Random Tugs 390

Call this a continuation of yesterday’s post, but this is a model bow set . . . . Given all the features that could be discussed, focus on these for oldest/newest, smallest/largest, and least/most horsepower.  Also, one of these does not fit with the others, although all are tugboats. 

Douglas J

Doris Moran

Philadelphia

Again, identify the oldest/newest, smallest/largest, and least/most horsepower.

James William  Here she appears to be towing a mooring into Erie Basin Brooklyn. 

Millie B and Louis C.  These two certainly do not fit in with this post, but  . . . I’m posting this photo anyhow.  Previously, Millie B has appeared here.  Louis C has appeared here. I hope you’re getting ready with your answers. 

Rowan M McAllister

Adeline Marie

All photos and any errors, WVD.   All info here thanks to Birk Thomas’ invaluable tugboatinformation.

Ready?  No cheating.

Just guesses.

Answers?

Oldest is Rowan M, and newest is Philadelphia. 1981 and 2017.

Smallest considering both length and beam is James William, and longest is Doris Moran although Douglas J is the beamiest. Lengths are 77′ and 118′.  

Least horses is James William, and most is Douglas J.  They range from 2800 hp to 4800 hp.

Besides Millie B, the outlier is James William because she has a push-knee bow–rather than a model bow.  Also, she’s the only triple screw here. 

Random Tugs 389

Call this the push knee set.  And let’s do it this way . . . given all the features that could be discussed, focus of these for oldest/newest, smallest/largest, and least/most horsepower.

CMT Pike.  An aside about CMT Pike is that she was not built with a retractable wheelhouse.  When launched, she had a fixed wheelhouse, the “stalk” of which can be seen directly behind where the raised wheelhouse is now.  I’ve not been able to find a photo of her in that original configuration. 

Shiloh Amon aka Jillian Irene

 

Lightning

Discovery Coast

Miss Madeline

And finally, a photo from January 2013 and showing one that has been sold out of the sixth boro . . . Herbert P. Brake. 

Have you written down your final decisions?

All photos, WVD.  All info here thanks to Birk Thomas’ invaluable tugboatinformation

Ready?  No cheating.

Just guesses.

Oldest is Miss Madeline, and newest is Shiloh aka Jillian Irene. 1976 and 2022.

Smallest considering both length and beam is Herbert P. Brake, and longest is Discovery Coast although both Discovery and Jillian tie at 34′ for beam. Lengths are 60′ and 96′.

Least horses is Brake, and most is Discovery.  They range from 375 hp to 3000 hp.

Random Tugs 388

Even on overcast days, the sixth boro aka NY harbor offers sights.  It’s long been so;  here’s much abridged paragraphs 3-5 Chapter 1 of Moby Dick:

[People] stand … fixed in ocean reveries. Some leaning … some seated … some looking over the bulwarks of ships from China… [some] pacing straight for the water…  Nothing will content them but the extremest limit of the land… They must get just as nigh the water as they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand…  infallibly [move] to water…  Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy [youth] with a robust healthy soul… at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, brother of Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning…. we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans … the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”

OK, so that might be over the top, but I find at least as much entertainment along the water as in all the other places in NYC.  Maybe that makes me a hermit, but that’s irrelevant.  Can you name these boats?  

At less than 10 miles an hour, trade comes in, commerce of all sort goes on. 

different hour different goods, 

different tasks, 

different energies

and errands 

by different 

companies . .  .

All photos, WVD.

And in order, Jonathan C Moran, Meaghan Marie, Ellen McAllister, Andrea, Schuylkill, Rowan R McAllister, Thomas D Witte, Susan Miller.

 

Tugs on the Sound 2

Here was installment 1.  Right over beyond Race Rock Light, that’s the entrance to 

New London, where Rowan M. McAllister lighters a salt ship named Feng Ze Hai.

A Reinauer unit heads for the sixth boro, and not taking refraction into account, 

I figured I could just read the name here.  Can you make it out?  My guess is Ruth E. but there are others similar to her. 

Cape Canaveral passed Bridgeport  bathed in morning light. 

Later, Sapphire Coast 

with Cement Transporter 1802 

overtook William F. Fallon Jr. and her barge at

Orient Point Light. 

As the early winter’s night approached,  Reinauer Twins

and RTC 104 passed close enough to read her name, refraction notwithstanding. 

All photos, WVD, who has many more and closer up lighthouse photos from the Sound.

Dawn 2023 B

Part B of this post is a corrective.  The lead photo I used two days ago was NOT the first photo I took in 2023; rather, the one below was:  a pristine 1969 or 1970 Buick Electra (?) parked here by another photographer wanting to get golden hour photos of the sunrise over waters near the VZ Bridge.  I knew I had to step back from my vantage-point cliff to get a photo of this museum quality piece of automobile history.  If you’ve been following Tugster for a while, you know it’s a waterblog that occasionally strays into automotive land machines, although not self-driving kind of “automotive.”  

A while later, with the sun still quite low, I caught Copper Mountain pushing A-70,

likely upriver. 

Above and below, it’s Shiloh Amon aka Jillian Irene. Unrelated, has anyone gotten a photo of Marilyn George aka Steven Wayne, ex-Patapsco, currently in the boro just west of Caddells?  I’m wondering if Marilyn George might soon be wearing a lion . . . .

Already on the first day of the year, loaded garbage barges move toward the railhead and empties  . . . to the marine transfer stations, here with James William in the foreground. 

Ava heads out for a just-past dawn job, as 

does Jonathan C. 

All photos, WVD. 

 

Old Years 2022

I’m back and just in time for the last day of the year, which –as explained in previous years— in my Dutch tradition is a reflection day, a time to if not assess then at least recall some of the sights of the past 12 months.  A photo-driven blog makes that simultaneously easy and hard;  easy because there’s a photographic record and not easy because there’s such an extensive photographic record to sift though.

A word about this set of photos:  these are some “seconds” that did not make the final cut for my 2023 tugster calendar.  The actual calendars are still available if you’ve not ordered one;  find the order info here. I’m ordering a bunch myself. 

One windy day last January I caught a Pilot No 1–the old New York–doing drills under the VZ Bridge.  Just recently I met one of the engineers on that boat, a person with epic stories about the sixth boro.

A warm day in February, I caught JRT Moran assisting QM2 into her Red Hook berth. 

March I spent a delightful day on Douglas B. Mackie observing the water side of a Jersey shore beach replenishment project, thanks to the hard-working folks at GLDD. 

April . . .  I caught Jane McAllister heading out;  correct if I’m wrong, but my sense is that soon afterward she made her way down to South America to join the expanding ranks of US-built tugs working on various projects on the south side of the Caribbean. 

As a member of the Canal Society of NYS, I had the opportunity to see Urger up close and sun-warmed on the bank of the Oswego in Lysander NY. 

A clutch of Centerline tugboats waited for their next assignment at the base just east of the Bayonne Bridge.   Note the fully foliated trees beyond them along the KVK.

From the humid heat of western Louisiana and onto the Gulf of Mexico, Legs III–shown 

here spudded up just east of SW Pass, afforded a memorable journey on its way up to the sixth boro.  Thx, Seth. 

Back in the boro, later in August, a Space X rocket recovery boat named Bob–for an astronaut– came through the sixth boro.  More on Bob–the astronaut–here. 

In September, I finally got to my first ever Gloucester schooner race, thanks to Rick Miles of Artemis, the sailboat and not the rocket. 

Icebreaker Polar Circle was in the boro a few days in September as well.  Now it’s up in Canada, one hopes doing what icebreakers are intended to do. US naval logistics vessel Cape Wrath is at the dock in Baltimore ready and waiting a logistics assignment. 

Ticonderoga certainly and Apache possibly are beyond their time working and waiting.  I believe Ticonderoga is at the scrappers in Brownsville. 

Passing the UN building on the East River, veteran Mulberry is currently out of the army and working in the private sector.  I’ve a request:  for some time I’ve seen a tug marked as Scholarie working the waters west of the Cape Cod Canal;  a photo suggested it might be called Schoharie. Anyone help out?

And finally, a photo taken just two days ago while passing through the sixth boro during what can hardly be called “cover of darkness” it’s Capt Joseph E. Pearce on its way to a shipyard on the mighty Rondout to pick up some custom fabrication for a Boston enterprise. Many thanks to the Stasinos brothers for the opportunity.

I’d be remiss in ending this post and this year without mentioning lost friends, preserving a memory of their importance to me personally . . .  Bonnie of frogma–first ever to comment of this blog so many years ago and a companion in many adventures– and Mageb, whose so frequent comments here I already miss. 

I plan to post tomorrow, although I may miss my high noon post time because I hope to post whatever best sunrise 2023 photos I can capture in the morning.  

Happy, safe, and prosperous new year to you all.  I’m posting early today because I want my readers who live much much farther east than the sixth boro to get these wishes before their new trip around the sun begins. Bonne annee!  Gelukkig nieuwjaar!

Sixth Boro Details 14

This will be the last post for a few days . . .   William F. Fallon Jr. at the Statue.

Thomas D. Witte, dredge Delaware, Durham, and some smaller boats in the Upper Bay.

Marjorie B. McAllister with NYNJR 200 on the Brooklyn side. 

Jessica Ann and another RIB appear to be involved in diving ops.  Brrr.

Schuylkill moves a tank barge across the boro.

James William tows a mooring into Erie Basin.

And finally, the ever busy Chandra B heads for the Kills.

All photos recently, WVD, who hopes to be back by week’s end.

 

Random Tugs 386

Discovery Coast has been around for over a decade now.  One of my first times to see her was here. 

Lightning has only recently been joined by Thunder, here.  Might tugs named for other weather phenomena like hail and fog be coming?

Helen was only renamed that earlier this year;  before that, she was  Charles Burton. 

Thomas D. Witte appeared here only once as Kendall P. Brake, and that was a decade and a half ago with Powhatan, class-establisher for Apache. 

Defender last appeared on this blog a year and a half ago here . . .  She was

formerly Davis Sea, my favorite photo of which was here, struggling with solid water upriver.

Pearl Coast is a regular at the cement dock on the KVK, here with Cement Transporter 1802,  one of a fleet of barges dedicated to exactly that. 

And while I was at this location, I caught a convergence of tugboats,  Pegasus eastbound and Stephen Reinauer westbound.   Stephen has been in the sixth boro for nearly 30 years now.

All photos, WVD.

Random Tugs 385

or maybe I could call these “roaring 20s” tugs in the sixth boro . . .

let’s start with likely the newest of these, maybe the newest in the boro, Charles Hughes, 3000 hp and 90′ x 34′ .

She’s a Salisbury-class, the fourth of that class from Chesapeake Shipbuilding.  

Another product of the 2020s, it’s James K, 2400 hp and 75′ x 30′.

She comes out of the Rodriguez Brothers shipyard. 

Jillian Irene is what AIS told me . . .

but that name is so new that the painting department has not yet caught up.  I thought her only recently the newest hull/name in the boro, but welcome the soon-to-be-marked Jillian Irene, a product of C & C Marine and Repair.

All photos, any errors, WVD.

Fall Migration 2

This follows up a post from not quite two weeks ago here. Of course, this unidentified recreational craft–here with HMS Justice and Fort McHenry–is out for a morning to commune with the fish migrating through the boro.  More on fish soon.

I have to admit first off that I missed SV Vaquita sailing through, but you can catch the highlights and follow along on YouTube, produced by the same wit as TimBatSea, both of which are YT channels worth checking out. Vaquita made its way south of Norfolk through the Dismal Swamp canal. 

Ketch Manana from Nova Scotia was eyeing the KVK before heading out the VZ.

Asteria is a 52-year-old yacht.  Registered in Bikini, she actually has the stuff to get there.  I love the lines.

In recent days, I’ve seen her both in North Cove and out by the

the statue, here sending her tender out on a mission.

As this sloop came between Roosevelt Island and the UES, she caught my attention because

of the lines and the polished aluminum hull. 

It turns out she’s Pleione, an Alubat Cigale 16 that’s been around although registry is Boston.

Finch seemed to be worked by a solo sailor from Portsmouth NH that was handling sail only just outside the ferry routes.

And if these lines don’t catch your attention, nothing will.  Of course, it’s a Lord Nelson Victory Tug (LNVT) 37′ version.  You’ve seen the model before here . . .  as in Sally W.

As it turns out, Sally W is hull #42, and the boat on the East River three days ago is hull #48, aka

Edward S. Marvin, another New Hampshire boat, here quite diminished by the cliffs and bridges along Manhattan’s east side.

All photos, any errors, WVD, a contrarian who’s migrating north a bit next week.