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If you hop on a plane today, you might still catch the last two days of this flower parade in the land and specific region of my father; my mother grew up farther east on the Rhine. Here’s an English version of what’s going on; Westland is a region connected by waterways, not a town. Here’s a map, and here’s info on the boats. I’m going to send this blogpost to my friends at the NYS Canals, because I think the integrated boat/bike/camping event is a worthy model for Canals to study.
With my limited WiFi, I post these for you to enjoy. Let’s start, of course, with a prime mover, a small tugboat mentioned in an earlier post comments as an opduwer.
I’m guessing this float was sponsored by an automobile dealer who sells US vehicles.
The range of themes surprises me. Note another small tugboat.
I love this one.
Actually, I love them all.
And given my current long stay in the bayou, I had to include this.
I have a few dozen more photos, if you indicate interest in seeing more.
Many thanks to Jan van der Doe for sending these along, more photos of a summer festival in another place, maybe not entirely different than the mermaid parade, which I missed last weekend. Imagine if NYS coordinated a people’s event of this magnitude in 2025 to fete the 200th anniversary of the year DeWitt Clinton made the 10-day journey from Buffalo to NYC to unite the fresh and salt waters.
While waiting to get under way and depart the bayou, I have WiFi and might as well post some photos I’ve taken along the backroads. I’m posting this one now but took it a decade ago, and I believe the restaurant is now as active as the Edsel motor car business.
This set I took in April ’22 in Cape Charles VA.
If ever I get involved with another restoration, I’ll certainly leave the exterior paint distressed in this way.
A distillery creates an aged product, right?
This one I took in northern GA in December 2021,
and have been trying to fit it in somewhere.
All photos, WVD, who’s posted photos like these under autoster. Jeeps can be found here. Old Car City GA has attracted me too, whenever I’ve been along I-75 in northern GA. Part A of this series can be found here.
Also, if you’re on Instagram (IG), I started posting there late summer 2021 here, and since then have found great photos like these under “ruralrideshunter.”
Well . . or with an accent, I’d say whale . . . I’m not out of the bayous and sugar fields yet, but it’s getting closer. When we do leave the dock, there may be several days that not even the robots will be posting, so be patient if this doesn’t update. Either that, or you could do searches in the archives of 5200+ tugster posts for your favorite photos of who knows what.
Some day soon, we’ll leave the NISDC and the land of … legs, alligators, mullet, gar . . . . and start toward the sixth boro.
Here are some recent photos of Superior Attitude, Gar,
beautiful dawns and dusks,
and the neighbors Maggie Kay and
Red Fin. The image below inspired me to rewrite the words to wimoweh . . . “in the bayou the murky bayou the gator lurks tonight . . . ” and you can imagine or freestyle the rest . . .
All photos, WVD, who posts when possible, with assistance from the robots of tugster tower.
Quick, name that boat.
It’s appeared on this blog before.
She appeared here before as Charles Burton, but now . . . meet Helen!
Cape Hatteras (1967) and Eugenie Moran (1966) have recently appeared over by Prall’s Island, regular spot for tugboats being prepared for reefing. I caught Eugenie in Portsmouth NH over a decade ago here.
Now over to the coast 3000 miles away, it’s C-tractor 22. Thanks to JED, I rode out to sea with a previous generation C-tractor here over a decade ago.
Many thanks to Tony A for all but the last photo, which was sent along by George Schneider. Thanks to you both.
And I’ll keep the lights on in tugster tower to keep juicing up the robots.
Here was the first post in this series.
If I’m not mistaken, this sand comes from the freshwater sources of sand in SW New Jersey; I posted photos of the loading and transit of such sand here back not quite three years ago.
My vantage point here was Little Island, and in midafternoon, I was shooting more into the sun than I’d prefer.
Yup, that’s Hoboken’s W hotel and the north end
of the bluff where Stevens Institute of Technology is located.
All photos, WVD, who encourages you to visit Little Island if you’ve not yet done so. The highest point, where I took these photos, is about 60′ above the river surface.
And unless I get the robots more photos/fodder, there may be some days sans posts coming up.
If I have these dates right, Pieter Boele was built in 1893! Clearly this hull was built for towing, that bow not built for pushing.
Of course, the same would be true of the 1913 Jan de Sterke.
Dockyard IX dates from 1915. I know the small tug is called Furie, considered a push boat. I can’t make out the name of the third and fourth steam tugs in this photo, beyond the small pusher.
Noordzee is a 1922 tug.
Roek dates from 1930, built in Vlaardingen, my father’s hometown. He would have been three when it was launched.
Volharding 1 dates from the same year.
Dockyard V, as seen here, was built in 1942, although the sparse design suggests it’s older than that.
As with part A, all photos in part B here were sent thanks to Jan van der Doe and taken by Leo Schuitemaker. Scroll through here for some fabulous photos of the event. Maybe I’ll go back there again in 2024.
Posting by tugster tower robots at the behest of WVD, who wonders why the Dutch are able to field such a rich field of restored and fully functioning steam tugboats.
Ten years ago, the WTC was incomplete, no supertalls/superskinnies were up, and Taurus was not yet Joker.
Miriam and the archway at Sailors Snug Harbor are all the same, although that dock is gone from there.
The 1969 Barbara McAllister is now Patsy K, operating out of the Gulf coast of Florida.
The 2003 Jane is now Anna Rose, and I’ve seen her in the boro a few times.
Amy Moran is now John Joseph.
Crow was in her last days here, and has been scrapped more than a half decade already.
Charles D. McAllister has now been five and a half decades in service and still working in the sixth boro.
Gage Paul was lost in transit after being sold overseas. Note the seaplane on the East River.
Last I knew, Buchanan 10 was laid up upriver.
In June 2012, I had the opportunity to tour USNS Apache near Norfolk. A few years later, Apache was the vessel credited with locating the black box of El Faro, after its tragic sinking.
Sharing the dock with Apache that day was USNS Grapple.
All photos, ten years ago, WVD, who is currently traveling again, out of tugster tower for an indefinite period of time, getting more indefinite every day. I have re-activated the robots, but we’ll see how reliable they are this time.
Full disclosure: Years ago I was showing friends from Germany around the city, and chuckled when they stopped to take photos of squirrels. Squirrels were a novelty, they said, because they’d never seen one in Germany.
The closest thing to an alligator I’ve seen in the sixth boro is this plastic toy that lay along the KVK a long time this winter; I took the photo then because NYC’s terra- and sub-terra boros have their own alligator tales–with some basis in fact– like here.
Given all that, I’m pleasantly surprised to have seen at least two alligators now, differing in size, alongside the vessel we’re readying to move. More info on that that later.
Yesterday I managed to see the gator coming our way with enough advance warning that I had time to grab my real camera.
This photo I took shooting straight down from wheelhouse . . . about 35′ above the water. I’d estimate this “el lagarto” to be 6′ to 8′.
No, I would not want to be in the water with this Alligator mississippiensis.
All photos, WVD, who apologizes to the robots for interjecting this post into their orderly queue.
As the robots diligently do their thing in the tower, I’ve been out gallivanting, as you likely know. The where and the how long . . . you might not know. Answer: I’m in the New Iberia South Drainage Canal, aka NISDC, kinda sorta between the fascinating home of Tabasco on Avery Island and the bayou still as uncharted (well . . . not really) as in the days of Jean Lafitte and his Baratarians, and of course some of their descendants.
From a distance, you know the locations of waterways and ports from hundreds of spuds, three per vessel. More on this indigenous species of technology can be seen here (published 1985) and here.
This one was supposed to have departed a week ago, but “boat time” says it leaves–as I do–when the work is complete, maybe a week from now.
Meanwhile, the delay means I get to see a series of sunrises and sunsets
and the light effects on the bottom of hulls, something not otherwise visible except with a snorkel mask–at least–in the realm of the alligators.
No, I’m not going in here.
Work on other lift boats ends, and new ones arrive and get snagged near our dock.
Others pass by on fingers of the NISDC to elevate themselves elsewhere.
And when rain comes, it’s intense but cooling.
All photos, WVD, who arrived here too late for the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival (yup… that’s the name) and too early for the Sugar Festival. Guess I’ll have to return for that. Of course, today is Creole Culture Day not far from NISDC.
Previous tugster posts from this area can be seen here, here, and here. With denser populations, places east of here have figured in posts like here and here.
And just for context, the NISDC heads south to the Gulf ICW. More on this section of the ICW can be seen here.
Kimberly Poling and barge lie alongside Maritime Gracious for lightering.
Eastern Dawn, here pushing a mini barge, continues to work in the sixth boro,
with a base over alongside the dormant Evening Tide.
Bruce A. travels west in the East River after a job over near Throg’s Neck.
I love the “whitewater” on the uptown side of the 59th Street Bridge.
A mile or so behind Bruce A., Ellen McAllister passes Rockefeller University’s River Campus.
Back exactly six years ago, pre-fab sections of the new campus building were lifted in place by a fleet of DonJon vessels here.
And finally, in the late spring haze, it’s Mary Turecamo
approaching her next assist.
All photos, WVD, who’s entrusting these posts to the tugster tower robots. Hat tip or whatever, robots. Actually, I don’t even know how many robots are involved in this effort, since they appear happy to subsist on nothing more than the electricity I provide.
I’m trying to get together a post or two from my current location, which I was supposed to depart from a week ago . . .
tugster: a waterblog 
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