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Here was 1. Background on the UHL “F” fleet can be found there.
I’d thought to call this “non-random ships 001” because choosing to post images of her was my deliberate choice, even though I grant that her passage through the KVK randomly happened while I was there, like her, in the fog. Anything moving was sounding the required prolonged blast at intervals of not more than two minutes; it was like call and response between UHL Faith and another vessel in Newark Bay.
See the Bayonne Bridge? Name the more distant tug?
I don’t either. I could have done this as a “fog” post.
Her two cranes have a combined lift capacity of 900 tons, or tonnes.
Where do you imagine she was built? I know that symbol is a stylized hook, but it reminds me of the Star Wars “rebel alliance” symbol.
Here’s the answer to an earlier question.
Patrice saw UHL Faith out to the anchorage. On a clear day, the WTC would be visible in the background.
Madeira seems to be gaining as a ship registry location. Could you locate it on a map?
All photos, WVD.
The UHL F-series vessels were all built by CSSC in either Huangpu Wrenching or Hudong.
Madeira is an archipelago off Morocco.
It was my first time to see her. She arrived this morning after a monthlong voyage from Busan, which she departed on December 17. With her containers all squared away, I’d gather she has delivered a full load.
CSCL operates eight of these vessels, valued at $117 million each.
The sight of these giants gives pause. China’s first container ship, Ping Xiang Cheng, launched in 1978 for a route between Shanghai and ports of eastern Australia carried 162 containers! Their first service to US ports came in 1981.
Who then could have imagined these.
Mariner gear in 2021 . . . it’s not what I’d expect.
With the two crew above and these four, this must be half or more of the deck crew.
For an afternoon’s reading, click here for an analysis of the shipyard which builds these behemoths and many other types of ships.
All photos this morning, WVD.
I was doing maintenance in the photo archives yesterday and took a second look at some photos from Damen and from Picton Terminals. Since I know that Sheri Lynn S (SLS) arrived in Canada in Montreal in late fall, this has to be a photo of it being loaded onto the ship in Shanghai after traveling via the Yangtze from the shipyard in Changde, Hunan in China. Given that, the tugs in the background could now be scattered all over the world.
This photo shows the boat being secured to the deck,again in Shanghai.
After the ocean voyage between the photo above, SLS arrives in a port at the end of her voyage, and that port has to be
Montreal, given the blue tugboat here, Ocean Georgie Bain.
And now for a few photos from her current habitat on the NE corner of Lake Ontario, SLS breaks ice, sometimes . . .
enabling the cement ship to dock.
In fact, this time of year, ice breaking is her main activity.
Many thanks to Damen and Picton Terminals for these photos.
A picture is worth a thousand words, even if the picture is a video still and grainy. This picture launched a 1000 (actually about 1300) words, which you can read in the embedded link at the end of this post.
So, just the basics will be in this post, since the story is in the link.
It was cold and dark in early December when Sheri Lynn S cracked some new ice in departing from the dock in Picton ON,
heading into Picton Bay
to meet this ship . . . delivering steel from Korea.
Communications describe how the ship intends to dock, and
Sheri Lynn S accommodates the plan, crew on the tug here prepare to send a line up to the crew on the ship.
Once the ship Lake Erie is secure, the tug heads into the frozen area of the Bay
to tie up until the next job.
Here are some shots on Picton Terminals last summer.
Click here for the article I did on the boat, crew, and operation.
Many thanks to Picton Terminals for assistance. All photos except the video still at the beginning by Will Van Dorp, who will have additional news from Picton soon.
Maybe a reader of Chinese can translate this….
or place name, contemporary or historical?
If I read this right, this 2013 vessel has had eight names in seven years, some very similar to Fu Quan Shan!
She’s left Norfolk by now.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, whose previous names posts can seen here.
Cosco is a huge, fairly new response to twists and turns of the world shipping fortunes.
Peony has appeared on this blog twice, but this is the first time for Jasmine.
I waited at the Narrows until one of the two box ships I was eyeing headed out yesterday, a hot seat in spite of the shade and the breezes, and Jasmine was first. The other was the irregularly named ONE Contribution, a large pink ship you can see here. It’s pink but not a ULCV.
Peony and Jasmine are about 1000 teu smaller than the mountain class…. Camellia, Azalea, Lotus, Orchid, Rose, and Sakura make up the rest of the flower class.
Anyone know the airdraft of these boats?
As of this writing, she’s headed for Norfolk
through the summer haze.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is wondering the relationship between the abstract boats like Cosco Faith, Glory; the country boats like Cosco Vietnam, and the flower boats.
Click here for an interesting article by Capt. Max Hardberger called “China’s Dominance in Shipping” on the long-term strategic global hegemonic implications of these ships and lines and our consumerism. Seized is a great read.
Oleander has been a regular in the sixth boro since 1990. It’s so regular that I’d not take photos of it, much of the time; it’s as regular as Staten Island ferries departing on the top and bottom of the hour, as regular as crocuses in spring or NYC Marathons in early November.
Technically, it’s Oleander III, and I’ve been unable to find images of the first two boats by that name, ones that shuttled between Bermuda (BCL expands to Bermuda Container Lines) and Elizabeth NJ.
I took the photo above and the one below on December 16, 2017, feeling sorry for the crewman on that cold day checking and securing the load straps on that trailer. The photo also shows the limitations of the Oleander III.
On January 02, 2018, I took this photo because of the saltwater ice on the hull.
Yesterday Oleander came through the KVK, and I almost didn’t take photos . . . because it was a Thursday and there would be nothing out of the ordinary about Oleander coming through the KVK.
Except I thought she looked different. I wondered if my general indifference to something that regular had led me to forget what this the actual vessel looked like. When I got home, though, I thought I’d look up my earlier photos of the BCL vessel.
Then I realized it was clearly NOT the regular. It’s Oleander IV, technically, and yesterday MAY have been her inaugural visit to the sixth boro. With a check in the accuracy department of tugster tower, I learned the new vessel only first arrived in Hamilton, Bermuda on March 19, 2019, from Yangzijiang Shipyard in Jingjiang up the Yangtze River from Shanghai, China. Click on the image below to see the differences in profile as the “old” and “new” pass in Hamilton. The most significant visible change is an increase in size and “garage space” so that the exposure of cargo as seen in photo #2 above is no longer needed.
For a tugster shot of Oleander in 2009, click here. For more news from Bermuda on Oleander, click here.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who learned a lesson about looking but not seeing yesterday.
Did you hear about Peak Pegasus, the vessel racing to get US soybeans into China before retaliatory 25% tariffs are slapped on? More on Peak Pegasus at the end of this post.
Well, these two container ship had no need to hurry into the sixth boro, yet here’s something I’ve never seen before . . . two container ships entering the Narrows in quite close succession.
Obviously the passage accommodates all, but still . . . a new sight for me, the reason I return here again and again.
See QM2 in the distance to the right? I caught her first arrival here 11 years ago. Dawn was too late for me to catch it. That ominous sky got me thinking . . . storm clouds. Locally I was just concerned about getting spots on my lens. But then I thought about the story of Peak Pegasus, the impending trade war. I could see those as storm clouds, and shipping . . . this is a front line, like every seaport in the US.
Take the value of all the imported cargo on Maersk Buton and
add to it the value of whatever’s on OOCL Berlin . . . and every other ship entering a US port for the foreseeable future and add the product of that and .25 . . . the sum’s rising. Ditto . . . whatever is on Bomar Caen–headed for Colombia–might just be less attractive if .25 gets added to the price of those goods. Maybe Colombia is not affected.
I’m by no means an expert in much, and please educate me if I’m wrong, but these storm clouds seemed appropriate this morning.
All photos and sentiments by Will Van Dorp, who first read the name of the Maersk ship as butoh, which would have been much more interesting.
Peak Pegasus plowed at top speed to make port, but . . . she failed. More here. Here’s a story from the same vessel from a few months back.
“A butterfly among moths” flitted past lower Manhattan yesterday, northbound on the North River, albeit a butterfly that hadn’t yet fully shed its cocoon.
“The boat has a colorful history, beginning as a small trading vessel along the South China coast. It reputedly once belonged to a Chinese warlord who had to sell it in haste to flee the country. Believe it or not, Robert Ripley purchased it in 1946 and owned it until he died… It was sailed across the Pacific Ocean in 1939 and then to the East Coast the following year.” All that was written here in 1985. Mon Lei is not to be confused with a junk called Free China.
Maybe she flitted as a butterfly in my mind, but yesterday Mon Lei was being towed. I should have gotten this photo without the excursion boat in the distance.
I had forgotten that the bow was squared off until I returned to my post from that year.
It’s truly unique, and I hope it doesn’t berth too far upstream because
I’d love to see it again, sans shrink-wrap and with junk-rig sails set on all three masts. Here’s a long article from 2017 with black-and-white photos from the distant past, including one with the unique Robert Ripley playing mahjong, believe it or not.
Here’s another unique sailing vessel of the sixth boro, Lettie G. Howard. And if you don’t see it in the next day and a half, you won’t see it in New York any time soon, as it heads west by sailing east: Lake Erie bound by way of Nova Scotia and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Maybe my friends along the way will get photos of her. The Seaway and its locks might provide good opportunities for photos.
And to round out this post, here’s a Nautor Swan for sale, currently tied up in North Cove. At a bit over $1.6 million, it could be yours, or mine, or someone else’s.
Like a RORO and a tanker that have appeared here before, Tugela is named for a South African river.
Quite the mast!
Finally, not the same black hulled sailboat, it entered the Upper Bay last week passing the Quarantine Station. Anyone know if a facility by that name exists there today?
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who should take walks around the land’s edge every weekend.
Here’s Mon Lei‘s homepage. Somewhere (?) I recall seeing photos of her in the 1976 bicentennial harbor muster. Also, not surprisingly, bowsprite dabbled with junk for a time.
Unrelated: Here’s a voyaging sailboat from the Philippines.
Click here for the first installment of this story . . .
Tuesday 0630. Note here that crews have already begun lowering the booms of these new gantry cranes in order to fit under the VZ Bridge.
Wednesday 0915. Plans were to begin the transit, but an anchor windlass refused to cooperate.
Wednesday 1030. And the fog began to descend.
Thursday 0630. It was a glorious morning.
Thursday 1000. It’s a go. That’s Media Boat 4 in the foreground.
1026. I read there’s a 10′ clearance, but my perspective–faulty–said otherwise.
1027. Yup . . . plenty clearance.
1140. near the Bayonne Bridge
1141. James D. Moran in the hard hat area.
1146.
1147. Under the bridge and then a turn into Port Elizabeth.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Read a Staten Island Advance article here.
tugster: a waterblog 
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