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This starts a new series, drawing from a loop from Chicago to Chicago via Mackinac Island.
Clearly something was amiss when a Chicago police boat was blocking outbound traffic from Burnham Harbor.
By the way, the grassy “dunes” in the background cover what was once Meigs Field.
Then a TowBoatUS vessel appeared on scene with a taut towline.
Someone’s journey was not going well.
The yacht, likely having lost power, was towed safely to a bulkhead.
And that day, other unfortunate boaters needed some assistance. Maybe I should say fortunate boaters, because they have TowBoatUS memberships.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I made my way to the Kills looking for the wayward Ilya, and several times a surfacing cormorant startled me, but alas. Except for knowing that the origin is Carib, I’d make a lame joke that Ilya should be called a woman-atee rather than a man-atee. OK, I’m sure it’s been done. Anyhow, instead, believe it or not, I spotted a motley group of tugs, ships, and boats. I’ll start with the tugs, both ones I saw and others I remembered.
Bismarck Sea ex-John H. Malik (who was he?) and ex-Gulf Ruler, built 1976. Notice the oval on the stack awaiting a K-Sea logo.
Remember the color scheme? It’s John H. Malik, foto taken winter 2007 in the sixth boro. Malik was a “founding Roehrig employee who helped to guide and grow the company until he passed away in 2001.”
Here’s that Roehrig color scheme on Eileen M Roehrig, now North Sea, built 1982 and pictured a week and a half back here.
Herbert P Brake . . . built 1992 of recycled steel by Bart Brake. Anyone tell more about the evolution of this tug?
Foto by Jed of Michigan Service, ex-Kevin Candies, 1981. I love those Gowanus Bay gravel piles in the distance.
Frederick E Bouchard, 1975.
Atlantic Coast, 2007!
Adriatic Sea, ex-Diplomat, 1978.
Linda Moran, 2009
All fotos but the two Roehrig boats taken in the past week.
Michigan Service by Jed; all others by Tugster. Some info thanks to Harold Tartell.
This could be called “How to identify a tug: start by recognizing fleets.” Long neck and short stack . . or vice versa. Bound for the North River are McAllister Responder with tall ringed stack and Norwegian Sea with tall orange-tipped house and mustard stack.
The height of wheelhouse matters not: tall orange-and-black house here–along with the black stack–makes it a Hornbeck, and this case, it’s Gulf Service.
Short red-and-white ringed stack–it’s Ellen McAllister. And the baby-blue stack with DT on it is Dann Ocean Towing’s Comet. By the way, I haven’t seen Dann’s Allie B since her departure for Rumania late last winter. Anyone spot Allie B?
Black stack with a bold M . . it’s Moran. In this case, it’s Miriam Moran, out to rustle up a ship.
In this case, the mustard stacks identify this vessel as a K-Sea . . . .it’s Falcon, with her low stern.
The stack color on Reinauer boats has much the same mustard color–at least in this light–but the addition of the diamond and the red . . . is unmistakeable. In this case, it’s Christian Reinauer.
Most prominent feature of this vessel–foto taken in the drizzle yesterday–is not the stack at all, but the color and superstructure shape. Anyone know?
It’s Cheyenne –or Crow–of course. In this case Cheyenne. Close up of Cheyenne‘s stack soon.
Last one . . . has no stack at all and I’ve run it before. It’s a mystery ship taken by bowsprite about a month ago and we’d love to get an identification. Help? Foto was taken from Lower Manhattan looking toward Jersey City; vessel headed upriver. Aliens . . . discovering the river, perhaps?
All fotos except the mystery ship by Will Van Dorp.
A truckable tug named Mame Faye and her tow anchor outside the current near the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers. Idyllic . . . serene, sleepy upstate river banks . . . eh? She’ll be back.
Here tugs Empire and Shenandoah tie up on the opposite bank of Mame Faye and along the bulkhead.
Farther east is The Chancellor, with twin stacks arranged longitudinally.
Still farther east inside LehighValley Barge 79, speakers like Jessica DuLong and Don Sutherland mesmerize with their tales and chronicles of the river.
Captains Bill and Pam park their powerful machines to rest and enjoy the quiet of oars moving in and out of the fresh water.
Rain showers come and go and no one cares. Lined up behind Empire are Little Bitt, Gowanus Bay, Benjamin Elliott, and Margot. It’s another lazy day at the Roundup.
What’s this on the foredeck of Bill’s Eighth Sea? Looks like PVC, hairspray, and . . . radishes?
And Captain Fred has gotten involved. This looks . . .
ominous, especially after he went to the supermarket for 50-calibre radishes, the most lethal kind.
As dusk falls, that same Captain Bill boards Mame Faye to maneuver the barge into the middle of the stream, which is now closed to traffic, for it will soon be time to
see the scene change and
How to describe that: part night harbor scene, rock concert, traffic jam, railroad crossing, cacophony, simulated war zone, kaleidoscope, popcorn popper, video game, confetti, aquatic bioluminescence gone wild, volcano, apocalypse . . . Oh, and I’ve always preferred seeing the flashes reflect in water to seeing them in air.
Now who do you suppose Mame Faye was? Elizabeth toots Mame‘s horn here.
All fotos and video by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated . . . the Dutch barge flotilla probably moves through the Hudson Highlands and northward today; if you get good fotos and want to share, email me.
More coverage of the 2009 Tug Roundup in Waterford later, but for now some quick fotos. Maybe the focus on flatbottoms aka platbodems in the sixth boro has influenced my perception, but bottoms were as much a thread this year as noses, last year. Of course, tugs dominated: near to far in this foto: Shenandoah, Empire, Benjamin Elliott, Margot, and Cornell . . . all of which you’ve seen here before. More on them soon.
Grand Erie, an Erie Canal tug–yes, it is–began life as Chartiers, an Ohio River USACE dredge tender in 1951. Get it . . . dredging . . . bottom?
Without the usual W. O. Decker selling rides, folks wanting to see the waterside could catch a half hour on this canalboat. Anyone got an update on Decker? Will it reappear next season?
And then there is Lois McClure, a replica of an 1862 canal schooner barge, with obvious mixed European heritage. Tug C. L. Churchill appears off the port stern quarter.
As tender atop McClure‘s deckhouse is this upturned birchbark canoe.
Complementing all my thoughts about undersides and bottoms was this T-shirt, modeled here by the ubiquitous Karl, who traded a Harvey shirt for a this one from an itinerant dredger crewman.
Until we see fotos soon, you might not believe that Stuart’s mini-tug SeaHorse has a flat bottom. More pics soon.
And since the bow pudding must transform this machine into a tugboat, I can add this to the pattern . . . a very flatbottomed jet-driven tug allegedly named Urger 2. And speaking of Urger . . . .
is it possible that a near clone–its name differing in only one letter–has arrived at the Roundup? More soon.
All fotos but the last one by Will Van Dorp. And that Burger foto . . . will for now go unattributed.
Check out the Waterford Historical Society site here.
U . . . “you” as in thank you for bearing with me. Truth be told . . . my first thought was of Bart’s beautiful site uglyships, but he does that so well, I fear to cross or even approach his wake, and judging by his enthusiastic fan hatemail, he has quite the following. So I’m using a series of unrelated U’s.
I can tease and start with underwear, as in the bottom paint on scow 65, here moved on the hip by Melvin E. Lemmerhirt. Wear and chemistry might be beckoning new bottom paint here. Watch the foreshadowing in this post.
Unchanged landscape. This is the Henry Hudson year, and Bowsprite and I are not the only ones somewhat obsessed by that Henry. In spite of the dramatic transformation of Manhattan and environs, islands like this in Jamaica Bay might give a sense of what Henry saw when he sailed into the sixth boro. Now if this were Bowsprite’s post, she’d inform you by block letters that clash with her charming calligraphy that the foto below is “not to be used for navigation.”
Under-reported. That’s a series on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate show. I love it. John P. Brown (2002) and Bohemia (2009) are two under-reported boats on this blog.
Unidentifiable . . . some language on the stern of this trawler. What make of trawler? I really don’t know.
Road Harbour is on a British island in the Caribbean, but the script looks somewhat yet not quite like Inuktitut. What it is?
“Up” position . . . where the wheelhouse currently set. Designed for the canal system, Cheyenne can lower the wheelhouse, if needed.
Unbounded . . . came to mind as I watched this trimaran sail towards the sixth boro, here past Hook Mountain. Unbounded like summer when you have no ties holding you back. Trimaran name is Friends; on a journey with that, you’d soon make them.
Unbelievable . . . that the mermaid parade took place a month ago already. Tell me it’s not true. I’ve read that Andy Golub does beautiful painting event around the boros but I’ve yet to catch one. Remember my earlier comment about bottom paint?
Unidentified . . . this vessel moving up the Rondout more than a month ago. I remain with two questions: what’s its name and are there spars that make this a schooner?
U . . . actually if I might indulge in “textingspeak,” I happy w U read my blog. At least that’s how I do texting, lazy yet impatient as I am. On a whim I started this meditations series, because I wanted to get out of a rut that convenience had pushed me into, but I feel the encouragement you send along, and that has given me a stretch. Thank you for helping a community germinate and grow.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Remember, click on the fotos to enlarge them. Do one twice, and you might be surprised.
Meditations U . . . just realize it sounds like higher ed. Get a pennant on your wall to show support for . . . Med U.
Countdown begins. Five days left. As training perhaps, Cheyenne pushes gravel,
Joan Turecamo froths up the KVK,
Labrador Sea and Taurus diverge off Mariners Harbor (foto thanks to Jed),
Marie J McAllister, Pati R Moran, and the sweet Brandywine converse in Bayonne,
Might those above raft up at Pier 84 in five days as these did last year?
Might they churn up the Hudson as Urger and Hackensack did two years ago?
Unrelated update on a delivery–not of pizza—but of cranes. Below is Zhen Hua 10 in Port Elizabeth as of mid-day Tuesday, August 26.
Photos, WVD.
tugster: a waterblog 
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