Riverbanks 11

Here are previous riverbanks posts, although for some inexplicable reason, they are not indexed in order.

Name the riverbank in the image below?  

Above and below, that’s Manhattan, as seen from about 30 miles out.  It would take another four hours before we passed the 59th Street Bridge.  The darker image in the center of the photo below is Vane’s Brooklyn, which we were following.

The sunset colors below in the photo below taken about an hour after the top photo were stunning.  

Three hours later we approached the Hell Gate bridges.  See Thomas D. Witte hidden in the lights?

Passing the northern tip of Roosevelt Island, the refurbished lighthouse looked like this, compared with

this image of the very same lighthouse I’d taken only eight days earlier.  The Nellie Bly “faces” tribute there is worth seeing by day.  The main channel passes to the left in the photo below.

Here is said 59th Street Bridge looking at the Graduate Hotel (No, that’s not a 1967 movie reference.) and some buildings of Cornell Tech.

New on this bank of Manhattan are the American Copper Buildings, here 

framing a seasonally-lit Empire State Building . . . ESB.  That belt joining the two . . . that houses a swimming pool.

The repurposed Havermeyer Sugar building has just added a new but retro sign, alluding to the former enterprise of the building.

Behold the 120-year-old Williamsburg Bridge 

and then eventually the 140-year-old Brooklyn Bridge. The 113-year-old Manhattan Bridge is in between the two. 

After rounding the “horn,” we headed up the North River for the Hudson, passing other new buildings framing the ESB. This twisting pair is called The Eleventh. The ghostly white tower is the Bank of America Tower, and below it is IAC.

Notice a pattern here in framing the ESB?  The “web” of course is The Vessel, a structure whose origins by water I posted about here and here.

Looking toward the Manhattan side of the GW Bridge, that red speck at its base is the “little red lighthouse” at Jeffreys Point made obsolete by the GW itself. 

As down broke, we were north of Poughkeepsie, breaking ice and about to turn into the Rondout. 

All photos, WVD, who hopes you’ve enjoyed this phantasmagorical sequence of the five boros as seen from  the sixth.

 

No Jokin’ Hell Gate

Hell Gate conjures up strong associations, whether you go with the English derivation or the Dutch one.  I don’t go there enough to get photos. 

But today, Joker brought Weeks 551 through the Gate, and I was there to record it.  

It is truly an ever changing set of turbulences. 

 

 

 

On a run from New London to sixth boro, this job is almost done.

All photos, WVD.

East River Traffic 5

If you’re unfamiliar with NYC, most of the photos in this series are from Roosevelt Island, likely off most visitors’ list of places to see.  That’s too bad, since it offers a lot, including great views of Manhattan and the strait (East “river”) in between.  If you’ve not seen the Nelly Bly memorial at the north end, you’re in for a treat.

 Here are previous posts in this series. Let’s start with the NYS-built Ava Jude, a 600 hp boat not seen on this blog in a while. 

It’s also been a while since Shannon Dann was last on the blog, but that’s because she has had her 2400 hp engines working elsewhere.

Ava Jude‘s 1200 hp fleet mate, William Brewster, has been working on the bulkhead project under the 79th Street bridge for some time. 

This Brooklyn, a Vane boat now but formerly Labrador Sea , also brings 2400 hp to the task, and like Brewster, is Blount built. 

I notice King’s Point‘s training vessel too late to get a side profile shot, but her “name” 142, is a number of great significance at the USMMA.  If you click on no other link in this post, do click on that one. 

Coastline’s Kodi is another New England (Gladding Hearn) built small tugboat, the perfect boat for certain jobs. 

See more Gladding Hearn boats here, although that’s not a complete list, since I notice that Benjamin Elliot and others are missing in that link. 

Michael L. Daigle has appeared on this blog only about once before.  She’s a 4200 hp boat that once wore Kirby colors on the west coast as Mount Bona, named for a major North American peak in Alaska. 

 

All photos and any errors, WVD. 

Mulberry

Mulberry might have all kinds of associations for you, but 

given the color and lines of this tugboat, it

 

refers not to the fruit or 

the children’s song. 

Mulberry was the code name for the artificial harbors created and transported to French beaches lacking harbor infrastructure to enable the landings at Normandy  70+ years ago.  If you’ve forgotten some of the details, what better day than today to refresh your memory here.   Corncobs, whales, gooseberries, and spuds were also involved, as in here. The first army ST by the name Mulberry, aka ST-488 and built in Brooklyn, is now a museum in LeHavre France. More on ST-488 can be found here.

This class of tugboats is named for significant US battles/operations.  For example, ST-911, three hulls earlier than Mulberry, and still in service, is called Enduring Freedom. 

Here’s video of ST-914 in service less than a decade ago. 

All photos, two days ago, WVD, who wonders why ST-914 was sold private although so new.  Mark Veterans Day today.

USAV LT-803, in the NYC tugboat races a few years back here, or one of that class, has also been sold into private hands.   See page 4 of the Marcon International summer 2021 newsletter,  here. 

Old Hulls, New Names Redux

I’m following up here from May, this post.

I won’t tell you the name yet, but here are some hints:  she carried the same name for 40 years and it was changed only in this fall.

More clues:  106′ x 35′ and 5100 hp.

This is a deviation from her new livery, but if you’re not ready to paint, slapping on a sticker might be a quick solution.

Her previous name was used once before in 1952 by her previous company.  That 1952 boat was reefed off NJ in August 1996 after going through a half dozen names here.

And here you have it:  tugster readers, meet The Beatrice.

 

 

All photos, any errors, WVD.

 

Old Hulls, Old and New Names 2

I can’t say if more than unusual number of changes are in fact happening these days, or if my radars are set to detect change.  In either case, I privilege novelty on this blog, so here we go, the first of the series.

April 2016 this was Ellen S. Bouchard alongside Bouchard Boys.

Also in 2016,  Ellen S. was in a crowded channel meeting another fleetmate, Evening Light.

From yesterday coming through Hell Gate I saw this. Name the tugboat pushing B. No. 282?

wearing a Centerline livery and now

carrying a new new.

It’s Jeffrey S,

here slowed down because of the work over near Blount-built William Brewster and the Manhattan side 79th Street bridge.

She’ll round the bend at the Battery and head up to Albany.

All photos, Halloween, WVD.

Happy November 2022.

 

Sixth Boro Pilot Beer Run

Yesterday morning some pallets got lifted from a terminal in Hunt’s Point in The Bronx by a Hudson River-based liftboat

to a Brooklyn-based ex-BUSL.  

Meanwhile, a Brooklyn-based crane ship on the hull of a repurposed lube tanker took   

position on the East Side of Pier 17.  

The lift boat Legs III is operated by Maritime Projects LLC, Helen A … by Brooklyn Marine Services, and  Louis C … by Lehigh Maritime.

For what’s going on here, I quote from “Beer Delivery Returns to NYC Waterways After 100 Year Absence“,  a press release from Oak Point Property LLC and Manhattan Beer Distributors,   “Hunts Point community leaders, local businesses, maritime advocates, and public officials today cheered the first maritime delivery of beer on NYC’s waterways in over a century. The pilot project, planned and executed by Oak Point Property LLC, Manhattan Beer Distributors (MBD), The Howard Hughes Corporation, Maritime Projects LLC, and Barretto Bay Strategies, with ongoing support from the NYC Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and the Greater Hunts Point EDC, delivered MBD’s six pallets of beer and Brooklyn-born Q Mixers from Oak Point terminal to Pier 17 at the Seaport.

With pallets loaded on its stern, Helen A., a New York harbor workboat, departed the Oak Point shoreline at 10:38 AM EST and reached Pier 17 at 11:38 AM. The Seaport’s operator The Howard Hughes Corporation received the shipment and distributed it to three businesses on the pier, including The Rooftop at Pier 17, NYC’s premier open-air venue hosting over 60 concerts this season.

The pilot is a crucial test of the viability of inter-borough shipping, tidal-assist propulsion, and congestion mitigation through waterborne problem-solving. One of the region’s busiest trucking hubs, the Hunts Point peninsula is criss-crossed by over 15,000 truck trips each workday.”   

“Inter-borough shipping” is a subset of short sea shipping, and in this case, short sea shipping confined to the sixth boro, recognizing that the sixth boro IS the underutilized link between the other five. Too bad “inter-borough shipping, tidal-assist propulsion, and congestion mitigation through waterborne problem-solving” doesn’t easily lend itself to a clever acronym.  IBSTAPCMWPS is quite unpronounceable. Any pronounceable suggestions?

Helen A‘s arrival was in fact timed to ride the tidal current, saving on fuel as well as mitigating the issues of delivery trucks making the approximately 12-mile run. 

Again, this was a pilot, a proof of concept, so a smaller scale cargo vessel is used, understood that you can’t scale up delivery trucks in nearly as many ways as you can a delivery vessel. 

In minutes, Helen A was fast alongside Louis C. 

The lift began almost immediately, and 

within 10 minutes of docking alongside with the cargo, 

Louis C crew 

lifted the first pallet

and swung it

safely ashore, where hand trucks 

awaited to move the cargo into the coolers. 

What’s next?  “The pilot will gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of waterborne solutions to middle-mile challenges while improving air quality and addressing environmental justice challenges in Hunts Point and other outer borough communities like it. To track outcomes, CCNY’s Grove School of Engineering will collect data from the pilot run and conduct a comparative analysis with truck-based delivery.”  I look forward to reading their report.

The first two photos are credited to Oak Point Property LLC and Manhattan Beer distributors;  all others and any errors, WVD.  

Some previous posts on similar projects include Black Seal , Ceres, and Grain de Sail.

 

 

Bruce, Meloi, and Ellen

and that would be in order of appearance.  

But check out this lead photo, a scene  no longer so common in the sixth boro, a ship being escorted in the direction of Manhattan and 

then turning into the East River.

When you see that, it likely means aggregates, cement, or shipyard.

I was fortunate to follow Bruce A. McAllister and Meloi as they made their way toward the Brooklyn Bridge earlier this week.  Here’s info on the Japan-built, Panama-flagged, and Greek-owned bulker.

I’m supposing the name is Greek, but other meanings of that word, that spelling in other languages, exist. 

 

I’ve been unable to determine where the aggregates originated, but where they’ll reside for the next century is in five boros’ construction.

 

All photos, WVD. 

 

East River Traffic 4

Here’s a new name on this blog:  Posillico, operator of Breakwater Marine and tugboat Deborah Quinn, the 1962 one.  Does anyone know the intended outcome of this work on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge?

As it turns out, there’s another tugboat that once carried the Deborah Quinn name.

This Quinn is a large boat:  92′ x 27′.

Sea Lion is a regular on the East River, here heading into Newtown Creek. 

At 65′ x 27′, Lion dates from 1980.

 

Brinn Courtney is fairly new in the sixth boro, and

appears to be keeping quite busy.

The first time I saw her she still had some red livery on her here.

 

 

All photos, WVD, whose previous iterations of this title can be seen here.

 

 

Bayou Boat in the Boro Six

Imagine traveling in the East River and seeing  . . . legs!

Seeing these legs spudded down, rudders and wheels on display . . . made me look around for critters!!.  after all, I spent the better than a month this summer in a place with legs and alligators.

Even the logo on the side, the Ram, and

the name . . . Aries Marine . . . was reminded me of western Louisiana.

I suppose they are core sampling.

Juxtaposed with the towering “leg-like” structures of Manhattan’s cliffs,

made me wonder if Manhattan was just a hull that could emerge from the crust and climb up on those legs. As of this morning, Ram VII has moved west and south and is now in the anchorage previously occupied by BigLift Baffin.

All photos, WVD, who points out that Ram VII and Legs III are not the same vessel.