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In fall 2010, deepening dredging was happening in the sixth boro to prepare for the ULCVs now so commonplace here, after Panama Canal enlargement and Bayonne Bridge raising. These operations afforded me the chance to see a cutterhead close up. The crewman wielding the hammer was trying to loosen a worn tooth. By the way, those teeth weigh 35 pounds each. Teeth . . . dentist?
Then as now, Layla Renee was in the dredge support trade. Right now she’s in Charleston. She was only two years old at the time of the photo.
It looks that way, but W. O. Decker is NOT a dredge tender in this photo. Here five people on Decker are catching the stare of the one dredge worker in work vest.
The entire K-Sea fleet has disappeared. As of 2020, Falcon has become Carol and I’ve not yet seen her latest livery. Houma was scrapped in 2017 in Baltimore.
Here are two of the McAllister tugs involved in easing MSC’s USNS Sisler (T-AKR 311)into Bayonne drydock as then-John P. Brown manages the door. For many more photos of the event, check out “floating the door,” where you also see Allied’s Sea Raven, unlabelled.
I caught Growler at Mystic Seaport that fall. Rumor has it that Growler has returned to the sixth boro under a new name and sans teeth, but is under wraps.
Also in Mystic at that time, 1885 steam/sail vessel Amazon (has nothing to do with Bezos), the 2000 Amistad, and the 1908 steamer Sabino. Does anyone know the whereabouts of Amazon today?
My reason to be in Mystic that October was to work on Pegasus, seen here with Araminta and Cangarda. What works of beauty all three are!
Deborah Quinn here is docked near where Jakobson Shipyard used to be located. I believe that’s her location as of this writing.
Under the old Bayonne bridge, Maurania III assumes position to ease the 1997 Maersk Kokura around Bergen Point. Maurania III is currently in Wilmington NC.
Back a decade ago, Day Peckinpaugh had some good paint on her, and Frances was like a cocoon in Turecamo livery. There’s scuttlebutt of a new lease on life for Day Peckinpaugh.
Let’s end with dredging, as we began. Terrapin Island was one of the regulars in the navigation dredging effort. Terrapin Island is currently in Norfolk.
All photos, October 2010, by WVD.
Big announcement soon.
Call this Something Different 21 followup, four and a half years on. From that October 2015 post, I’d say art deco tug meet art deco yacht, built in 1941 by Palmer Scott in Fairhaven MA as a prototype for Revere Copper and Brass Inc. Hence the name Revere. I’d first thought it was named for the city.
And why the title? Because this morning when following link to link, I arrived at this article by Krista Karlson about an exhibit I’d missed. Sorry, Mystic, and now more sorry.
It turns out there was a Revere plant right beside Palmer Scott’s boatyard, if I read the last page here correctly. Timing may have stifled follow up to the project, and after the war, other boat building materials were used. But what became of this all metal, welded Cupro-nickel vessel? Have Revere thought of manufacturing these?
I’d love to know more about the travels of Revere, which in the photo above appears to be headed downstream in the North River.
Related: Last year I posted a photo of a mystery vessel I referred to as a boat/rat rod here. I see some similar lines.
I could have called this “unusual sail.”
That’s me in the two-person sailing Folbot back in 2002. I had bought it back around 1998 from an ad I saw in a publication called Messing Around in Boats. The gentleman who sold it said it had been in his barn for at least 30 years. When I peeled off a layer of pigeon shit, the skin came off with it and exposed a wooden frame that broke down into pieces four-foot or shorter. The hull, mast, leeboards, sail, rudder all could fit into a seabag, and I fancied myself, a show-off, hiking up to a roadless mountain lake, assembling my vessel, and sailing . . . in the clouds.
When I couldn’t sew a new skin or find someone who could do it–two different canvas shops took on the job and then backed out–I decided to skin it with leftover shrink-wrap boat covers,
reinforce the bow with duct tape, and go paddling.
It worked! Here’s a blurry shot showing the insides . . . shrink-wrap and plastic strapping.
As time passed, I decided the Folbot could at least as be sculptural until such time that I find a canvas skin maker.
So this is the top of big room in my Queens cliff dwelling, where I should maybe keep some shrink-wrap and a heat gun handy to skin my boat in case the water level here rises.
And since I’ve invited you into my home, how about more of the tour. Yes, that’s the stern of the Folbot in the center top of the photo and a spare one-seater kayak, which I cut-bent-glued-stitched at Mystic Seaport, to the left. [They appear not to offer the kayak building classes now.] Only problem with the stitched kayak . . . the only egress/ingress is out the window, down 12′ onto a flat roof, and then down another 15′ onto the sidewalk.
In a pinch, you could make a kayak using a tarp, willow or similar shoots, and wire. And in the long ago and far away department, here I was back in January 2005 sewing that kayak you see hanging to the left above . . . 10 hours of just sewing once the skin was on, per these plans.
Bending ribs right out of the steam box and
knotting together the bow pieces happened
prior to the actual two-needle sewing.
These last two pics are not mine but come from a Folbot publication from the 1960s. The photo below shows what a later-model sailing Folbot–just out of the duffel bag– looked like.
Here’s what the publication says it looks like sailing.
For now, mine remains sculpture.
Julia approaches Nanticoke from the stern and
transfers a visitor. (Doubleclick enlarges.)
Anthony L. shuttles
dock lines
to the bollard.
Note the man in the blue shirt under and awning just above the afterdeck of Resolute; he’s
squeezing–with yards to spare– into the least-likely marina space in the sixth boro.
Not so able to squeeze into places or remain incognito, it ‘s Eos!!!
And Eos shared the Sunday morning harbor with this vessel, Aviva. Foto by Birk Thomas. Identification by Vladimir Brezina.
Meanwhile, some odds and ends. Amazon, depicted here last fall, has mere days left at Mystic Seaport. See her while you can.
And, thanks to Soni Biehl of greater Eastport, Maine, here’s a great 10-minute video followup on the pregnant cows in CATS post I put up five (!) months ago already here.
Finally, here’s info on the “Save our Seaport“meeting tomorrow night in near South Street.
All fotos except Birk’s by Will Van Dorp.
Baidarka . . . an intriguing name for a ketch . . . docked in Waterford, New York and headed home!! Keep your eyes peeled for them soon in the sixth boro.
Can you guess the name of this tug with Halloween decoration in the wheelhouse? Answer follows.
So they do . . . as do poltergeists, especially in the Hudson Valley. This is in the tributary of Catskill Creek.
Any wagers on the name of this old wooden yacht, overgrown in a marina across from Dunderberg Mountain?
I really wanted to add a preposition “of” between the top and middle lines here.
Atlantic Salvor . . . here with a scow in the KVK, lines and name make my heart beat faster.
Deborah Quinn waits at the old Jakobson yard in Oyster Bay. I’ve never seen her in the sixth boro.
Canvasback lies in Mystic . . . seeing and being seen among the beauties at Mystic, as is
true of Sinbad VI.
So, those spiderwebs . . . were in the house of hard-to-read The Chancellor, on the wall in Waterford last weekend.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Late summer sail might look like this, Clipper City motorsailing up the Buttermilk Channel past Caribbean Princess, and early autumn
sail like this: Gazela showing the flag in Oyster Bay. The town dock here is roughly located in the former Jakobson yard, and that’s Growler and the Jakobson-built Deborah Quinn (1957, ex-W. R. Coe, Karen Tibbets, Ethel Tibbets) across from Gazela. W. R. Coe’s first work was for the Virginian Railroad.
Early autumn sailing can also look like this: Breck Marshall‘s skipper standing while making her play in the wind.
Or this: a heeled over Escape Plan.
or this: 1929 Summerwind playing a bit before headed for the Chesapeake Schooner race last month.
while on that same day Lettie G. Howard comes out of slumber to mingle with the likes of this
varnished catboat-with-a-blog named Silent Maid.
Getting later into autumn can mean mild weather and bright light over this aptly-named vessel–Persephone . . . preparing to head for the underworld or –at least–the southern approach to northern winter.
Or it can look like this: skipper Richard Hudson beginning winter preparations as Issuma heads in the direction of its port of registry . . . the Yukon.
More Issuma soon.
For now, as you make your own preparations for winter, check out this new Thad Koza 2011 Tall Ship calendar featuring a sixth-boro based schooner . . . . Any guesses?
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Don’t forget to send in your estimate of the cost of ONE of these cutter head teeth. Answer SOON!
J. P. Morgan’s Hoboken-built Corsair II sometimes flashes by from either an image or reference, but I never saw it: it turned into scrap about 10 years before I was born. I never expected to see anything like it. I did know of Vajoliroja, Johnny Depp’s yacht. And did post this foto (see 3rd foto from bottom) of Atlantide, with some lines like steam-yacht headed up the Hudson last fall. So the following vessels quite astounded me in Mystic. First, Cangarda.
My fotos do not do justice to
this ocean-spanning gem that currently
boasts seven steam engines!
If you can, get thee to Mystic soon to see this gem, “managed” by Steven Cobb, a former master of Wavertree and other vessels.
Currently, Mystic has TWO steam yachts aka screw schooner. Amazon was dieselized
in 1937.
If I ever see either of these gems at sea, my first reaction will be to rub my eyes in disbelief, imagining them mirages . . . until I recall my most recent visit to Mystic.
Here are a few dozen fotos of Cangarda taken between 1901 and 1999. Here’s a link to an article on the owner of Cangarda (scroll about halfway though). Stuff can go awry at a ship launch, and that ALMOST what happened with Cangarda. Cangarda joins a list of prestigious yachts saved through the efforts of folks at IYRS.
Here’s an article on Amazon, launched 1885!
Finally, just a potpourri of steam yacht images, of which one to see must be Gondola.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Mystic, to quote Soundbounder, is “Disneyland for [proud] water rats” and thrills even the dogs, at least water dogs. Can you figure out what’s happening here?
Kingston II was launched in 1937 after being assembled by apprentice welders at Electric Boat.
Amazon (an 1885 screw schooner) graces Mystic with her beauty until her lightning-charred electronics are repaired. Just beyond her with the wildly raked masts is Amistad, also in for repairs.
Amazon (83′ waterline x 15′ beam) embodies long and lean.
Breck Marshall, a Crosby catboat, sails like a dream.
Mina is a sweet “launchetta” from exactly a century ago.
Growler leaves early on Columbus Day.
Be-puddinged garvey with dory and high-and-dry whaleship Morgan.
And the dog question . . . John Paul (launched 1967, ex-Katrina, Nickie B, and U. T. 1) , moored for part of weekend, had a blueclaw on a piece of fendering designed to allow assisting of submarine. Dog saw crab and became so curious it nearly tried walking on water.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. More on some of these vessels soon.
Mystic Seaport . . a magical place for me for over 20 years! I’ve done research there and watched Amistad being built. Some fotos of Amistad tomorrow.
From this weekend, Mystic has even more magic: more fotos of Pegasus there, surrounded by fantastic vessels and people. Below, from left to right: Araminta, Cangarda (WOW!!! and more later), Pegasus, and Joseph Conrad.
Peg with lots of happy visitors next to L. A. Dunton, built in Essex, MA in 1921 and now hasn’t sailed since 1963 . . . if my memory serves me well.
More of Peg, happy visitors, and Dunton.
Foreground left to right: motor launch Resolute, Araminta, Sabino, Peg, and Dunton’s headrig. Sabino is a 1908 . .. Maine-built steamer that once ran my recent waters . . . the Merrimack.
Some of same vessels as seen from Cangarda‘s bow.
Catboat Breck Marshall comes nosing past Peg. More pics of Breck Marshall soon.
As a “flying horse whisperer,” I know Pegasus feels honored to have spent the weekend at Mystic. If you haven’t been to the Tugs exhibit at Mystic yet, go . . . soon, so that you can go again and again after that.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
What’s this?
Would you believe the object in the first foto here rubs faces with the formidable 8th Sea? And does so sans fear.
This gives “flat bottom” a whole different meaning. No comparisons with an athlete’s belly fit here, as was true for Livet.
It’s the mighty albeit miniature Sea Horse, possibly Hippocampus ingens plywoodus connecticutus, here communing with Mystic Seaport’s resident tug, Kingston II, I believe.
Here is owner/builder/captain Stuart Pate at the Waterford Tug Roundup . . . was that already almost a month ago? Yes, that’s Mame Faye off right.
The engine room. Tohatsu 9.8. Note the ” onboard auxilliary re-powering system” or O.A.R.S. for short, athwartship between the chairs. Seahorsepower? Immeasurable. Bollard pull? Inestimable. I’ve heard Paul Bunyanesque rumors about the results of the nose-to-nose push-off contest. And deep draft on the tug . . . unfathomable.
Thanks to Stuart for all the fotos except the last two. For plans, see here.
Unrelated: Below is a foto by Jeff Anzevino, showing Flinterborg headed upriver Saturday. When she leaves Albany some time tomorrow, she’ll be carrying a deckload of Dutch barges. Check this site for fotos of the barges rolicking their way upriver.
Happy river watching.
tugster: a waterblog 
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