Kirby and BBC Kimberley

It’s another dark, rainy day in the sixth boro, so let’s recall the vibes of a warm, sunny September last week and BBC Kimberley swooping through the KVK.

Does it get more photogenic?!

Kirby Moran escorts at a distance until needed.

Name the country of “St. John’s” registry?  Answer follows.  While we’re at it, how about BBC . . . what does it expand to?  British broadcasting  . .   uh, no.

 

Here rounding Bergen Point and heading into a berth, later BBC Kimberley stayed in port only a short time.

All photos last week, WVD.

St. John’s is the capital of Antigua and Barbuda.  It’s also the name of the capital of Newfoundland and Labrador, whereas St. John [no apostrophe or s] is the port city of New Brunswick.

The ship registry was established in 1986 and lists 1400 vessels.

And BBC expands to “Briese Bischoff Chartering,” a shipping group of more than 150 general cargo vessels based in the Ems watershed. “Briese” refers to BBC partners Captain Roelf Briese and Bruno Bischoff.  Anyone visit much along the Ems international border and the outlying islands?  If you’ve not read Riddle of the Sands, put it on your list. 

 

The Delaware’s Doomed Ships 3

A relative’s big birthday brought me to Philly for the first time in a long while and afforded a few minutes to look around.  Name that carrier?  I once walked its decks as a visitor more than three decades ago, and have a friend who served aboard . . .  as a journalist in the USN.

On an earlier trip of the Delaware, I recall seeing that faded reddish, peeling gray on Arthur W. Radford (DD968) before it was reefed.

Got the name?

But wait, there’s more . . . including one that should not be there.

I’d heard that Powhatan-class Apache had just been decommissioned and towed there last week, and this was the vessel I wanted to check on.  The link in that previous sentence I posted a decade ago, after walking her decks.  Recognize the larger vessel to Apache‘s port?

I wonder where Apache‘ll end up, now that her replacement(s) are under construction.

The one below would not have been there if a tow last month has gone without issues, as seen here but you have to scroll. I wonder when she’ll attempt her final journey next.

Yup, it’s ex-USS Yorktown (CG-48), and the carrier is the JFK, another fading Kennedy.

All photos, WVD, who really needs to get to Delaware River ports more often.

Mixed Sixth Boro 2

Christy Anne is a small tug that I’ve not seen in 15 years!!  I posted it here, after seeing it in the Hackensack River, a place I see rarely.  Unrelated:  where are those buildings on the ridge in the distance?  Is there some Fata Morgana effect going on there?

With the placement of tire fendering fore and aft, I had the impression of an amphibious craft, the hull shaped around the tires almost like fenders on a flat-fender Jeep.  Here’s the late Fred “tug44“s post about the boat. 

When I saw this boat sailing in the other day, with its serious lines, I had to learn its story.  It’s Sparrow, an Open 50 racing sloop, preparing for the Global Solo Challenge. More on the boat here. 

 

Nicholas Miller, 33′ x 11′ crew boat, is picking up a pilot on the fly as

MSC Elodie, 980′ loa, comes into the harbor.  Nicholas matched the ship’s six-knot speed, sidled up, and stuck the rubber to the ship’s hull;  once the pilot was safely aboard, 

powered her way to overcome the physical forces and get away from the ship.

Ocean Venture is a purse seiner that comes through the boro periodically.. Some concern exists about the menhaden fishery.

She was possibly headed for her base on the Penobscot.

The seiner skiff helps deploy the purse  net.

What was curious, I thought, was that UConn’s 90′ loa Connecticut came in right behind Ocean Venture. 

 

As seems true a lot these days, I suspect there’s much more to the movements of these vessels

than I will ever know.  

All photos, WVD, who’s just being his customary curious.

Mixed Sixth Boro 1

The sixth boro and other harbors have those vessels that seem to hide in plain sight.  Maybe it’s more accurate to say these craft, like the one below,  are visible but their usage might not be so clear.   

Here’s how Annie Moore gets described:  “a utility vessel for the National Park Service designed to transport national and international VIPs to the Statue of Liberty.”   That’s vague and not vague at the same time.  Who are these national and international VIPs, I wonder. 

Here’s more:  “to transport VIPs, official passengers, supplies and equipment to Ellis Island from Battery Park, New York, NY.”    Only Battery Park?  Some contradictions exist in these two pubs.

As many questions as I have with Annie Moore, when HOS Browning came back into port after some days offshore, I have even more.

 I know what the boat does, but I crave specifics.  For HOS Browning, I’d like to know where they went, why that location, what specifically was accomplished with which tools and to what end . . . .

In port, what and who leaves the ship and what and who comes aboard?  Maybe that makes me a landlubber with too much time on my hands . . . .  Who are the crew?

See the name on the bow of the high speed vessel below?  Clearly, it’s not THIS Sea Vixen,  but somewhere in the weapons “kit” carried on Ro8 HMS QE is an enterprise called Project Vixen, involving aerial drones, and named for the de Havilland DH.110 Sea Vixen carrier-based fleet air-defense fighter.  

Technically, the vessel above and below is a 43′ PTB, a personnel transport boat, and  “the HMS Queen Elizabeth class will each carry four PTBs made by Blyth-based company Alnmaritec. Each 13.1 m (43 ft) long PTB carries 36 passengers and two crew to operate the vessel.”  Find more photos here.

The PTB seemed to be flitting all around the boro, checking out the sights.  Who gets to ride the Sea Vixen and who the larger sixth boro-based PTB, whose name I didn’t catch.

Why those sights?  Had HMS Prince of Wales come to town as planned, it would have had evolved PTBs, such as the one here. 

All photos, any errors, WVD, who’s always looking for novelty.

Random Tugs 380

Lightning is here and has been for at least four years, and Thunder is on its way.

From 2014 and therefore two years newer than Lightning, Adeline Marie, previously Denise A. Bouchard, was heading over to the Industry Day on Wednesday. I caught a few photos of her as Rubia in between her original and her latest livery. 

The 2006 Kristin Poling first came to the sixth boro as the 5000 hp 111′ x 36′ Chesapeake.   Here was my first good view of her as a Poling/Cutler tugboat.

Atlantic Enterprise has been keeping busy with runs with dredge spoils from the North River passenger terminal out to the dump site aka HARS.   For a day’s worth of reading, click here for a July 2022 report on HARS. 

The 1981 Susan Miller pushes a small deck barge through congested waters here. She’s been working in the boro for as long as I’ve been doing this blog. 

The 1968 Marie J. Turecamo has worked in the Moran livery for over 20 years. 

Scale is clear from this side-by-side photo of the 2007 Saint Emilion (105′ x 38′ and 4800 hp) and the 1982 McCormack Boys ( 74′ x 26′ and 1200 hp), both hauled out over at Bayonne Dry Dock. 

The 2007 Normandy (79′ x 27′ and 1900 hp) has been in the boro since 2015. 

The 1981 Navigator (64′ x 24′ and 1200 hp)  has to be one among the busiest boats in the harbor and the region.

The 1975 Mary Emma (100′ x 31′ and 3900 hp) has worked under this livery since 2021.  I caught her transformation here about a year ago. 

All photos and any errors, WVD, who thanks you for continuing to read this blog. 

Bruce, Meloi, and Ellen

and that would be in order of appearance.  

But check out this lead photo, a scene  no longer so common in the sixth boro, a ship being escorted in the direction of Manhattan and 

then turning into the East River.

When you see that, it likely means aggregates, cement, or shipyard.

I was fortunate to follow Bruce A. McAllister and Meloi as they made their way toward the Brooklyn Bridge earlier this week.  Here’s info on the Japan-built, Panama-flagged, and Greek-owned bulker.

I’m supposing the name is Greek, but other meanings of that word, that spelling in other languages, exist. 

 

I’ve been unable to determine where the aggregates originated, but where they’ll reside for the next century is in five boros’ construction.

 

All photos, WVD. 

 

JRT and the Whale

The whale happens to be a 2007 1284-teu container ship previously called Beluga Constitution and CMA CGM Corfu, but has carried the “whale” name for almost a decade now. I’ve seen other Warnow–named for a river in NE Germany– vessels in the sixth boro, but never posted any of them until now. 

Some time ago I saw Warnow Dolphin and was intrigued, but I never followed up.

So I felt fortunate the other day

when I passed Kirby Moran assisting the Whale into Red Hook container port.

 

Light and color and composition all came together as

her crew eased her in.

 

She’s left port now and is currently heading for the Panama Canal.

All photos and any errors, WVD.

Brinn Courtney and RS815

All day long, one ferry or another crosses the harbor, and one tug or another

travels light from point A to

point B and

makes up to another vessel

to move it to where it’s needed.

I was fortunate to see this vignette

of one part of someone’s day play out.

All photos, WVD.

Crushed stone is a commodity indispensable for construction.  Previous commodity posts can be seen here from 2010, here 2011, here 2013, here 2017, and many other instances not identified as such, like this one.

Random Sixth Boro 13

Here was the post I’d planned for yesterday, put together in a moment when I thought a single focus was too elusive, random scenes, like a container ship anchored off Stapleton, elusive detail in a set all diverging from usual patterns. 

Or seeing a Mein Schiff vessel in town after a hiatus… with Wye River passing along her stern?

Or this bayou boat discovering it offers solutions all over the boro and beyond, here passing a lifting machine?

How about this speedboat chasing a tugboat, or appearing to, with lots of hulls in the distance?

Or a single terrapin crawling out of the surf in a non-bulkheaded margin of the wet boro?

Two pink ONEs at Global terminal?

A ketch named Libra or Libre heading south with a scrap ship at Claremont?

Two commercial vessels out at Bayonne?

Two Ellens?

And finally two elongated RIBs with

camouflage-clad Coasties aboard?

All photos, seen as slight deviants from existing patterns, WVD.

 

Big Lizzie II

I had a different post and an entirely different morning planned, until I looked at AIS, and saw that after almost exactly four years, Big Lizzie (HMS Ro8) was inbound.  So whose was this when 

these were coming into view?

More specifics in the link above the first photo, but check out the info here. 

“But sir, I’ve been fighting this trophy striper . . . !”

 

Notice Stockham (T-AK-3017) in the distance?

 

Why eight?

Danmark, owned by the Danish Maritime Authority,  is simply called that;  although a naval training ship, it does not go by Margrethe II.   More photos of Danmark appeared own this blog earlier this week. 

 

Note a second helicopter now?

 

Wednesday and Thursday the “Atlantic Future Forum” will occur no doubt right  there. 

Kirby has the stern as they Ro8 enters the nUpper Bay.

HMS Richmond (F239) escorts Queen Elizabeth in. 

All photos, any errors, WVD.