Random ULCVs 2

Here was the first in the series.  It does seem a greater percentage of container ships calling in the the sixth boro are  ULCVs.  Hyundai Hope arrived here on Saturday.

and from here, where she departed midmorning today,  she goes into the port of Wilmington.  She must be a sight to see there.  HMM, Hyundai Merchant Marine, dates back to 2010.  Hyundai Hope was built in 2014 and carries 13154 teu.

OOCL Korea, built 2014 and capacity of 13300 teu, came in recently on a windy day . . . .  The gargantuan size is illustrated by the the two McAllister tugs that seem almost to disappear off her stern.

OOCL Korea  is appearing on this blog for the first time.

Two of them meet in Ambrose Channel, along with an incoming Torm tanker as well.

Season Harrier, first of a series of newbuilds, called here recently.

.

Gunhilde Maersk, at 7000 teu and built in 2008, left here 10 days ago and is already in the Red Sea.

OOCL Chongqing was built in 2013 and carries just over 13k teu.

 

All photos, WVD, who misses more than half of the ULCVs that call . . . .

Ever wonder the per-mile cost of moving a container via rail car versus via ship?  Answers here.

Small Craft 24 a

I’m at a quo vadis point myself.  I appreciate the feedback you’ve given on the virtual tour. I could do more, e.g., guide to the Welland Canal, the Saint Lawrence Seaway, and four of the five Great Lakes.  As to the Erie Canal, which was/were your favorite leg?  What info specifically did you find most interesting or startling?  As for myself, learning about the loyalists  . . . that’s topic I could dig into more, not on the blog but in my personal reading.  Three Rivers Inn nightclub is one of my favorite details.

Let’s have a look at small boats and their seasons. Below, that might be Emily Miller, black and white alongside the monolithic hull of USNS Watkins.  She’s acrew boat that operates all year ’round.

Savitsky is one sweet fish boat.  Fishing is a year round activity in the boro.

Emergency vessels are here year rund. NYPD has a number of these fast 70′ tactical response boats.  One I caught soon after arrival in the sixth boro exceeding 40 knots can be seen here.

Side by side, here’s a serious USCG 45′ nearer and a NJ State Police RIB farther.

And the 29′ Defiant looks like it’s made for

maneuver-

ability!

Marine 1 FDNY has the big boats, medium,  and small boats, although I’m not sure the length and other specs of this one.

And finally, the North Hudson Firestorm 36 is a rare sight on the KVK.  I first saw her here on her delivery from Canada.

All these photos I took in March or earlier.  As we move farther into spring, covid-19 notwithstanding, different types of small boats will be moving around the sixth boro.

 

Welcome Comfort 2

I could also call this “other peoples photos” but here is yesterday’s arrival of the hospital ship as seen from three friends’ perspectives.

Phil Little took this, and referred to it as his Normandy landing shot, an appropriate name given that this asset, arriving with a large support group, marks a surge, a counteroffensive against the invisible foe.  Note that the top of WTC1 is obscured, as is most of the VZ Bridge, center right.

To reiterate, Comfort‘s 1000 beds and 12 operating rooms will take overflow from other hospitals, overflow of NON-covid-19 patients.  Click here for much more info on the ship, medical facilities and operating life.  Click here for video of the hospital ship arriving.

The flotilla is almost to her berth, here passing Hudson Yards.

Renee Lutz Stanley took this one from a pier south of Intrepid while trying very hard to practice social distancing.

Phil calls this the “turn-in.”

This last two come from David Silver, taken looking south.

Cruise ships and hospital ship are roughly the same color, but that color gives a profoundly different impression in each.  Comfort with its relatively few “port holes” and glass is a place of intensive inward examination, a place apart, one hopes, for healing.

Many thanks to Phil, Renee, and David for use of these photos.  Please do continue social distancing and hand-washing.

Welcome Comfort 1

At 0900 and a few minutes, USNS Comfort arrived at the Narrows.  Ava M was one of six McAllister units meeting her there to assist.

USACE, NYPD, and other agencies saw her in as well.

, 

She passed the USCG station and

 

and the old hospital complex.

Another USNS vessel in the port was Watkins.

From this point off Bayonne, we’ll pick up the story tomorrow.

All photos, WVD.

Government Boats 53

Foggy day, moody port.  Without the icon off to the left, you might think it’s just an uninhabited island with a law enforcement boat approaching in our wake, but

once you see the logo on the cowl . . . along with the statue above . . .

suddenly the land edges lapped by the waters must be teeming with life. The sixth boro is the least inhabited one.

All photos by WVD, who’s amazed by the mild February weather.

 

Government Boats 52

. .  . starting with Canadian government boats, Coast Guard vessels and CCGS-to-be.  Tor Viking is the Davie Shipyard near Quebec City in Lévis, where she’ll be transformed into CCGS Vincent Massey,  a medium class icebreaker, following the wakes of sister ships into CCGS Molly Kool and CCGS Jean Goodwill.  Another CCGS, Sir Wilfred Grenfell, recently left Labrador for the long trip to British Columbia.

CCGS Sipu Muin has appeared here before with photos from her first pass.  Two days later she flew by even closer, determined to be seen.  That gull off her starboard looks spooked….

 

 

In the distance with the large green dome, that’s Canada’s largest church.

How about a US vessel–USS Indianapolis LCS-17–commissioned in Indiana less than a month ago, here transiting Quebec near the downstream end of the Saint Lawrence Seaway?  Here are my previous photos of LCS models  . . . and others’ photos are here.

And let’s conclude with local sixth boro NYPD marine crew monitoring something

on a red channel marker in the lower portion of the Upper Bay yesterday.

The USS Indianapolis photo comes with permission from Marc Piché, whose photos have appeared here previously.

All other photos by Will Van Dorp, who posted about NYPD boats previously here.

Something Different 46

What the title means is something different than I had planned . . .  So watch this series of screen shots . . .  first at 0010 hrs today.

But then, look who picks it up, re-messages it, and it appears in their news feed!!  NBC, NYDailyNews, USNews . . .!!

Tri-CityHerald comes from Washington state, and then there’s the SFChronicle . . .

. . . the ReadingEagle . . .

So when I got up this morning and read notes messaged to me and then a sampling of news from commercial outlets–as evidenced above–I’m in a tizzy.

I recognize the ship as a serious attempt at reproducing a vessel of 500 years ago and calling it Nao Santa Maria.  So when I google Nao Santa Maria, I find they’ve been in town but their very own FB notice–I believe–says “first time in the US…”  I’m done!!

 

This leads me to the vessel’s “serious” page, rather than their FB hype, and for the second time (I’ll get to that) I read this:

The “Nao Santa María” is one of the most famous ships of mankind. On October 12th of 1492, led by Christopher Columbus, it played the main role on one of the most important historic landmarks: the discovery of America, the encounter between two worlds that changed the future of universal history.

On August 3rd of 1492 it sailed off from the port of Palos de la Frontera (Huelva, Spain) together with the caravels “Pinta” and “Niña”, the so called three caravels from which this nao was the flagship. In all references written by Columbus about the Santa María in his famous diary of the expedition, he refers to it as “nao”, as did other chroniclers of the time:

“Cristopher Columbus loaded, apart from those two, a nao… and on the third, being the nao bigger than the rest, he wanted to travel himself, and hence it became the flagship” 

It was acquired by the Spanish Crown to be part of Juan de la Cosa’s columbine expedition. Although De la Cosa was natural from the Spanish northern region of Cantabria and lived in the southern Puerto de Santa María, the general belief is that the vessel was built somewhere on the coast of Galicia, hence her previous name: La Gallega (The Galician) . . . .     

It goes on.  You can read it here. So, Nao Santa Maria (NSM) is one of the “most famous ships of mankind” by their own proclamation, and US history books would generally agree.  How many ships’ names did you know in –say–fifth grade?

But I go on with my rant.   On NSM’s “blog” section, and you’ll see here they say they begin their “tour along the US” here back in January 2019, and at that, they state they arrive in the US then from San juan PR . . . Is PR NOT in the US?   !@#@!!   And was their summer “tall ships parade” as far west as Green Bay WI not in the US?  Moreover, did NSM’s participation in the 2019 event ever get shared nationwide identifying them as a pirate ship?

In the world of “fake news” and “spin” and otherwise biased reportage, this surely seems like a cautionary tale.    This out-of-control story about NSM as a pirate ship reminds me of this old collecting feathers story.

I first encountered and posted about NSM in Ogdensburg NY here.

All “cut’n’paste” and sentiments are solely those of Will Van Dorp, who has previous made known my attitude toward pirates here.

If you think you’ll find a disabled pirate ship in the sixth boro tis morning, well, they’re nearly to Atlantic city by now, trying to outrun the travesty of reportage captured in google . . . or bury their loot?

 

 

Small Craft 22

This will be a photo-rich post, starting with bridge workers currently at the Brooklyn side VZ tower, aka the former Fort Lafayette.

You might remember Michele Jean;  Christina is the replacement vessel.

Most small craft in the sixth boro work all year round, in either construction, hydrographic surveys,

boom handling, launch service,

law enforcement,

and more.  Some fishing takes place all year round although winter fishing employs different craft.

 

Fishing machines as below . . .  only from about April to October.

Annunziata is a fishing boat I see a lot on AIS, but this is my first time to confirm boat with name under way.

New York Media Boat has some of their vessels working all year round, but here’s a catch, a NY Media Boat RIB in front of the Hudson Yards endless staircase called the Vessel, parts of which appeared on this blog during construction.

Then, the red boat below with kayak on roof, that’s a summertime only boat for up here.

And let’s close with the boom handlers;  tankers and oil barges are boomed during some of their harbor operations, as a precaution in case of spillage.  All year round these small craft do their boom wrangling.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Small Craft 20

It’s the first full day of spring, which means that soon many more small craft will operate on the sixth boro, yet all winter long, many small boats never leave.

If this is a Class A 25′ SAFE Defender boat, it may have entered service in 2002.   I’ll be back with this.

Here are a team of the newer 29′ USCG vessels.

Line and boom boats, patrol boats . . . these small craft operate in the sixth boro all year round.

Ditto survey boats like this one.

Over alongside Rhea‘s stern, that’s certainly a launch from Miller’s.

I’m guessing these are 31′ SAFE boats operated by NYPD, but they’ve been running in threes of late.  They also have larger Vigor (ex-Kvichak)-built boats.

NJ State Police has a few small boats that patrol/train all year round.

NYPD has had a few of these for almost five years now.  When they first arrived, I was astonished by the speed they could make.

USACE Moritz first launched in 2001.

 

So let’s go back to that 25′ Defender in the first photo, but at closer inspection . . . see the logo on the door . . . it’s a DonJon RIB.

USCG checking me out with a long lens? . . . Nah, that’s Bjoern of New York Media Boat.  Check out their blog here, and book a tour here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s again reminded that you’ll see something new each time you go down to the water and look closely.  And in the next few months, in all waters recently ice-bound, be ready to see an influx of recreational boats coming north for the summer.

 

Small Craft 19

Here are previous iterations of this title.

Well, in fresh water like the Upper Saint Lawrence, they look like this, from a photo by Jake Van Reenen.

In salt water, even small outboard work year round.  There are boom boats,

patrol boats,

more boom boats,

clam-digging boats,

small island supply boats,

fishing boats,

police boats,

. . . and 29′ Defiant boats.

Top photo credit to Jake;  all others by Will Van Dorp.