Hoorn-Bound Half Moon

If Half Moon had a voice and addressed folks in her new permanent port, she’d say something like this:  Mijn reis is begonnen. Ik zie jullie in minder dan een maan.

Almost exactly three months ago, I indicated in this post that Half Moon was bound for a new life in Hoorn, namesake of that rock off Tierra del Fuego.  This more she left . . . keeping her speed just under the posted 40 mph max although just barely.  I raced but she showed me nothing more than her stern,

as she surveyed the denizens and green and orange icons of this uninhabited island called Manhattan one last time

before heading toward the gate of hell and

the Bronx and

points east.  If anyone gets photos of this vessel on the Long Island Sound, please send them to me and I’ll post them here with your name as credit. For an index of my previous Half Moon posts, click here.

Maybe now is the time to dust off–and complete– the narrative that bowsprite and I discontinued five and a half years ago when we failed to agree with the Henry Hudson’s secret missions to North America just over 400 years ago.  Just maybe we will disclose what best conspiracy theorists believe.

All photos taken by Will Van Dorp.

 

Onrust Splash Plus One

..plus one year, that is, not quite.  A year ago, work to ready the vessel for a mid-May splash reached frenzied levels, but the Adriaen aka Aerjan Block replica made an early June appointment to be part of River Day.  Here Onrust follows Half Moon in the direction of Tappan Zee Bridge, distant background.

Here she dangled, late May 2009, minutes before splash, and

here she shivers, nine months later, February 2010, in an Albany shipyard awaiting warmer weather.

Here was two days post-splash, just above Lock 9, and

… February 2010, Albany shipyard.

Here, in suspension  . . . merest seconds before the first ever splash, and

… February 2010, Albany.

And some 70 miles south of Albany . . . Half Moon waits in a protected area for all the ice to clear out.   I wonder if the ghost of Henry migrates south to this bend in the river to find solace in the dark months . . .

and if so . . . what are his dreams, his obsessions . . .   And if that’s true, whose ghost inhabits the replica of Onrust?

Plans for Onrust for this coming season include completing the interior and doing other finishings that’ll allow further voyages, maybe in time . . . retracing the travels of Captain Block.  After four voyages to North America, Block never returned;  he continued to sail but into the cold regions north of Scandanavia once explored by Hudson.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Dutch Barge No Return

What does 1887 look like on 2009?  Feast your eyes below.  Further may we feast our eyes in a while when she splashes back into her element.  It’s New York Central No. 13;  boat and owner are aching to see much of the the iron hull (originally all-iron) back in the water.  Eric showed me around, showing me around No. 13, but also treated me to a view of the land-log crawling lumber tug Bertha, still in the chrysalis stage.  Eric blogs about the day way better than I can.

If you check out his site, enjoy following the links to find the name of the yard in Camden that built No. 13 and the name of the 1907 tug also built at that yard.  It may not be what you think, although I’ll say it performed a herculean task of towing its sister through the Strait of Magellan.

While visiting Eric, I got a closer look at Disch Construction’s Little Bear, built 1952 in Jacksonville, FL.  By the way, the bridge in the background is Outerbridge Crossing, named for Mr. Outerbridge.

I visited the yard because Eric told me the Groninger tjalk called Livet, former Dutch mystery of the Hackensack, was hauled out for some work.  Unfortunately, the 1901 flatbottom experienced some misfortune when welding ignited the wooden interior.

Platbodem or flat bottom . . . this hull is anything but all flat.  It’s as flat, I guess, as the so-called flat belly of an athlete is flat, and I love all the curves

and more curves.  In fact,

seeing these lines . . . I can imagine only a human posterior, as lovely

as that is.  Think tight-fitting leather britches!

Bow thruster tunnel.  Help me out here . . .  I can’t come up with an analogous part of human anatomy for this.

Two closing notes:  A new Henrysobsession post is up!!  Henry, 400 years ago, dejected and sullied, heading back east, giving up on Cathay for awhile.

Livet came from the Netherlands some years ago–I’d like to know more about this–but is not headed back east with the fleet that danced and sang up the Hudson recently.  That fleet will be loaded aboard Flinterborg in Port of Albany starting tomorrow.  So here’s a proposition:  if you’re anywhere near the Hudson Tuesday into Wednesday . . . please take fotos of the 15-masted motor vessel as it steams southbound. I’d love to see pics.  I’ll share departure time from Albany as I find it out.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated:  See what Joey from Gloucester thinks of the sixth boro.    I like it;  I’ve added you to my blogroll.

Also unrelated:  See Kimberly Poling push a barge 212′ beneath the new Walkway at Poughkeepsie.

Atlantic Basin Barge Muster

Those lucky Hudson Valley towns:  the “flat-bottoms” move upriver today after a festive send-0ff yesterday from Atlantic Basin.  Portside NewYork had published a wonderful PDF guide to Red Hook and the barges available here.

The setting sun in Red Hook has too rarely enjoyed such beautiful surfaces to paint with low-angle light and color.

The clouds heightened the sense of ceremony as

the barges paraded in . . . singles or

pairs . . .  to

the shelter of the enclosed Basin within

of New York skyline.  (By the way . . . two fotos up following the two skutsjes into the Basin is the barquentine Peacemaker.  More on them later.)  After dark the

music man appeared with his vessel Cecelia to

create magic.  More fotos of this muster later.

Thanks to all involved from this dweller of the banks around the sixth boro.  And if you live upriver in the next two weeks, enjoy!  And if you get great fotos and want me to share them here, send me an email.

Here and here are some foto links.

By the way, exactly 400 years ago today, according to Juet’s journal, the Half Moon made it up to present-day West Point.  See Henrysobsession.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Narrows Encounter

This morning at dawn,  replica Half Moon, was anchored in Gravesend Bay.  Four hundred years ago, VOC Half Moon was, and worlds began to collide.  Today they continue to collide.  They don’t need to.  Empathize.

Let’s dance to our neighbor’s drum as well as to our own.  Foto above was taken at the Salt Festival on August 29.  Thanks to Red Storm Drum & Dance Troupe for posing.

Bowsprite and I have been trying to imagine this collision, with all its casualties and boons, angst and ecstasy, steps forward and back . . . in Henry’s Obsession.

Flinterduin Arrives in New York

With many thanks to everydayeastriver.tumblr.com . . .  welcome Flinterduin!  In the next few hours, her cargo will be offloaded, and the sixth boro will see sail and leeboards as it never has before.  Amusing though confusing was the counterclockwise victory lap of Governors Island Flinterduin indulged before heading under the southernmost East River bridges on her way to GMD.

More later, but here’s another look at her deckload.

Might there be an as-yet unannounced tugboat race entry down in the hold?  And the contest . . . not over yet.

Two Ships and a Tale

So that I avoid being labelled too much of a tease, I’ll start by saying . . . this post features two ships and a tale, but I do NOT know the tale of the two ships,  which in themselves are related only in that they both traversed the KVK yesterday morning in opposite directions.  The tale comes at the end, but before we get there, imagine loading a large population of boro6’s historic vessels onto a ship for a festival on another continent. for example, suppose the groups and people responsible for Pioneer, Lettie G. Howard, Pegasus, Shearwater, and Adirondack agree for their treasures to be –literally–shipped to South America for a festival.  Visualize the emotional cargo making its way to the south.  (Btw, if you don’t know these vessels, type the names into the search window on the left side of this blog.) And I’ll get back to this.

Now let’s learn some taxonomy (tjalk, aak, jol, botter, hoogaars, skutsje) and some place names (Lemster, Giethoorne, Zeeuwland).   Ponder those words;  I’ll get back to them too.

Here are two more shots of Sea Miror, also depicted in yesterday’s post.

Judging by the stains on the hull, I’m guessing this bulk carrier, its previous life betrayed by the paint job on the stack, transports a building material like cement.  Anyone help with this?

Moving toward my point, I gave a big KVK welcome yesterday to MV Marneborg, a general cargo ship registered in

Delfzijl, up near the North Sea border between Netherlands and Germany.  This area serves as setting for one of my favorite sailing books:  Riddle of the Sands (1903),  by Erskine Childers, author, sailor, and Irish nationalist executed by the British in 1922.  I love the sailing and intrigue in the book.

Marneborg has the profile of contemporary northern European general cargo carriers;  actually, she looks not unlike Flinterduin, featured here a few days ago.  I’ve duly noted that the extraordinary orange survey vessel betrays a desire to follow Marneborg here. That’s Brooklyn in the hazy background.

So, when Flinterduin arrives in less than a week, it will treat sixth boro watchers with some quite unique and historic Dutch sailing vessels.  Some examples:

Sterre (translated “Stars”)  a tjalk built in 1887!

Vrouwe (Lady) Cornelia, a tjalk built in 1888.

De Goede Hoop (Good Hope) , a staverse jol.

Delfzijl, a modern port.  Lemster, once a traditional Zuyder Zee fishing village.  Giethoorne, another tiny water village.  Zeeuwland, a province along the southwest coast of the Netherlands.  The list could be very long, but the point is that coastal Netherlands, like coastal US, has places each associated with various boat types.  For example, Jonesport lobster boats, Cape Ann schooners and dories, Chesapeake skipjacks . . . .

More tales on this later, as my excitement for September builds.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp and imaginary gnomes.

Remember the foto contest:  material prize for the best foto of Flinterduin entering New York or making its way up to the Brooklyn Navy Yard on or about August 31,  As of dawn August 27, tracking shows Flinterduin NW of the Azores, about halfway across.

An Extraordinary . . .

In mid-August 1609 Robert Juet wrote in the log of Half Moon–that Half Moon— . . “we killed an extraordinary fish . . .”  Nothing more in the way of explanation or description or taste did he write.  That makes me want to speculate all night and all day . . and start a game like . .  what extraordinary thing else might they have killed or at least experienced.  Check out the extraordinary catch I witnessed today in the KVK.  They pull and

they strain and

bring up a most extraordinary . . . cement block.  “Part of a sediment sampling monitoring program,” I hear.  Although Kenneth Biglane is a locally-based EPA vessel,  I’ve never seen it until today.  Incidentally, the vessel’s namesake studied oil spill containment in many places including the Torrey Canyon spill in 1967.

Earlier in the morning, a most extraordinary orange boat, previously depicted on this blog, crisscrosses the KVK as part of a sampling of sediments, I’m told, that

are no longer there as well as what’s left below where the silt is no longer there . . . or something.  Michele Jeanne sampled away until it had to get out of Sea Miror‘s way, and then

Tomorrow, another day, I’ll go off in search of more extraordinary . . . .  Join along?  By the way, Sea Miror is ex-Maritime Pearl, 1990.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Other Watersheds 3

Unless you already know from the clues here, you’ll have to guess:  from left to right and at anchor, Vane Brothers Chesapeake, Wye River, and Tuckahoe. Slightly off center to the right is Scotia Sea.  The twin raked funnels I won’t identify til later.

So yes, clearly this is another watershed.  Am I cheating on boro6 by blogging about this?  No way!!  I don’t use the word “cheating” that way.  Did Henry Hudson “cheat” on Europa by exploring new passages and connections?  Did the Apollo 11 folks cheat on the Earth?  By my perspective,  sampling of all sorts spices our inner broth,  chases off monotony,  sustains life, and just follows logically from curiosity and wonder.  If you call it cheating, then you might say I cheat all the time.  But to do otherwise would be to cheat myself.  End of rant.

Any guesses on the location?

Scotia Sea is ex-Mr Shep.  Guess where Scotia Sea is located before clicking here.

Bohemia here passes . . .Campbell Field.  Now that’s a clue.

All I’ll say about Jupiter now is that it was built in 1902 in this city at the yard of Neafie & Levy.

Jupiter‘s horns.  I’d love to hear them.

M as in Myle . . . pronounced “my lee.”

This city also hosts the cruiser USS Olympia, and

the slightly older look-alike of the sixth boro’s very own Peking.  This bark is Moshulu, which in the Seneca language means “one who fears nothing.”  It was aboard this vessel that the author Eric Newby once worked.

Tugboat Jupiter link

Cruiser Olympia link

Barque Moshulu

And this is the city of brotherly (and sisterly and everybodily, one would hope) love.  The two raked stacks off in the distance in first foto top the SS United States, launched the year I was born:  such a young fast creature she is.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

In case you missed the hint above, TWO NEW messages have arrived from Henry Hudson, modulated by hurricane winds and arriving across 400 years almost precisely.  Check them here and  here.  I have to confess, I feared we’d lost his signal, but  . . .  oh the joys of 21st PLUS 17th century technology!!

Meditations U

U . . . “you”  as in thank you for bearing with me.  Truth be told . . . my first thought was of Bart’s beautiful site uglyships, but he does that so well, I fear to cross or even approach his wake, and judging by his enthusiastic fan hatemail, he has quite the following.  So I’m using a series of unrelated U’s.

I can tease and start with underwear, as in the bottom paint on scow 65, here moved on the hip by Melvin E. Lemmerhirt.  Wear and chemistry might be beckoning new bottom paint here.  Watch the foreshadowing in this post.

Unchanged landscape.  This is the Henry Hudson year, and Bowsprite and I are not the only ones somewhat obsessed by that Henry.  In spite of the dramatic transformation of Manhattan and environs, islands like this in Jamaica Bay might give a sense of what Henry saw when he sailed into the sixth boro.  Now if this were Bowsprite’s post, she’d inform you by block letters that clash with her charming calligraphy that the foto below is “not to be used for navigation.”

Under-reported.  That’s a series on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show.  I love it.  John P. Brown (2002)  and Bohemia (2009) are two under-reported boats on this blog.

Unidentifiable . . . some language on the stern of this trawler.  What make of trawler?  I really don’t know.

Road Harbour is on a British island in the Caribbean, but the script looks somewhat yet not quite like Inuktitut.  What it is?

“Up” position . . . where the wheelhouse currently set.  Designed for the canal system, Cheyenne can lower the wheelhouse, if needed.

Unbounded . . . came to mind as I watched this trimaran sail towards the sixth boro, here past Hook Mountain.  Unbounded like summer when you have no ties holding you back.  Trimaran name is Friends;  on a journey with that, you’d soon make them.

Unbelievable . . .  that the mermaid parade took place a month ago already.  Tell me it’s not true.  I’ve read that Andy Golub does beautiful painting event around the boros but I’ve yet to catch one.  Remember my earlier comment about bottom paint?

Unidentified . . . this vessel moving up the Rondout more than a month ago.  I remain with two questions:  what’s its name and are there spars that make this a schooner?

U . . . actually if I might indulge in “textingspeak,”  I happy w U read my blog.  At least that’s how I do texting, lazy yet impatient as I am.  On a whim I started this meditations series, because I wanted to get out of a rut that convenience had pushed me into, but I feel the encouragement you send along, and that has given me a stretch.  Thank you for helping a community germinate and grow.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Remember, click on the fotos to enlarge them.  Do one twice, and you might be surprised.

Meditations U . . .  just realize it sounds like higher ed.   Get a pennant on your wall to show support for  . . .  Med U.