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Sometimes voices talk to me as I’m taking photos. I realize I’m leaving myself wide open when I write something like that, but I’m not joking. Especially when a vessel named Opportunity comes in. Be honest. What would the voice in your head say?
And then it goes away?
So once you register that “opportunity comes and goes,” and then you see other vessels doing the same . . . .?
sure . . . Yankee comes and goes. Her sister vessel . . . Freedom comes and goes.
Even clunkier names . . . RHL Agilitas . . . yup . . . .
she comes and goes . . . from Kingston Jamaica to Halifax Canada.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who himself comes and goes. Then other times he eats shoots and leaves.
Tuira II anchors west of Perico.
Different sites related to Canal and Bay Tours say this boat was built by Wiley Manufacturing of Port Deposit MD, makers of sixth boro’s Patricia, Norfolk’s Hoss, and Erie Canal’s Capt Alix, but Wiley history doesn’t reflect this. Any help?
Also in the Canal and Bay Tours fleet is this vintage 1912 wooden vessel in Neponset MA by Lawley & Sons, Islamorada. A claim is that Al Capone once owned her.
Here she shares a lock at Miraflores with a bulker. More closeups of the locks and tugboats soon.
Below is the same Islamorada I took in mid-March 2012; that’s a range marker in the foreground to the right. I prefer the 2012 color scheme.
Fantasía del Mar, here docked in Gamboa and alongside Atlas III, is the third of three US boats operated by Canal and Bay Tours . . . and said to be built by Eastern Shipbuilding of Boothbay, but I know of no such yard.
Las Cruces . . . she could be US built, but again . . . no info. I’m really striking out today.
Safari Voyager, not flagged US but operated by UnCruise Adventures, is definitely a US bottom, built in 1982 in Salisbury MD, the yard where many of the recent Vane vessels originate from. That’s also the shipyard that has built American Cruise Line vessels.
Wind Star, featured here just recently, was built in France in 1986.
And finally . . . in the background one morning was Maasdam, heading for Mexico, launched from a Fincantieri yard in Italy in 1993.
The green trimaran–I’ve forgotten the name–was super light and fast, heading for the Marquesas. She transited the Panama Canal maintaining the requisite minimum of 6 knots with an outboard! According to her owner, she can make 5 knots in 2 knots wind.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
And again a repeated request: Please send me a photo of your seat. What I mean is this: I’d like to do a post on captain’s and/or pilot’s chairs. I’m looking for the luxurious all the way to decrepit or basic. Email me a photo of the chair and identify the vessel. You don’t need to be sitting in it. I’ve got photos of two seats so far, but I’d like a half dozen before doing a post.
Here are previous posts in this “whatzit” series, the most recent being components of The Vessel.
So what’s this craft below?
Well, back in September 2010, she was excursion vessel Commander running into the Hudson Highlands out of Haverstaw. She nearly made it to 100 years in various excursion assignments after being launched in North Carolina in 1917 as SP-1247.
I next saw her next to the marine railway in Greenport in May 2015, and then
she had quite the makeover on Staten Island and Brooklyn, converted into a floating marina building in front of Brooklyn Heights. Quite the second . . . or tenth life for this former naval vessel. I do hope to see inside later this year.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
The challenge here is to have clear photos and lights. Evening Star with B. No. 250 starts us off,
Jean Turecamo is on assignment with a barge,
Reinauer Twins heads back for the Kills,
TRF Memphis waits in Stapleton anchorage,
Mount St. Elias departs her barge,
and Alice Austen, usually the wee hours ferry, runs early.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s another photo shared by Ingrid Staats. If you’ve been to this blog before, you recognize the bridge, but what are Vega and Altair you might wonder. The ferries are aptly named, since they are two characters in a Chinese love story, Vega the weaver girl and Altair the cowherd.
Here they operated within the fleet of the Bergen Point Ferry, both built in 1946 and discontinued in 1961.
The ferries were sold after discontinuation of the service, and both were lost in 1961: Vega off New Jersey and Altair between Mexico and Cuba deep in the Yucatan Channel. These are small boats to be going to Mexico: 61′ x 38′ x 8′, but another of the set, Deneb, made it and appeared in the Mexican registry.
To drive along Richmond Terrace these days, you don’t get the same sense crossing Port Richmond Avenue that you would have had 70 or 80 years ago . . . click on the photo below for a photographic tour of what used to be a crossing into NJ.
I used to have a photo of the sign still hanging near the ferry until quite recently, but when I gallivanted around there a few days ago, it was gone and my photo is as well, victim of one of my misguided cullings to reduce the memory demands on my computer.
In that recent gallivant, I did look along the west side of Port Richmond Avenue at this church and graveyard.
This is some old NYC history, and
names memorialized in places are reflected here . . . . Prall’s Island today is uninhabited but known to everyone who travels through the Arthur Kill.
Many thanks to Ingrid for use of the Vega-Altair photo. More of her photos to come.
And while you’re at the Reformed Church, go another 100 yards inland and check out Nat’s Men’s Shop and buy some warm work clothes.
Although I’m a newbie, this being only my second run on Huron, I suspect this view dominates the experience of crossing Huron, possibly Superior also, which I’ve not traversed. Huron is the inland sea with the longest shoreline, surrounded by sparse population. Sarnia, the largest city on Huron has about 70,000; Port Huron, 30,000; and Alpena, 10,000. Of course, Bay City–population 35,000– lies there also, but at more than 50 miles into Saginaw Bay, it’s a city you go to as a destination, which I need to do soon. I’m eager to visit all the towns along this lake.
Off to starboard, it’s Thunder Bay, China-built, Seawaymax.
To port, it’s barge Menominee pushed by
Olive L. Moore. If you look at no other link than this one in this post, check this one for the evolution of this tug since the hull was first laid down in Manitowoc in 1928, designed low to fit under the bridges in Chicago.
Arcticus ,Laurentian, a USGS vessel launched in 2014, was working some research project off our starboard. Here’s a post I did in 2014 on another USGS vessel at its christening in Oswego.
Otherwise, along the shore there are lights like Thunder Bay Island Light,
(and I’m not sure of the identification here) New Presque Isle Light, and
Near here, we passed tug Michigan pushing barge Great Lakes, which I last saw in Montreal last fall.
Martin Reef Light tells us we’re approaching the Straits, as
does the appearance of Kristen D, the ferry between Cheboygan and another Bois Blanc Island–more places to visit some day. Kristen D dates from the late 1980s.
Samuel D. Champlain I could pick out anywhere by its profile, but John C. Munson I had to check on my device. SDC appeared on this blog several times before, with a closeup here, and in a previous iteration here. Last year I caught SDC southbound in roughly the same end of Lake Huron.
And less than a mile from the dock on Mackinac Island, we pass Round Island Light.
Writing this post has clarified one section of where my next road trip will take me. All photos and sentiments, errors, etc. by Will Van Dorp.
Related: Check out these 10 facts about the Great Lakes.
Unrelated: The 2017 NYC tugboat race is scheduled for Sunday Sept. 3.
This is the third of three digressions before getting on with the account of my trip west.
The saga of SS Binghamton started in 1904,
and I last saw it from land on January 6, 2017, when demolition was said to have started. Demolition had started but defined as “asbestos abatement” by the alien looking figures clustered near the tender and the stack.
As a relative newcomer in the sixth boro, I first set foot on the ferry in 2011, when some thought a chance still existed to save her or parts of her. I’ve also been holding off doing this post in hopes that more photos of the demolition process would surface. I hope I can still do another post if such photos emerge. I would have been there, but I was on my trip west.
The next two photos I took on July 16 from the water, the last it turns out.
Paul Strubeck took the photo below as he passed by about 10 days later when the stack had just been removed . . . as in a decapitation.
Only a few days later, Glenn Raymo took the next two shots from the Walkway over the Hudson, rubble going up the river.
Here’s a TV commercial once intended to attract patrons to the now gone restaurant.
Thanks to Paul and Glenn, more of whose work is available here.
GWA stands “go[ing] west again,” the next set of posts all attempting to catch myself and maybe you up, if you’re following along, with random and I hope interesting photos from the past almost three weeks. I realize that catching up is impossible, and in this case while I had vacated the sixth boro, big stuff happened.
A word that comes to mind is protean– named for Proteus. Type “define: protean” into google and you’ll appreciate why it’s difficult to catch up. But here goes.
Within a half hour of departing Warren RI, we pass Naema and
Lionheart. Do check the links. Either would be worthy of a post in itself.
And still north of the Rte 138 bridge, we see NOAA R/V Henry B Bigelow.
On the cusp of Block Island Sound, we encounter inbound Atlantic Pioneer, where you’d expect her returning from a run. Here’s a post I did almost exactly two years ago when Atlantic Pioneer components still needed to be combined at the shipyard.
A bit further, it’s Carol Jean and Islander, both Block Island bound, although one will arrive much before the other.
By now, we’re into Long Island Sound and being overtaken by darkness. That’s Atlantic Navigator II as a speck heading toward us.
This dawn photo found us within NYC and approaching the East river. It’s Fort Totten, designed for the entire US by Robert E Lee. Here could be a dilemma: there’s no debate that I know of of striking his name from the credits for this fort.
We pass HuntsPoint Produce Market,
the floating pool,
Marty C–a Weeks tug I’ve never seen,
the “north end” of Roosevelt Island with the Blackwell Island Light,
Gabby L Miller pushing past Cornell Tech‘s yet-to-be used buildings,
the Brooklyn Navy yard with Asphalt Sailor and –I believe– the old Great Point,
swimmers in the water doing a Manhattan circumnatation,
and–let’s end it here for today–a yacht named Vava II. Here’s info on her owner.
Protean . . . day 1? It’s not even over, and I think so.
Lots more to come.
Here are more photos from May 1. Betsy Ross is a product of Yank Marine in Tuckahoe, New Jersey.
Here, r to l, are three generations of sixth boro people movers . . . Betsy Ross, Garden State, and the new NYCFerry known as H202 for now. Garden State was launched in 1994.
H202 crosses the bow of the mighty Helen Parker.
By an hour later, Betsy Ross is already roaring back from across Raritan Bay.
Closing shot is H202 wheelhouse as seen from the upper passenger deck . . . approaching the Marine Parkway Bridge.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is preparing to head back northward on the ICW, which I’ll call Gallatin’s Ditch.
I read the sign and decided to
wait until the greeters had left and then
bought a round trip ticket at Pier 11 for less than what I’d pay for a bagel and coffee
and got on the next ride to the Rockaways. If you want to know specs and dimensions and such right now, click here. Or wait, and guess who built the power plant and what the passenger capacity is, and I’ll tell you some of that at the end.
After a stop at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, we zoomed out towards the VZ at 25 knots, past Coney Island,
through the goalposts at Marine Parkway, and
to the new Rockaway dock,
where shuttles gathered or distributed potential passengers.
Then it was back to Pier 11 in the
pea soup thick
fog.
So the power plant is Baudoin Marine. Passenger capacity is 150. The captain requires a 100-ton license. Here’s the NYTimes story.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s headed for the confluence of the Saluda, Congaree, and Broad soon.
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