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Let’s go back a decade. Then MSC Emma was on the west coast of Bayonne leaving town; now she’s on the west coast of Central America, leaving Lazaro Cardenas for Panama.
Above she was assisted by Gramma Lee T [now in Norfolk] and Margaret and setting up for the turn from Newark Bay into the KVK; here we had almost gotten ahead of the trio of vessels.
A strange trio was in the sky
over the sixth boro. The piggyback rider is still in town, albeit likely to never fly again. More here.
Meanwhile, over in the Arthur Kill, a boring machine was placing charges in holes below the bottom of the waterway and connecting them to the stringy orange signal cord to blast when the time was right for them all to detonate at the same millisecond. That day I touched some hefty but perfectly safe explosives, inert until the right signal is applied, which sounds like some folks I know.
More on “kraken” the bottom here.
Back then, I was spending a lot of early mornings near Howland Hook waiting for my work to begin, and I caught a Double Skin 37 moving bunkers
and maneuvered by Coral Coast. Was that mechanical dredge Captain A. J. Fournier in the distance above?
The Joker was then a more sedate Taurus, before joining the hilariously-named over at Hays.
Put Tasman Sea into the picture too. Is the Tasmanian still laid up in Louisiana?
And it was a great April 2012 day I caught the seldom-seen Patty Nolan
moving a houseboat into the sixth boro. Patty seems to be preparing for a comeback.
And the 1972 2325 teu Horizon Navigator, here with Samantha Miller alongside, was still working. Is the 1972 container ship still intact?
And let’s wind this up with Ellen and Maurania III returning to base after a job. Ellen is still in the sixth boro, and Maurania III is in the Delaware.
All photos, WVD, April 2012.
Entirely unrelated, check out these Smithsonian photo winners.
I hope you all enjoy looking at these retro posts as much as I do putting them together. I’m seeing that 2010 was the year I started to gallivant extensively, so the division for July 2010 retrospective is part a is for local, and part b will be for away.
Count the boats in the photo below! Greenland Sea is prominent, but in the distance, find a Staten Island ferry, QM2, Susan (?) Miller, a dredge operation where I see Rae, and a Reinauer tug (Ruth?) beyond that! Greenland Sea is now on the hard in Houma LA, the SI ferries run regularly but with fewer passengers due to the covid catastophes, QM2 is in Southampton, the Miller boats are still busy, Rae is kept in reserve for special projects designed for a 46′ tug, navigation dredging is over for now, and the Reinauer tugs have proliferated and keep busy.
Navigation dredging has created deeper channels, and the Bayonne Bridge has been raised. Miss Gill is now in Jacksonville FL, and GL 55, the dumper scow, is wherever work may require her.
The formerly-yellow submarine is located at the entrance to Coney Island Creek, a place I’ve not been to in almost a decade.
I never did identify the wrecks at the mouth of said Creek, which seemed then to have an abundance of blue-clawed crabs.
Jane A. Bouchard languishes along with the rest of the fleet, and Cape Cod, with one of the intra-port SSS barges here, has moved to Philly, last I knew.
Barbara McAllister pushes B. No. 262 with an assist from Ron G. Barbara has not been in the sixth boro in quite a while, the 262 is laid up, and Ron G has been sold south.
Cape Race arrives here in Atlantic Basin, with a much-changed lower Manhattan skyline. The former fishing trawler/now expedition yacht is currently on the Elbe, south of Hamburg.
Margot still “keeps on pushing,” although I’ve not seen her down in the sixth boro of late.
And here, Patty Nolan passes a wreck–I’ve not yet identified it . . . maybe you have–inside Sommerville Basin in coastal Queens. Patty Nolan has been on the hard a few years.
And here’s a photo taken exactly a decade ago today . . . an unnamed houseboat being towed from Peekskill to Queens, not a view you see every day. It’s Patty Nolan towing with gatelines. Here and here she tows other houseboats.
All photos, WVD, who wishes everyone health and patience in this difficult time. Also, these “retro sixth boro” posts take us back only one decade. It’d be great to locate more photos of identifiable locations going back 50 or so years, the fifth dimension of time photos.
Recently I got a request for something on single screw tugs. Ask . . and receive, from the archives.
May 1, 2011 . . the 1901 Urger was on the dry dock wall in Lyons looking all spiffy. A month later, she’d be miles away and alive.
On March 19, 2010, the 1907 Pegasus had all the work done she was scheduled for, and the floating dry dock is sinking here. In 10 minutes, Pegasus would be afloat and a yard tug … draw her out.
On a cold day last winter, a shot of the 1912 Grouper, in dry dock, waiting for a savior. If you’re savvy and have deep reservoirs of skill and money, you can likely have her cheap.
In that same dry dock, the 1926 boxy superstructure DeWitt Clinton.
To digress, here’s how her much-lower clearance looked when first launched in Boothbay.
Back on July 30, 2017, I caught the 1929 Nebraska getting some life-extension work. Unlike the previous single screw boats, Nebraska has a Kort nozzle surrounding its prop, which clearly is away getting some work done on it also.
On February 10, 2010, the 1931 Patty Nolan was on the hard. She was put back in, but currently she’s back on the hard, with plans to float her again this summer.
A CanalCorp boat, I believe this is Dana, was in dry dock in Lyons this past winter. If so, she’s from 1935.
As you’ve noticed, single screw tugs have sweet elliptical sterns. All painted up and ready to splash, they are things of beauty. On December 16, 2006, I caught the 1941 Daniel DiNapoli, ex-Spuyten Duyvil, about to re-enter her element.
Also in dry dock but not ready to float, on March 10, 2010, the 1958 McAllister Brothers, ex-Dalzelleagle is getting some TLC.
Is it coincidence that so many of these single screw boats are . . . aged? Nope. Twin- and triple-screw boats can do many more things. Is it only because the regulations have changed? Have any single-screw tugs been built in recent years? Are single-screw boat handling skills disappearing in this age of twin- and triple-screw boats? No doubt.
All photos by WVD, who enjoyed this gallivant through the archives.
And speaking of archives, Mr Zuckerberg reminded me this morning that nine years ago exactly, the sixth boro was seeing the complicated lading of the tugs and barges being taken by heavylift ship to West Africa. There were so many challenges that I called the posts “groundhog day” like the movie about a guy having to use many many “re-do’s” before he could get it right.
Remember the logic in this series is . . . the first pic of the month and the last pic of the month . . .
Early September found me still along the Acushnet . . . Malena–as of this writing–is in Sierra Leone, having bounced around the Caribbean since departing New Bedford.
By September’s end, Wavertree was slathered in a beautiful red primer.
Early October . . . that’s North Star off the Orient Point, and Plum Gut, with Plum Island in the background.
Late October . . . a conversation led to an invitation to tour iMTT Bayonne and see Marion Moran at the tug fuel station from the waterside. I still need to post about that.
November . . . and Med Sea bound for the Sound and beyond.
Joyce D. Brown going back to the kills.
And late in the month, my only view of Patty Nolan, on the hard in Verplanck. Click here for some of many posts on the 1931 Patty.
Early December . . .it’s mild and I decided to experiment with some color separation on Margaret Moran. Click here for a post from seven-plus years ago with Margaret Moran . . .
And since December has not yet ended, I will post this in its incomplete state, with the promise of a “last December 2015” post yet to come.
This is my last post for 2015. Happy New Year. May it be peaceful and safe.
All fotos here from yesterday . ..
Liberty Service as you may never have seen her. Here (third foto in this link) she was four years ago.
Ditto Huron Service. Repainting on Huron seems farther along than that on Liberty. Here’s how Huron Service looked a year and a half ago. Get ready for Genesis Energy.
In the past year, this Pegasus has sprouted an upper wheelhouse; compare with here.
Welcome to the waters around Houston. Well . .. I do mean the 118,000-barrel barge married to Linda Moran. Uh . . . do tugs and barges ever get divorced?
Trucks on the water pushed by Shawn Miller.
I realized only later that–had my conveyance lingered here–I would have seen Catherine C. Miller push past with FIVE trailers/tractors on a barge. See her in the distance there beyond the bow of RTC 83.
Reinauer Twins waits alongside RTC 104 with a faux lighthouse in the background.
Lucy Reinauer–earlier Texaco Diesel Chief built in Oyster Bay NY–is the push behind RTC 83.
DBL 29 pushed (ok, will. . . open eyes. thanks for the correction.) moved alongside by Taurus. See some of my previous Taurus fotos here and here.
And thanks to wide-eyed bowsprite, a vessel I’ve not seen before pushing stone. It’s Patricia. She reminds me of a vessel I spotted along the road a few years back . . . Hoss.
So, this is the “plus” in the title, the group-sourcing request portion of this post: what company is operating Patricia?
And another question . . . from an eagle-eyed upriver captain. Notice the weather instruments on this channel marker just off Bannerman’s Island (I am planning to do another post on this unique location north of West Point.) And . . .
here are more weather instruments on this federally-maintained channel marker off the Rondout. Questions: who’s responsible for these and is there a website where the data collected can be monitored?
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, except for the last three, which come from bowsprite and Capt. Thalassa.
Speaking of bowsprite, today she’s running Radio Lilac and I’ll be there tending bar. Here’s something of the inspiration. Come on by if you have the time. Teleport in if you’re otherwise out of range.
Here’s a previous post with this title.
For anyone venturing upriver, no landmark is more intriguing than Pollepel Island, 50 miles north of the Battery. But it’s changing. Note this difference between these fotos I’ve taken over the past decade.
2003, as seen from the Channel, looking roughly east. Notice the lower wall and the upper wall with four sides, which I’ll call west, north, and east and south sides not visible.
earlier this August 2013 as seen from Patty Nolan from the same approximate location. Notice that the upper structure NOW has only a west-facing wall. Unrelated to this landmark, but you can see the photographer in the mirror.
Here’s an August 2013 closer-up, showing the upper west wall only.
Here are the south and east walls as seen from the land looking west in spring 2007. The east wall is now all gone, as is a large portion of the south wall . . . here bathed in the most sunlight.
Same vantage point… south and east walls, as seen from MetroNorth train later in the spring 2008.
And another view of the west and north walls from fall 2008.
The island is off limits, but you can get a tour via Bannerman Castle Trust, Inc.
I took the tour yesterday. Here’s the south wall. Compare what remains of the stairs here with what you could see in the 2007 and 2008 fotos. Click here for more before/after views.
Closer-up of those stairs. Notice the metal tubing near lower right side of the foto?
Here’s that metal tubing, remnants of a drawbridge.
More of the south side. Bannerman saw architectural cannonballs as his logo, and they are everywhere.
Balls and balls and more balls.
Here are closer-ups of the north and west walls. Scaffolding will soon appear here, as attempts are made to keep these facades from crumbling as well.
More cannonballs.
Reportedly, these “balls” are cementaceous orbs stuck onto surplus bayonets embedded in the brick. I can’t verify this story, but Bannermans business was Army/Navy surplus, which his father started while the family lived near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Click here to see a six-minute video of their 1927 catalog; if you generally click on no links in this blog, this one is worth it.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who plans at least another Bannermans Island psot soon.
You may have seen this foto sequence yesterday of Orlando Duque diving from a helicopter near the Statue of Liberty? Well . . more on the foto below later in this post, but the diver here is in fact she who inspired my post today by her instructions on how to swim from a schooner . . . a few years back.
If you’ve looked at bowsprite’s link above, you’ll notice that my instructions begin differently.
1. Choose your location, and few locations are as enticing to me as the Hudson north of the Bear Mountain Bridge, where I hiked a few months back.
2. Select a tugboat. Buchanan 12, here managing eight stone scows just below Breakneck Ridge, is photogenic but absolutely the wrong choice for this.
Nor should you choose Kimberly Poling, here headed southbound on the Hudson in the same bends.
Patty Nolan, however, fits the specs perfectly. You may remember Patty here from a few years back looking just a little different and facing a dilemma.
3. Here’s where I concur with bowsprite’s first item: find a captain who will let you off the boat. We did. The dock worker here belongs to the blue-hatted union.
And off we go in search of an anchorage. Now I know that since contemporary life comes with an infinite lists of troubles and limitations, to relax . . . and celebrate life . . . you gotta do it!
The mature days of summer demand celebration.
4. Anchor in a safe location. Bannerman, haunting in springtime, seems more welcoming in late summer.
5. Check the equipment. Will Patty the figure figure be enticed to come up out of her cabin by this gold lamé?
6. Set up the sturgeoncam
and deploy
the crane.
7. Swim . . . without the strap or
or with, in a variety of entrance styles.
8. Board the boat when the day is done . . . if you can figure out how. I need to work on that one. Or sturgeoncam here might have to swim down the Hudson . . . . In late summer, that’s not a bad option.
Would you believe this waterspotted lens proves I followed Patty and crew all the way back to Bear Mountain?
Do you think I’d conclude this post without a video of tugster swinging from the crane? Click on the foto to see.
Don’t let Labor Day find you without a Hudson River dip in your experience.
By the way, from the local paper, one of my favorite weekly columns, twelve places you should also visit in the Hudson Valley.
Foto below was taken on July 3, 2012. Charles D. McAllister . . . featured here dozens of times, was assisting British Harmony (see name on lifeboat) out of IMTT Bayonne . . . for sea. Where? Doubleclick enlarges fotos.
Related: note the follow-though handwork demonstrated by the line thrower below. Where is he? He’s not throwing the line to anything belonging to British Harmony, but he is in the same watershed.
Ditto this tug and barge. Where it it? Notice the water color. Notice the name on the barge.
MANAUS on the tug is the best clue.
All fotos in this post except the first one were taken by my daughter, Myriam, who’s on the Amazon all summer as a grad student. I bought her a camera and said . . . “tugster needs you,” and she’s been following through since mid-May while I’ve focused mostly on my end of the sixth boro, not hers. More on this later in this post. That’s a sweet ride below.
She’s based in Macapa and took this and all the others from her workboat. No, she doesn’t drive it.
Cargo moves by vessels like this, and
this. Right now Ikan Suji is Shanghai bound with a hold filled with Amazonian raw materials, I’d bet.
My guess (and I’m often wrong) on this cargo is navigational aids in the making.
I wish she’d caught the rest of the ferry . . . but there are fewer possibilities for a bow than a stern. I’d never imagine this house/stern arrangement.
NYC’s sixth boro . . . as all areas . . . have their
government boats.
Behold two Amazonian “rebocadores ” Excalibur and Merlin. Click here for Smit Rebras including some interesting newbuild fotos. Thanks to Harold Tartell for suggesting looking here.
But, not unexpectedly, vessels on the Amazon and its many fingers are as diverse as the population of that great country.
This could be the Mississippi,
as could this.
From Macapa to Manaus upriver is 500 to 600 air miles. Stadt Gera, in Macapa today, was in the sixth boro and on this blog a year and a half ago.
And here’s why I put the foto of Charles D. McAllister and British Harmony first: British Harmony is about halfway up the Amazon to Manaus as I write this. One really can get anywhere watery from the sixth boro. Knowing that and having concrete reminders like this are not the same.
From fishermen, people with cameras along the KVK, and Macy’s barge waiting for the 2012 Independence Day fireworks . . . to kids in wooden boats like this . . . all seen by crew on British Harmony on the same trip . . . I find amazing.
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of another watershed. Myriam certainly has the gallivant gene. Here’s some self-disclosure. 39 years ago (!!) I traveled to my first professional job about 500 miles up the Congo River on a huge tugboat named Major Vangu, pushing four deck barges. The tug had 8 or 10 “staterooms” and a bar/restaurant for paying first class passengers. Second class were on a barge with shade, and third class slept among the cargo (barrels of fuel, trucks, crates of beer, misc . . .) on the other barges. It took four days and nights to get from Kinshasa to Mbandaka, near where I spend the next two years. The reason for the choice of a tug was the airplane was non-functioning and roads to get there would have taken weeks. Making this realization today suggests the need for a long river trip next year. . . . hmmmm . . . .
This post is inspired by Jed’s extended resume of last April here, and a “lightbulb” comment by Maureen. Thanks to you both.
Related: Several times I tried unsuccessfully to find good profile shots of Major Vangu, which sank in 1979. Anyone have ideas on finding fotos of the old Onatra vessels like Major Vangu?
Related: In writing this post, I stumbled onto this blog by an artist in Belem, a major Amazonian port.
First . . . around the boro, the light is beauteous enough to suspend a sense of time and obligation and stress and disappointment. This side of the boro, though on duty, works the milder solstice.
Lynx (1967, ex-Catherine Foss, Kainani) probably working with a dredging project, I’ve never seen here before.
Discovery Coast glows.
Nicole Leigh waits orders, as crew might ponder
a different season, as seen here.
In this heat and light, Kimberly looks positively artdeco: her aqua would blend in on South Beach and way beyond.
Brandywine wrestles the season as she dances her partner DoubleSkin 141.
Quenames broods as she gazes into the stream.
Miriam Moran cruises past Sailors’ Snug Harbor, as purposefully as always.
Jane A. Bouchard races deep into right field, showing what waters can be divided by more than 6000 hp on the wheels, while her older sister
Barbara E. Bouchard dozes briefly in the shadows before moving upriver, where
the venerable Patty Nolan dons her midsummer’s bikini, freshens up her dancing paint . . . the mayor’s drum is soon to call to disorder the 2012 parade . . . the sixth boro’s shoreline version of Mardi Gras.
OK . . . one final glance for now at Lynx off to the dredge site.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who is solely responsible for any erroneous interpretations of event, signs, and artless ceiling doodles.
Happy summer!!
Unrelated: If you happen to “see things” when you pass the KVK salt pile on Saturday night, you’re not hallucinating. Lumen will happen.
For an auspicious virtual gallivant as they sally forth through the Rideau Canal from Lake Ontario to Ottawa and beyond, follow Sally W . . .
The event is called Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival, so indeed, it’s a water festival, a river fest started by a folksinger, now 93, who cares deeply about
the river that flowed past his birthplace. A river festival means boats.
Of course, Clearwater in the distance is the flagship of this festival, and the big sloop spawned the smaller sloop Woodie Guthrie closer in.
The festival takes place on a peninsula where you see the tents in the middle of the foto.
It’s called Croton Point Park, about 30 miles north of Manhattan’s north tip.
But this location is surrounded by shallow water, so temporary docks are needed, which means small shallow draft tugboats like Augie (1943 and on the first job of her new life) and
Patty Nolan (1931 and available for charter). . . And the red barge is Pennsy 399 (1942!!) .
Also taking passengers during the festival is Mystic Whaler, here with Hook Mountain in the distance.
Here’s the northside of Croton Point last evening looking toward Haverstraw.
Exactly five years ago I took this foto from a small boat just off Pioneer‘s bowsprit. Here are more fotos from that day.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who might go back for some music tomorrow.
tugster: a waterblog 
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