Where “Exotics” Ain’t Exotic 3 b

One more to underscore the increasing frequency of a variety of these boats . . . Brooks McCall even today is working an area of Long Island Sound between Plum Island and Fishers Island.

That’s Millstone Point in the background. 

Brooks McCall is slightly older and longer than Miss Emma McCall, from yesterday’s post.  Brooks appears to operate out of the Thames River. 

Note above three towed surface “sleds” (not sure what they are called) attached to the boat, as seen below.  

This is the best I could do from a bit 

over a mile distance . . . .

Abreast of us, she turned to starboard and showed

her arm.

All photos last week, WVD. 

Here’s where TDI worked earlier.  “Our specialty is the survey, geotechnical and benthic components of these wind farm projects,” according to their CEO.

 

Tugs on the Sound 1

Here are some previous Sound posts. Recognize those buildings about 30 miles from my location?

How about this tug with a string of scows?

 

Yacht traffic in this location between Huntington and Stamford seemed to be in a hurry.

If you didn’t recognize this tug earlier you can’t miss the name now . . .   Mister T is a Blount built boat from 2001.

 

 

How about this one?  There aren’t many tugs in the area that look like this when the wheelhouse is hydraulically raised.

Here’s the skyline a few hours after the first photo, showing only midtown and up.

All photos from the Sound by WVD.  That tug with raised wheelhouse was Justine McAllister, a 1982 product of Jakobson on Oyster Bay, one bay to the west from my vantage point on Sound Wave out of Huntington Bay.

Sound Ferries 2

After I return to CSF with a camera, I’ll pick up part 1 again.   For now, let’s look at another ferry line that crosses the Sound.  By the way, how many ferries do you see in the photo below?

It was a foggy day in Port Jefferson that I chose to walk on for a jaunt across the Sound.

Grand Republic, certainly not the first vessel to carry that name, was getting some maintenance, so her sister vessel, P. T. Barnum, would be my ride. More on a much-earlier Grand Republic and a question at the end of this post.

This Grand Republic and this P. T. Barnum were launched four years apart, in 2003 and 1999, respectively. Mr. P. T. Barnum was a co-founder of the line, creating a ferry route that ran between his hometown of Bridgeport, nicknamed Park City,  and the port in Long Island farm country, Port Jefferson.

We backed out of the dock of a very foggy village of Port Jeff.

Here’s a phenomenon I don’t understand:  on either side of P. T. Barnum, I saw these rainbows.  Why there?

Mid-Sound we passed Park City.  She’s the oldest (1986),  smallest, and greenest of the current fleet.  When Park City was launched in Florida, she apparently made alligators fly;  read about it here.

Back in March, while in Seaside Park, one of the big parks in Bridgeport, I watched Park City sail into the port.

Later that same windy and cold March day, I watched Grand Republic sail in.

Here I’m looking north from just inside Port Jefferson harbor.  It’s worth a glance at a map to see how protected this harbor is.

All photos, WVD.

Related:  I’ve heard there’s a difference between the McAllister family and the McAlister family, the latter referred to here.  Can anyone jog my memory?  Of course, that may be yet another story than the one recounted in the 150 Years of Family Business book, in relation to the tugboat Iona McAlister.   Has anyone been to the Greenpoint bar called Grand Republic?

Mostly unrelated:  Here are two interesting postcards, one featuring the Starin  fleet, which McAllister acquired to form their own ferry business, and second . . . an appropriation of the Statue both from 150 years ago.

If you ride the ferry or just visit Port Jeff, spend a few minutes inside the office for some vintage photos like Nonowantuc (a native name for part of the Port Jeff area) and

Victor.  Info on all the boats can be found here.

x

Sound Ferries 1

New London with bow ramp open here . . . has to be the fastest and one of the cleanest boat for Cross Sound Ferry (CSF).  I mean cleanest burning,  with its recently added Tier 3 Cummins power.  She was CSF’s first new build, coming off the ways in New London in 1979.

What I like about New London is the design allows a passenger to see over the vehicles at the wake, vehicles oriented toward the stern

or the bow.

John H, the largest CSF  vessel, was built for the company in 1989.

She has the capacity of 100 vehicles and 1000 passengers.

Mary Ellen was in 1983 by Offshore Shipbuilding in Palatka Florida as Grand Republic for the Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Ferry (BPPF).  That fleet will be next when I post more on ferries on Long Island Sound.

Once loaded at Orient Point NY, she backs out of the rack while lowering the bow ramp.  In that she reminds me of Badger, although there, it’s the stern ramp that lowers upon departure.

I did several trips on BPPJ ferries back in 2000 as I shifted domicile from MA to NY, so I’m guessing I rode or saw this vessel ass Grand Republic at that time.

Caribbean Ferry is called that because she originally worked in the Caribbean after coming off the ways at Blount in the 1970s.

And until I get photos of the remaining CSF boats, we’ll end here with the most distinguished, Cape Henlopen, launched in 1943 as USS Buncombe County (LST-510) from Jeffersonville Boat and Machine Company.  In early 1944 as an LST, she departed NYC for a convoy crossing over to Europe, where she took part in the D-Day landings.  Subsequent to the end of WW2, she worked as a ferry crossing the Chesapeake Bay, then Delaware Bay, before coming to CSF in 1983.  She also operates with Tier 3 engines at this point.  That’s the light on Little Gull Island in the distance.

One goal I’ve set for the nearer future is to ride or at least see all the other CSF boats.

All photos, WVD.

Sound Platform

Let’s start at the Mattituck Inlet . . . and look east.  I’d never had a sense of the bluffs here.

I’d come here to catch a glimpse of the platform, the only deepwater petroleum platform on the US east coast, I’m told.

It was built in the 1960s by Northville Industries,

which in the decade before had built this storage facility. You can find more of that history here.

By the time I got closer, a tanker had arrived.

Kimolos carries the livery of the TEN fleet, like Afrodite.  Kimolos has previously appeared in this blog nine years ago.

I believe those are two Miller’s Launch boats alongside the platform.   Kimolos has since departed for Sint Eustatius. 

All photos, WVD.

Jetster Inbound

The flight back home through LaGuardia the other day chilled with its turbulence but thrilled with scenery.  I used my phone rather than camera to avoid hitting the window with the lens.

Here we enter  NYC airspace over Raritan Bay.  Imagine this on a clock face at the 0800 and heading clockwise. The land is the SW corner of Staten Island.  That’s Outerbridge Crossing over the Arthur Kill (AK), and the cargo vessel following the ever-so-strange channel is SCT Matterhorn, all 538′ of her outbound.

Here we look at the creeks in Freshkills Park, Isle of Meadows, and then Carteret NJ on the other side of the AK;  just off the left side of the photo is the location of the marine scrapyard featured in my documentary, Graves of Arthur Kill. 

A few seconds later, our Embraer 190 crosses the KVK;  dead center is the Bayonne Bridge and Shooters Island at the confluence of Newark Bay (to the north, or right on this photo) and the Kills . . . Arthur and Kill Van.  We’re now at about 0900 on our clock face.

Here’s my favorite shot of the series . . . the entire length of the curvy KVK.  Exiting the Kills and bound for sea past the Staten Island Yankees stadium is the 751′ Hoegh Asia.   I’ve no idea who’s on first.   The salt pile and the IMTT tank farm are key landmarks.

Below are the twin peninsulas of MOTBY, with Bayonne Drydock and the Bayonne Cruise terminal directly across that peninsula.  In the lower rightmost patch of green on this peninsula you can locate the statue dedicated by Putin . . . yes, THAT Putin.    The peninsula to the right–the Global terminals Bayonne— accommodates container ships and ROROs. In the distance Newark Bay Bridge and the rail bridge to its right cross Newark Bay.

Slightly farther north, you can see Global terminals, the Weeks Marine yard, the Greenville rail docks serving NYNJ Rail, and Sims scrap yard in Jersey City, where an unidentified bunker loads.

Approaching 1000 on my clock, here’s the confluence of the Hackensack (nearer) and Passaic Rivers, forming the SE point of Kearny NJ where they become the north end of Newark Bay.  Several hundred ships were built in the Kearny yard–this side of the point–in the first half of the 20th century. The Passaic disappears here into the tall buildings of Newark NJ.

Behold the meadowlands, and if you want to read a good book about that marsh, here’s a review of Robert Sullivan’s book, one of my all-time favorites.  Captains Bill or Hughie give fun tours there too.

So remember this flight is headed into LaGuardia from the NE, so that puts us at 1400 on our clock face, and that means we’re over New Rochelle this point in the approach pattern and that’s Hempstead Bay beyond Sands Point, with Execution Rocks Light looking like a submarine near leftish  center of photo.   The top of the photo looks SE across Nassau County.

It’s City Island, the most unlikely part of the Bronx, to which it’s connected by the City Island Bridge.

And just before landing . . .  it’s Throgs Neck …  and a few seconds later, touch down.

All I can add is that I was glad for a portside window seat on the Embraer.  All that water, that’s what I call the sixth boro.  More Jetster soon . . . .

 

270 nmi to Rendezvous with Kings Pointer

This is day 8 of the GHP&W series, so let me break pattern a bit.  If you missed the beginning, GHP&W is not a law firm; it’s abbrev for “gunk holes, harbors, ports, and wharves.”  I haven’t dusted off any wharves yet, but two-thirds of the months still lie ahead.

The story here is that TS Kings Pointer was out serving as a training platform and not at Kings Point, although there was a potential meeting somewhere south along our track to Portsmouth, VA.

Mile 1, 0738 Wednesday, heading for the Throg’s Neck Bridge.

0756.  Passing SUNY Maritime and TS Empire State. Click here for photos from her summer sea term 2015.

0804, Robert Burton, a Norfolk boat.

0907, Mary Gellatly with a sand scow at the southern tip of Governors Island.

1010, passing the northern tip of Sandy Hook but looking back at Naval Weapons Station Earle, with USNS Medgar Evers at the wharf.

1017, Romer Shoal Light and Coney Island.

1517, Capt. Willie Landers northbound off Beach Haven, I think.

1612, FV Jonathan Ryan and tug Pops in the distance.

1618, entering a grid marked “numerous scientific buoys.”

1657 off Atlantic City, with unidentified tug and barge

1740 and about to switch watch.

Thursday, 0852, looking north into the Chesapeake after going wide around Fisherman Island.

0910 . . . it’s the current  TS Kings Pointer, ex-Liberty Star. . .

 

. . . heading along Virginia Beach

before turning northward toward Long Island Sound.  Her former sister ship–Freedom Star–was in the area but we did not see her.

Meanwhile, we head north into the Thimble Shoal Channel Tunnel and into port, which you can follow tomorrow.  And that tug and crane barge in the distance . . . survey work for new infrastructure or maintenance dredging?

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, with thanks to the USMMA Sailing Foundation for inviting me to crew in winter relocation for Tortuga.  It was a smooth trip.

Mary Ellen

Any guesses?  It’s a view I’d never seen until a last-minute arrival on the ferry set me up to be the very last car to debark.  The afternoon light wafting into the cargo space was a treat.

Here she is in profile departing New London.

built 1983, major renovation in 2003

 

In the right light, she’s a beauty.  Notice the low profile of the North Fork of Long Island along the horizon to the right below.

Just to the left of the stack, that’s Cape Henlopen, ex-LST 510.

 

Finally, another shot of the empty cargo deck.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Thanks to N. S. Martello

Sal Martello posted this comment –“I posted some pics of half moon on marine traffic.com if you want to use those pic for your blog.”  So I went and looked and here they are.

Sal took these photos–all sizes–off the Connecticut coast around the first day of summer in 2011.

Thanks much, Sal.  If anyone approaches the vessel on the Sound today, you’d think it was the middle day of winter given the snow in the air.

 

Balancing … or Not 2

If you click here and are familiar with some of the changes on the NYC waterfront, you’ll know some of these landmarks are gone.  Debate on choices of what to save and what to preserve are endless.  Recognize the vessel below?  What was its past and will be its future?

The vessel above and the one below live about 20 miles from Hell Gate.  Christeen, below, was built as an oyster sloop in 1883.  Click here and here for video of Christeen under sail today.

Here’s a summary of Christeen‘s features.  Click here for a quick timeline of  150+ years of water history of Oyster Bay, NY.  Of course, Oyster Bay launched many tugboats during the half century of Jakobson‘s tenure there.   Scan the list for boats that have appeared on this blog, (Cornell, Margot, Houma, Maryland, Escort, Consort …) too numerous to link to now, but you can use the search window to see them.  Jakobson’s even built a small submarine, X-1.  Jakobson’s yard is now gone without many traces.

The vessel in the top foto is Ida May as she currently looks, but

she once looked like this.

This is a down-at-the-heels queen whose future

hangs in the balance.  More info is available through the

Waterfront Center.

What prompted this post is an article in the NYTimes this morning about Pier D, near 64th Street.  If you’ve never seen it,

you won’t.  It’s gone.  See the article here.  I took this foto less than three months ago.

All fotos by will Van Dorp.