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It’s the end of another month, and maybe because everything’s been so bleak of late, let’s just admire and enjoy the complexity of the sixth boro.
Diverse people work here on diverse missions.
Places like NY Harbor School and M.A. S. T. as well as SUNY Maritime College and King’s Point MMA are here.
On foggy days a narrow navigation channel gives the illusion of being as expansive as the ocean.
Keeping it as ideal a place as possible is the mission of many people and much infrastructure, seen and unseen.
Professionals pass through the sixth boro without ever technically entering the space, both a boon and a bane to all involved,
and their safe passage is ensured by the named and the nameless.
Work and recreation can happen in the same space because of
professionalism. If you have a lot of time, you can binge watch these videos by a pro who works the sixth boro and beyond. Now, when I hear his voice on VHF, it’s familiar. There are books as well.
The universal language of gesture is powerdful.
The sixth boro has at least as much specialized equipment as the other five boros combined; another way to put it, the specialized equipment of the sixth boro enable the other boros to perform.
And if the land boros have spirit, don’t imagine the sixth boro lacks anything.
Photos and sentiments, WVD.
If you’re new on this blog, for the past 27 months I’ve been posting photos from exactly 10 years before. These then are photos I took in June 2010. What’s been interesting about this for me is that this shows how much harbor activities have changed in 10 years.
Tarpon, the 1974 tug that once worked for Morania and below carries the Penn Maritime livery, is now a Kirby boat. Tarpon, which may be “laid up” or inactive, pushes Potomac toward the Gate.
North River waits over by GMD shipyard with Sea Hawk, and now also a Kirby vessel. Sea Hawk is a slightly younger twin, at least in externals and some internals, of Lincoln Sea.
Irish Sea, third in a row, was K-Sea but now is also a Kirby boat.
Huron Service went from Candies to Hornbeck to now Genesis Energy, and works as Genesis Victory.
Ocean King is the oldest in this post . . . built in 1950. She’s in Boston, but I don’t know how active she is.
Petersburg dates from 1954, and currently serves as a live aboard. Here’s she’s Block Island bound, passing what is now Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Kristin Poling was built in 1934 and worked the Great Lakes and the Eastern Seaboard via the Erie Canal.
To digress, William Lafferty took this photo on 15 May 1966 at Thorold, Ontario, in the Welland Canal, same boat 44 years later.
And finally, she who travels jobs up and down the East Coast, the 1970 Miss Gill. She’s currently working in the Charleston area.
All photos, WVD, who never thought a decade ago while taking these photos that I’d revisit them while in the midst of a pandemic. June 2010 was a great month for photos, so I’ll do a retro a and b.
ABC-1 is unique, a survivor. Launched in Sturgeon Bay in November 1941, she was originally built for the US Army as a vessel to collect mine boxes. Here she returns from a supply run in Port Elizabeth or Newark, as she’s done for as long as I’ve been paying attention. Here, by the way, is the first in this series, one that didn’t even use this title.
I don’t know how long she’s worked in the sixth boro or if the hull and power have been modified since 1941. Maybe someone can speak to this.
NYC DEP has a number of vessels, likely all of them larger than Sea Robin.
This is my first time to notice this boat.
All photos in recent cold days by Will Van Dorp.
It’s the sheer diversity of traffic on the sixth boro that keeps me coming back, although diverse does not mean unpredictable. In summer, mermaids gather, specifically around the very day of the solstice. In winter, fishing boats come . In fall, the fishing boats are of a different sort.
Chele-C was fishing on the west side, and
Phyllis Ann over on the east
with Dutch Girl and
this boat I could not identify.
Eastern Welder has been a fixture in winter fishing as far back as I can remember.
Osprey are well known for their fishing ability, so I should not
have been surprised to also have seen HSV Osprey out extracting from the depths.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I did this once before here. This time I was deleting near duplicates to limit the size of my photo library to accommodate the many photos I brought back from the gallivants, and my mind quickly formed today’s post. Enjoy all these from August through October 2009 and marvel at how much the harbor changes. As I went through the archives, this is where I stopped, given the recent developments in Bella Bella BC.
For background on this tug, check here.
Notice also the Bayonne approach to the bridge.
IMO 8983117 was still orange back then.
King Philip, Thomas Dann, and Patriot Service . . .
…
Odin . . . now has a fixed profile.
And these two clean looking machines — Coral Queen and
John B. Caddell — were still with us.
This is a digression to March 2010, but since I’m in a temporally warped thought, let me add this photo of the long-gone Kristin Poling.
Back to 2009, Rosemary looked sweet here in fall scenes.
John Reinauer . . . I wonder what that tug looks like today over in Nigeria.
And Newtown Creek, now the deep Lady Luck of the Depths, sure looked good back then.
And while I’m at it, I’ve finally solved a puzzle that’s bugged me for a few years. Remember this post from three and a half years ago about a group of aging Dutch sailors who wanted to hold a reunion on their vessel but couldn’t find the boat, a former Royal Dutch Navy tug named Wamandai A870? Well, here’s the boat today! Well, maybe . . .
Another boat you can dive on is United Caribbean aka Golden Venture.
Photos and tangents by Will Van Dorp.
This series handles my miscellaneous needs with updates, follow-ups, and oddments.
Let’s start with the mage below. Click on it and you’ll learn how soon a sixth boro GUP vessel transforms into dive attraction named Lady Luck. Thanks to Mike Hatami for passing along this info.
If the image below looks like a boat, it is, or it was before San Francisco grew (or tumbled?) over top of it. For more info on the buried vessels of SF, click on the image. Here’s more.
Below, well that was me about 10 years ago. After I had built a skin-on-frame kayak, I need to paint the porous “skin” with urethane, hence the respirator. If anyone’s interested in buying me a token of appreciation to update this vessel–which I still have–click on the image to see my one-item wish list. And thanks in advance.
More old business . . . the photo below I took from the Manhattan side of the East River about 10 years ago, and
this photo was taken by Robert Silva back in September 2014; of course this was what remained of the John B. Caddell after Hurricane Sandy, the suspense, and the subsequent auction.
By now, that old steel may have seen the hold of a scrapper like Atlantic Pearl . . . and been transformed in the heat
And finally, in response to a recent comment asking about Gateway tugs . . . the rest of the photos/text here I took/wrote in April 2014 and never posted because I was waiting for some additional info.
“What’s under the ‘white house’ here?
Click here to find out. And the tug C. Angelo is resplendent in the brightening daylight.
So this is future defense works passing obsolete defense works.”
C. Angelo in drydock?
All photos except the top three and the one by Robert Silva . . . by Will Van Dorp.
NYC DEP has a diverse set of vessels in its fleet, from sludge tankers to this water quality testing vessel. It even had a skimmer at one point called Cormorant.
HSV (hydrographic survey vessel) Osprey has been around for a quarter century already. I caught it being refurbished here earlier the spring.
Here she is under way a rainy morning a few years back.
Now osprey and cormorant are winged creatures. And I’m posting one hour earlier today so that more of you reading this can still make it to the annual migration of winged and scaly creatures coming ashore on Coney Island, and that’s where I’ll be, documenting my heart out in the name of science, of course. STEM needs you.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Here are previous posts with references to wind. Sunday and Monday were windy but commerce went right on.
The weight of these units is manifested by the smooth ride in the harbor chop. Offshore it would be a different matter in the swells.
I wouldn’t call it spindrift, so maybe
it’s just spray?
All photos last weekend by Will Van Dorp.
And here, thanks to Aleksandr Mariy and unrelated but interesting, it’s Black Douglas, in its many forms. And if you like that, you’ll love Roosevelt, especially that photo off Newburgh NY.
And finally, thanks to Isaac Pennock, who caught Dylan Cooper down bound passing Detroit on a run between Green Bay and Montreal.
Know this water, more of a waterway than a harbor? The distant buildings are a clue. See the one just left of the center of bridge center, needle thin?
Here’s another clue . . . the structure near the right side of the photo, like an old time gas station pump?
Or this one left of the crane, looking like the business end of a blue crab whose pincers are down?
Or this wreck? What WAS this boat? I’ve asked a million people who all say they also asked a million people. Anyone know?
And seriously, the first photo showed the Throgs Neck Bridge, the second the LaGuardia airport traffic tower, and the third . . . Arthur Ashe stadium. The photo above with the mystery wreck in the Whitestone Bridge . .. the second one in when you travel from Long Island Sound into . . . the East River
And that needle thin tower in 432 Park, said to be the tallest residential building in the hemisphere. Click here for views from the tallest bathtub in that building. And in the foreground of the photo below, truly a place of superlatives . . . . Rikers Island, i.e., one of the largest incarceration places in the world. No gunk holing is tolerated anywhere near this place.
Rikers has literally overflowed its banks. This is the off-Rikers portion of NYC Corrections, the Vernon C. Bain Center.
Click here for a tugster photo of part of the Rikers fleet. And here for Bain’s NYC floating prison predecessor.
By now, most of you know this is the East River and we’re traveling west. Here the DEP sludge tanker Red Hook prepares to depart the Hunt’s Point wastewater treatment plant. Click here for some tugster posts on treating waste and keeping sixth boro waters as clean as possible despite the teeming millions that live along the banks of these waters. And if you’ve never read my Professional Mariner story on the latest generation of these tankers, you can do so here.
Between Rikers and Hunts Point, there are the North and South Brother Islands; see my post from South Brother here from a long time ago. The safer channel goes around the north of North Brother, but in daylight, most vessels can shoot between the two.
I’ve never set foot on North Brother, but I imagine it a terrestrial version of the “graveyard” on the Arthur Kill.
A “night wharf” on Wards Island for the sludge tankers lies here just east of the Hell Gate and RFK bridges there.
This strait–between Roosevelt Island and the upper east side of Manhattan–in the tidal strait that’s known as the East River can see some fast currents. Somewhere off to the right is the vantage point Jonathan Steinman takes his East river pics from.
This is not a cargo pier. These vessels are repairing the bulk heading.
Anyone know the identity of these two “houses” nestled up there in the eastisde of Manhattan cliffs?
These barges called the Water Club . . . I’ve never been there. Any personal reviews?
Newtown Creek awaits its fate here at a dock in Wallabout Bay right across
from the rock wharf where Alice Oldendorff has discharged millions of tons of crushed rock over the years.
After we duck under the Brooklyn Bridge, we near the end of the East River,
where South Street Seaport Museum has been fighting the noble fight to
preserve ships and the upland including the wharves.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Here was GUP 3, and here was one GUP-related post since then, about the sale of a peer of the vessel below. In case you don’t check the links and are wondering what GUP is, it’s my neologism for “gross universal product,” AKA sewage. I’m doing this post now as a complement to my article in PM magazine. North River is currently high and dry and getting some paint. More on that later.
For now, let’s have a look at the fleet carrying the load . . . or loads.
The most recently arrival is Rockaway, in service now nearly a year.
Coming right up on a one-year anniversary of start of service is Port Richmond. If you are wondering about the names, all three new boats are named for sewage facilities serving NYC. Here’s an article about the Port Richmond facility.
And the original of this class is Hunts Point, in service now about 15 months.
Now if you conclude that Rockaway, Port Richmond, and Hunts Point look alike . . . well, they’re virtually identical.
Not true for Red Hook, which has been in service now for over six years.
I compared bows of the current generation with that of Red Hook here about a year ago.
Here’s the most recent photo I’ve taken of North River. How much service–even back–she has left in her I can’t tell you.
Meanwhile, all hats off to this fleet which keeps sixth boro waters smelling as sweet as they do to us and feeling as hospitable as they do to all the other critters that depend on this habitat.
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