim. For some quantifiable info, she dates from 1981 and reports 1200 hp.
Ellen always strikes me as a brawler, more so than identical YTBs. Maybe it’s the ships’ hull paint she’s rubbed off with the bow rendering. For numbers and facts, she dates from 1967, built in Marinette WI, and currently has z-drives putting out 4000 hp. Click here for photos I took in Marinette this past summer.
Dory looks great, having added an upper wheelhouse. Click here and scroll for photos of Dory over the years, pre-upper wheelhouse. Who operates her now?
Amy Moran and Atlantic Salvor meet under the bridge. As an indication of winds, notice the bridge “curtains” movement. Numbers: AM 1973 and 3000 hp. AS 1976 and 6480. For previous Atlantic Salvor posts, click here.
If Buchanan 5 looks like she has new paint, she does. It used to work around here as Taft Beach. Numbers: 1983 and 2600 hp.
Normandy benefits from a simple and classical paint scheme. 2007 and about 1900 but with triple screw. As I understand it, she used to work in Colombia. Anyone have info on her propulsion plant?
Kimberly Poling got a makeover almost 10 years ago and she is just a beauty. 1994 and 3000 hp.
I’ve long heard Thomas D. Witte once worked the Erie Canal as Valoil, but I’ve never seen photos of her superstructure from that time. Anyone help? 1961 and 1500 hp.
And finally, Matthew Tibbetts once won the most attractive tug at a North River Tugboat Race, and she truly looks good. 1969 and 2000.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
One satisfying thing to me about these retro posts is noticing how much the local fleet has changed. All these photos I took in November 2008. Coral Queen was scrapped at least eight or nine years ago. Maersk Donegal has had two name changes since 2008, now know as Santa Priscila, and no longer calls in the sixth boro.
SPT Guardian, still under the same name, is currently operating out of Lome, Togo. Note the NJ State Police boat alongside. I don’t know if they are still using that boat.
ITB Groton is gone as well.
The huge K-Sea fleet in the boro has dispersed. Solomon Sea is now Emily Ann,
Falcon, I believe, is still Falcon but wears Vane livery,
Davis Sea still has the same name but Kirby colors and operates in the Gulf,
and Aegean Sea carries the same name but works for Burnham Associates in my old stomping grounds north of Boston. NYK Diana has moved to the Pacific to the US West Coast.
This Rosemary McAllister has been replaced by another Rosemary McAllister, and has spent only part of one day in the sixth boro.
Stapleton Service takes the prize for the greatest number of name changes, three since 2008. She’s now Michael Miller.
Buchanan 15 has become Dory, although I’ve not seen her in a while.
Coral Queen‘s smaller fleet mate was John B. Caddell, which became a hurricane Sandy victim: grounded, sheriff auctioned, and scrapped.
I made a jaunt upriver aboard the only and only Half Moon–now sold abroad– in November 2008, and saw
Champion Polar but she’s now
–ice bow and all- dead and likely scrapped, as well as
a more intact Bannerman’s Castle.
All photos by Will Van Dorp in November 2008.
It’s been a few months to do a sixth-boro look around here. Of course it’s never the same. Never. Not even from one day to the next. Let’s start with Weeks tug Elizabeth. If I’m not mistaken, this machine’s carried that name ever since it was launched in 1984.
James William has been a regular in the sixth boro the past five years or so, but she started as a Moran tug in 2007. Note the eerie fog around the base of the Staten Island-side bridge tower.
Choptank [which the pesky auto-correct insists should be spelled Shoptalk] passes in the foreground; Mary H in the distance. Choptank is back from several years in the Caribbean.
Paula Atwell is almost 20 years old, having started out as Crosby Express.
Northstar Integrity . . . quite the mouthful of syllables . . . seemed an unknown to me, until I realized I knew her as Petrel . . .
Not long ago I caught Marjorie at work on the Hudson down bound.
Mary Gellatly emerges from the fog.
Evening Star rests B. No. 250 at anchor with Brooklyn in the background.
Mister T heads for the mooring . . .
All sixth boro photos by Will Van Dorp, who has a backlog of so many collaboration photos that I might be alternating much-appreciated “other peoples photos” posts for a while.
The day brightens a bit, but I stayed between Newburgh–to my back–and Beacon.
Whenever a boat passed, the gulls followed, feasting on the small fish stunned by the props.
The town below gets its name from the mountain, Mount Beacon.
Local squalls obscured the area north of Newburgh-Beacon.
Following Sarah Ann northbound was the indefatigable Buchanan 12.
A few miles upriver Buchanan 12 swapped these scows out for a loaded set, and in a few hours, returned southbound.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Pre-foliage spring is optimal time for seeing the landmarks along the Hudson. This one is near Wilderstein (scroll), but I’d never seen it before.
Esopus Meadows cannot be missed either down bound or up. Get on the wrong side, and you’ll regret ever being here. Click here for tugster posts showing the light in all the seasons.
I wonder what the crew on the anchored bulker thought of the Beaux-Arts structure on the bank. I wonder what some of foreign crews coming up river think of the river as a whole?
Comet heads northbound with segments of dismantled TZ Bridge. The first specific example I’ve heard of reuse is here, in Mount Vernon.
At first glance, I thought this was odd snow accumulation on the banks,
closer up . . . an auto auction lot.
Tilcon operates one of the most conspicuous quarries along the river, seen here last week from the water and here
from the train. Quarrying has been a major activity along the river. And here finally I see the derivation of “trap rock,” which this crushed aggregate is sometimes called: trap, as in stairs, for all those Dutch speakers out there.
I’ve been curious about this large crane near Chelsea NY since last summer. Now my best guess is that it’s related to NYC Water Tunnel No. 3. Any DEP readers help out?
Just below the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, we meet the Buchanan 12 and her herd of barges, heading up to Tilcon for trap rock. For many more views of Buchanan 12, click here. We met her just as she left the sublime highlands.
Of all the many posts I’ve mentioned Bannerman’s in, here and here are my favorites. For close-ups, click here. In this era of gun questions, here’s an article with specifics of his unregulated trade.
Breakneck Ridge looked particularly ominous with afternoon sun cast shadows. It appears MTA trains will stop there if you have a ticket.
And movement on a ridge in Little Stony Point . . . a photographer. Like me. And the “point” . . . it was once an island.
South of here, more beautiful scenery awaited, but I got distracted and took no more photos in the fading light of late afternoon.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
On a day in the sixth boro, you’ll see a lot of working boats that’ve been around a while. These are randomly chosen. Lynx dates from 1967.
Stephen Dann from 1999.
Weddell Sea from 2007 and Lincoln Sea, 2000.
Joyce D. Brown, 2002.
Buchanan 1 . . . is she aka Buchanan 10? If so, 1967.
Marty C, 1981.
Little C, 1988. She looks somewhat similar to Lil Rip.
Pearl Coast, looking huge out of the notch, 1978.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Of all the area Tilcon sites, this one at Clinton Point is the most conspicuous one as seen from the river.
If you’ve taken the train northward along the Hudson, you traveled just inland from this structure.
To see the cavity quarry behind the silos, click here and go to page 57 of what has become one of my favorite books. The quarry, where rock has been dug since 1880, dwarfs the shoreline buildings.
Buchanan 12, a regular on the river doing Mississippi style assemblages of scows, here prepares another group for travel downstream.
I wonder if Tilcon welcomes visits by reporters . . . as this one in Illinois does.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Here was 1 in this series.
About a month ago, I caught up with Buchanan 12 moving crude materials, as is almost always the case with Buchanan 12, aggregates, one of the basic elements for most construction projects.
According to this lohud.com story, about three million tons of aggregates were shipped on the Hudson in 2014. My guess is that it’s higher today, since there’s long been rock in “them thar hills.”
Some aggregates further move east toward the Sound, as these in the East River are.
Mister T is a Blount built tug.
And these seem mixed aggregates.
More statistics on aggregate production–including a listing of all the types–can be found here.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I took these photos over a two-day period in late July, traveling the entire 130 miles of the Hudson from the Battery to Troy while on the trip from Narragansett Bay to the “source” of the Chicago River. RV Shearwater here surveys the river/bay; that’s Willy Wall on the horizon left, so the Battery is behind us.
The Tappan Zee nears completion: the gap on the left side is all that needs to be bridged. The Left Coast Lifter will then become the “left coast lowerer,” I assume.
Infrastructure materials come out of the ground here in Haverstraw,
Viking passes below Osborn Castle,
summer play happens in the Hudson,
Buchanan 12 pushes more raw materials for infrastructure,
a tribe paddles over to Bannerman’s,
a truck lifts three vessels in imitation of Combi-Dock III,
Vane’s Delaware pushes DoubleSkin 50 upriver,
Spring Sunshine offloads aggregates at Caymans, where
a 400-ton 12-story structure awaits (then) its float down to NJ [more on that soon],
yacht named Summer heads south for Key West,
raw materials that once rolled on roads await the trip back to the blast furnace,
a horde does sun salutations on shore,
the American goddess Columbia trumpets at the top of a needing-to-be-updated soldiers/sailors monument in Troy,
and an oracle wearing a sea creature hat and using an old-school device taps out verbiage suggesting I’m headed for Ithaca and not Chicago, although I’m pleased with that too.
All photos and observations by Will Van Dorp, who is grateful to the oracle.
Somewhat related: Click here for a CNN Travel clip called “Liquid City” and starts out with the sentence “most people think NYC has five boros, but there’s really a sixth one; it’s the largest one and it connects all the others.” I heard it while waiting at the airport in Indianapolis the other day and was stunned. Do you suppose Justin Davidson reads tugster?
For blog posts written by folks going first northbound and then southbound on a LNV tug, click here and here.
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