From the Line Locker 33

Remember Solar Sal from yesterday’s post?  A sharp-eyed reader recalled having seen in in a boatyard this past June.  Question:  Where is that boatyard?  Answer follows.

Geoquip Saentis is a “regular exotic” in the sixth boro, although at a certain time that becomes an oxymoron.   But what is that irregular shape along her starboard side?

Here you see more of it on the shore beyond Joyce D. Brown.

Here’s one more shot . . . from a different angle.

Here was the roughly the same area back in July.  It’s the Military Ocean Terminal, a shoreside that’s changing quickly. 

Here from two years ago that now imploded building is to the right below.  Click here for the implosion less than two weeks ago.

Oasis of the Seas has been in town the past few days, the first cruise ship here in about a year and a half.  I’ve never notice this “wave breaker” on previous cruise ships.  It appears to be protection for the tenders.

 

Yesterday Oasis was docked opposite YM Width. 

This head-on shot shows the bulky profile of Oasis.

Getting back to Solar Sal, that photo was sent along yesterday by George Schneider, who took then photo in Berkeley, California!

All other photos, WVD.

Claremont

Claremont  . . . the place of ore and scrap.  Stand by. 

Let’s get oriented.  See the Statue midright slightly top in the map grab below?  Now follow the line representing the longer ferry route.  That is the Claremont Terminal Channel, a place you don’t go to unless you have to.  That ferry picks up on the south side of Port Liberté.  Here‘s a great montage of images in different directions from there.

See the bare earth and all the scows stacked up along the SW side of channel?

This is the domain of Sims Metal Claremont Jersey City. Find out about the shredder pulpit, zorba, and the monetary values of things related to Claremont here.  Sims is named for Albert Sims, of Sydney AU, who started the company over a century ago. To see the yard closer up, go to google earth and zoom in.

Quite often a bulk carrier is docked there, loading mostly steel and ferrous scrap in chunks created by the megashredder mentioned above along with zorba. 

One fact that’s interesting to me is from 150 years ago back to time immemorial, this was likely marsh grass leading into rich oyster beds.  In 1920 it was bulkheaded “by the Lehigh Valley railroad to unload ore-laden freighters from South America, the Claremont Terminal’s considerable dockside trackage was used to quickly deliver raw ore for use in the steel mills of Bethlehem Steel at Bethlehem, PA.”  During WW2, it “was repurposed for the loading of US Army troopships and transports following the war and working in conjunction with the Caven Point Army Terminal provided much of the material used by US forces in the early years of the Korean War.”  I’d love to know where in South America the ore came from.

On the other side of the channel is Caven Point, “operational from early 1900’s until the early 1970’s [as] a large US Army installation located on the tidal flats of Jersey City. Caven Point’s proximity to key rail networks and the ports of New York and New Jersey made it invaluable for the marshalling of troops, munitions and materials heading for front lines in Europe. During WWII, the facility was one of the major points of embarkation of US soldiers heading overseas, and was also one of the major East Coast POW processing points for captured German and Italian troops during the war. Following the cessation of hostilities, Caven Point was a key receiving point for homeward bound American servicemen, and again used its proximity to US rail lines to send tens of thousands of troops on their way home.”  Sources are here and here. Near the end of this link are photos of USN vessels at Caven Point.

This photo is taken from the innermost area of Claremont looking back out.  The USACE buildings at Caven Point are to the left, and Atlantic Veracruz is along the dock to the right.  Rebecca Ann and Sarah Ann are managing the scrap scows.  Shoreside here is not Sims but Clean Earth, Inc.

That’s Brooklyn in the distance.

All photos and reads, WVD.

Fall 2020 Fishing

Fishing grounds . . . the NJ Upper Bay portion of the sixth boro. Quick question to be answered at the end of the post:  how many commercial fishing ports does NJ have and can you name them?  Eastern Welder is a perennial boat here;  Hyundai Victory is one of the ULCVs newly recent here.

I can’t tell you the name of the nearer boat,

but it certainly shows the influence of the deadrise boat from farther south. Click here for a technical definition of deadrise.

Fishing from pedal kayak has surged in popularity, and

can be fishing where they’re not expected.

Bjoern Kils and I on the New York Media Boat Defender visited the nearest NJ commercial fishing port, Belford NJ, the other day.

Although Belford has a lot of boats, it is NOT NJ’s largest fishing port. More on that assignment in an upcoming post.

Belford Creek is home to a diverse set of fish boats.

Given the trail of gulls following Trisha Marie, fish are being cleaned during the ride back to port.

Note the VZ Bridge and the Manhattan skyline visible from the Belford Channel.

Meanwhile dozens of small boats fish the Lower Bay this time of year, while whales gorge themselves on all the bunker in the Bay.

So . . . besides Belford, the other NJ commercial fishing ports are Point Pleasant, Viking Village in Barnegat Light, Atlantic City, Cape May/Wildwood, and Port Norris.  Viking Village is the largest at this time.  Belford is the newest.   More here. Looks like I need to do some more gallivanting . . .

If you’re looking for a non-traditional food for T’day in this non-traditional year, get fish.  It may not be all that non-traditional. Here‘s info on the Belford Seafood Co Op.

All photos and sentiments, WVD.

‘Ster Crazy 1

Social distancing  . . . we hope it’s playing a role in defeating the spread of infection, so it’s not really true that we’re going stir crazy; instead, we do good by limiting travel and seeing this time as a godsend, an opportunity to face long-postponed tasks.  So for the near future, we’ll be posting from the archives and soliciting –ster posts.  Got any?

These and this text from Phil Little, who has a most ideal porch view, right across from the Manhattan Passenger Terminal.  Phil’s sentiments are inside quotation marks.

“Cranester?  I took a series of shots from the balcony here in June 2016 of a tower crane boom extension being installed at 899 Avenue in Port Imperial NJ. Not exactly 6th Boro, but if they dropped it, that’s where it would be!   The pics are pretty much self explanatory. Those guys obviously don’t have acrophobia.”  If you want to know all about a tower crane, getting to the cab and operating the crane, click here.

1. “Picking up the assembled section.”  Notice the triangular Via 57, which some call a pyramid on the Hudson, others call a hyperbolic paraboloid. It’s 57 because it’s on 57th Street.

2. “Here she comes! Get ready!”

3. “Pin A goes in Tab B….I think!”

4. “Ok! Got her hung!”

5.  “Everybody always gets together after the job for a beer or two!”   Uh, Phil, I don’t think that’s beer.

Many thanks to Phil Little for these photos.

Hats off for the folks doing essential work.  Stay healthy.

Related:  tugster posts focusing on cranes can be found here.  Also, if you’re not familiar with NYC and its ferries, NY Waterways, whose boats you see in some of these photos,  IS an interesting story, a ferry company created by a trucking magnate… a 20th-century version of Vanderbilt, who was a ferry magnate who created a railroad network.

And here’s a virtual tour you can sign up for and take from anywhere in the world:  Wartime Production in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  I plan to take it.   Here are more.

 

 

Daisy Mae

Here’s my article on Daisy Mae in the August 2019 issue of Professional Mariner magazine.  And as I have often done, this post is mostly images that didn’t make it into the magazine.

All the specifics are in the article, but here’s the SW New Jersey dock where this sand is loaded.  Washed sand from the conveyor in center right of the photo below is falling into the barge CMT Y NOT 2.

Here’s the shore side loading, and

here’s the waterside view.

Once loaded it’s a short but

tricky run out of tidal Salem River when there’s sufficient water.

After arriving in Delaware Bay, the transition is made from push gear to …

[I’ll bet you didn’t expect this front-end loader here.]

… the wire.

 

I know the coastal NJ waters are not always this flat.

Just outside the Narrows, the tow is remade so that

 

 

the last few miles to the Brooklyn dock

can be performed with precision and efficiency.

Many thanks to CMT and the crew for helping me tell their story.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Check out the link to the story here.

 

Gone!

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.

 

 

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 . . . .

 

Scale 10

I think of ROROs like Dignity Ace as being fairly large, but this juxtaposition made me re-evaluate.

So let’s let the tape tell its tale:  three vessels here are (l to r) Anthem of the Seas, YM Utmost, and Dignity Ace with respect to their length and breadth; and I realize that the photo does nothing to show loa.  It comes out as 1141′ x 162′  v.  1099′ x 140′ v.  656′ x 106.’

The two Vane tugs are 90′ x 32,’  although I know it’s Fort McHenry alongside Anthem and cannot identify the tug alongside Dignity.

I’m guessing the fishing boat anchored here is about 20′ and

Franklin Reinauer is 81′ x 27.9 . . . .

And since we’re doing numbers . . . from the “globe” atop the “sky arm” to the water . . . that’s 300.’

That puts some perspective on scale of some sixth boro traffic.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Riverbanks 10

Here are previous installments focusing on background.

Sometimes the partial reveal and the juxtaposition highlight what’s on the shorelines, like those triple deckers in Bayonne that would blend in perfectly in many 19th century mill towns.

Or the hugely forgotten Singer plant in Elizabeth, hugely forgotten by most residents of Elizabeth, that is.  Imagine, if someone could turn the clock back on that one, 10,000 people would have manufacturing jobs . . . either sewing machines, or

weaponry of all sorts.

 

But one detail on the bank over by the NJ-side of the Bridge caught my attention.  So I thought these beams would be trucked from the disappearing bridge to a scrapping yard.  How surprised I was when the crane lifted the beam off the truck not 1000 feet from where they’d been on duty for decades and

lowered them

one after the other

to what might be a series of trucks below.  I can’t quite see what becomes of the beams on the ground at Bergen Point.  And I think that’s the Passaic small boat.  ??

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.  Keep your eyes open and stay safe.

Three Minutes in Eerie Light

I’ve done posts with titles like 15 minutes or 18 . . . but here’s a set shot in just three minutes, just after that strange cloud–comet’s tail?–passed the day the temps went up to 65 midday for a few hours, setting a NYC record for that day.

Here’s Jonathan C from head-on, with Shooters Island off the stern.

Zooming out shows Pegasus and Kimberly Poling using Edwin A. Poling, and the cranes at Howland Hook.

 

 

It looks like some refinishing is happening on Pegasus.

Mary H pushes Patriot heading the other direction.

That church in a lot of photos is Immaculate Heart in Elizabeth NJ.

 

 

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.