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Springtime seven years ago, the roadbed that had existed on the Bayonne Bridge was breached, In a controlled manner, of course. Steps in the transformation are captured here. April 3, 2017 was the day this vessel, Maersk Kolkata, came through the opening that dismantling had just created. Here were moments before that happened.
As I took the following photos yesterday, I realized I hardly ever
think about the previous shape of that bridge,
the new configuration has been seared into memory, what else would the Bayonne Bridge look like, I think.
After all,
bridges are forever,
until we think about it.
All photos, any errors, WVD.
No, they’re not.
By the way, I wondered about the tanker name Arrebol. It wasn’t familiar and didn’t sound appealing until I looked up the derivation. Nice!
Quick post. All photos I recently have taken in the sixth boro, could you arrange these tugboats from newest to oldest?
Charles Hughes
Kristin Poling
Matthew Tibbetts
Janice Ann Reinauer
Marie J Turecamo
Navigator
Marie J Turecamo 1968
Matthew Tibbetts 1969
Navigator 1981
Kristin Poling 2006
Janice Ann Reinauer 2020
Charles Hughes 2021
All photos, any errors, WVD.
Traffic, when you’re trapped in it, is not fun. Watching commercial marine traffic, for me, never gets old, as you might know. The more things get, the more interesting the harbor seems. A handful of sophisticated and expensive machinery and its skilled operators jam pack this image. I see three Centerline boats, JRT, and Safmarine Nomazwe.
Roughly the same place and hour and some later, Thunder, just off the port side of Caroline M, shares this image with at least three other tugboats that almost blend into the cold humid morning.
Foreshortening makes Laura K and Doris Moran seem a lot closer together than they are.
Here it’s Marilyn George, Coursen, Alex McAllister, and Wye River, I believe.
Besides the three tugs along the left side, that’s Alex, Kristy Ann with RTC 80, Barney, and Kristin Poling pushing Eva Leigh Cutler. Between Barney and Kristin are at least two Kirby boats.
This was several minutes after the previous photo with some of the same boats.
Daisy Mae here pushes a CMT barge with a Vane unit in the distance, in front of an impossibly packed set of cliffs.
This is not so much packed as it is filled with very different examples of marine commercial traffic.
And in closing, clustered in front of USNS Red Cloud, clockwise starting from Cajun, it’s J. Arnold Witte, USACE Haward, and Marjorie B. McAllister.
All photos, any errors or omissions, WVD, who hits the road again tomorrow. Peace on Earth!
Here are previous installments of this title.
ONE Hawk above and Rana Miller below.
The venerable Twin Tube with Robert Burton below and with Nave Equinox above.
Charles A passes the graving dock where Red Cloud gets a refurbishment,
Maddie K moves some rock.
Ava M and Hayward are on the hard in Bayonne.
And finally, Kristin Poling waits in the anchorage.
All photos, any errors, WVD, who wishes you a thankful week this week, and another next week, etc.
I’ve noticed and mentioned patterns before today. A pattern in my book has to be made up of more than two items or occurrences. So Marilyn George by itself is not a pattern.
Having Kimberly Poling show up while Marilyn George was at the IMTT dock is not a pattern either.
Kimberly appeared to be settling into their space east of Caddell’s but then abruptly turned out and westward.
That Crystal Cutler powered into my view should not have surprised me, since I’d noticed her northbound on the AK
By this time, I’d not yet realized I could have gotten all three boats into the same frame. By the time I noticed the pattern, the opportunity had passed.
Know the launch order?
Patricia E. Poling . . . number of barrels? Answers follow.
All photos, any errors, WVD, who took these photos in the space of an hour.
Crystal Cutler– 2010, Marilyn George-2004, Kimberly Poling-1994.
And Patricia E. Poling –2010. Capacity . . . 15,000 barrels.
To repeat, any errors, WVD.
Seth Tane took this photo on the Columbia in 2000. This was my sense of tugboats back then. I had little sense of their age, power, crews, skills needed for operation, etc. Take a guess on those features of this boat, and I’ll provide you some answers at the end of this post. Note that this tug and barge are at a log dock, a trade unknown in the sixth boro or the NE US.
Here’s a shot I took in 2002 while hanging out on what I called back then the “waterfront” and saw this vessel. Again, I had no idea of those same features as they pertained to this vessel, nor of the logic of this design. Test yourself, and then some info can be found at the end.
I took this photo in 2004. My 15 years in coastal NE had given me an interest in schooners but I’d never sought an opportunity to crew on one, until my move to NYS, first on and then off the live-aboard.
Note the warehouses still standing where Brooklyn Bridge Park is now located. Volunteer crewing on Pioneer and the other boats at South Street Seaport Museum kept me on the Upper Bay for long hours, and I saw lots of new things,
some things whose uniqueness I didn’t even fully appreciate. Anyone know what’s become of that tugboat Rachel Marie? I don’t.
Some things intrigued me,
and other things like this derelict sugar mill and sunken lightship were soon to disappear.
I started to see interesting tugboats in unexpected places.
Little did I expect then the changes that would happen. Know the boat above and below?
All photos, WVD. Answers below.
Craig Foss, 1944, 116′ x 30′. Here are more particulars, but as good as the boat appeared the top photo, she was purchased by unqualified parties, detained, and eventually scrapped. You need to read the story here; some crew were lucky to have survived.
The second photo shows Coral Queen, a motor tanker that carried petroleum from 1920 (!!!) until 2011. That is a long working life. Here are the particulars from Birk’s data base. From Auke Visser’s site, here are more particulars. And finally, from my Barge Canal series last year, here are images of her generations of fleet mates; her design relates to her work as a tanker in the “inter-connected waterways,” the Great Lakes and salt water connected by the Barge Canal.
The 1885 Pioneer still seasonally sails with professional and volunteer crews, and the 1893 Lettie G. Howard does the same on Lake Erie mostly.
I’ve no idea what became of Rachel Marie.
Meow Man traces are still around.
The sugar mill area now has an Amazon facility, and the old shipyard is the Red Hook Ikea parking lot, and the sunken ship reefed, the piers scrapped.
Grouper, frozen in ice, is still waiting to be scrapped, but as of March 2, 2023 is still entirely intact. The orange livery has disappeared from the sixth boro; that boat June K is now Donjon blue.
Ultimately, the more I found answers to questions I had, the more I was drawn in to learn more, a fact that keeps me looking and asking. I really never expected to be in the boros and fascinated by the sixth boro as long as I have been. Recently, I had a conversation with a friend from another NYC life and she reported never to have heard of the sixth boro. I guess that’s as shocking as hearing that someone’s not heard of the legendary Meow Man, the saltwater equivalent of Kilroy, or the US version of Maqroll, whose exploits need to be written down. As of the date of these photos, tugster the blog had not yet been launched.
I’m not sure when I’ll post anything next, but it could be tomorrow.
If it seems I have a dirty lens, I don’t, but this winter has been a season of the good light and my schedule not coinciding. No matter . . . the subject just looks grayer than I’d like much of the time.
When this ULCV arrived the other day with Mary Turecamo as one of the assists, I was reminded of how high the deck is on these ships, and they’re getting ultra-larger and higher. In this post, Mary’s upper house was way above deck level on the tanker.
Will this nose be superseded by Marco‘s style of nose?
Janet D was sharp, but note how hazy the distant shore is.
HMS Liberty is appreciably closer than Barney Turecamo, and therefore is sharper, until
Barney gets closer.
Enjoy these others: Jillian Irene,
Horizon’s Edge (a newby in the boro?) and Regulus,
Schuylkill,
another shot of Liberty,
Crystal Cutler and Patricia E. Poling,
and finally Margaret.
All photos, WVD.
A few photos from the recent week . . . like Cape Fear heading over to Gowanus Bay and
Miss Madeline coming from there, passing the KV buoy and
more . . ..
Notice anything unusual but entirely understandable about the photo immediately below?
The barge is the 80,000 bbl Edwin A. Poling and the
tug is Saint Emilion, usually mated with barge A87.
All photos, WVD, who will be inland and rolling on the rails most of the month of March….
I caught her at the fuel dock the other day, and knew a bit of back story. Do you recall seeing her before on this blog?
Since she was fueling and I was not waiting around for that process to end, I left. I wish I’d gotten a 360-degree view, because changed paint really changes appearance.
She used to be Marion Moran, as seen in these Bayonne Bridge April 2013 photos
here muscling a HanJin container ship around Bergen Point.
Another new name . . . Marilyn George, stencilled on for now.
As you can see, before that she was Steven Wayne and before that . . .
she was
Patapsco, as seen here in a September 2008 photo.
Welcome Marilyn George and Topaz Coast. All photos, WVD.
Daisy Mae . . . time flies and this 82′ x 30′ and 3200 hp boat has been around since 2017 already.
Crystal Cutler, 67′ x 26′ and 1500 hp, I remember when she first arrived in the boro. I mist be getting old here.
Evelyn Cutler, 117′ x 32′ and 3900 . . . I recall when she was Melvin E. Lemmerhirt.
Discovery Coast, 96′ x 34′ and 3000 hp . . . she’s been around by that name since leaving the shipyard a decade ago.
Capt. Brian A. McAllister, 100′ x 40′ and 6770 hp . . . half a decade here.
Brian Nicholas, 72′ x 23′ and 1700 hp, I never saw her as Banda Sea, although I saw many other Seas.
Charles James, 77′ x 26 and 2400 hp . . . I recall her as Megan McAllister.
Navigator, 64′ x 24′ and 1200hp**, arrived here as that. Saint Emilion . . .105′ x 38′ and 4800hp, I’ve known her as Arabian Sea and Barbara C before that, and this blog has been doing this since before she was launched.
All photos and any errors, WVD.
**We know about autocorrect. Here’s a message from Capt. Tugcorrect: “Re 1200 hp, she’s been repowered and info should reflect that she ‘boasts two MTU 12V2000s rated at 900hp each for a total of 1800.’ ” Thx, Tugcorrect.
tugster: a waterblog 
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