Truckster! 17

I caught up with this . .  the other day,

Switching lanes . . . I noticed something I’ve seen before

like here from a decade ago, and in many other posts like here. Of course, others become art objects for a while, maybe until they rust back into the earth.

 

Cars arrive from the factory on trucks, they depart from road use on trucks.   I’m glad there was a traffic jam on the main avenue so that I could get the photos after parking along the access road.

There may be some crushed trucks on that trailer . . . not just cars.

All photos, WVD, who always keeps the camera on the passenger seat.

 

Astrand

All photos today come thanks to John Huntington.  Check out his new site here, one which I mentioned a week and a half ago here.

Here are the basics on what you are looking at, mostly from John’s caption:  “FAR ROCKAWAY, QUEENS, NEW YORK CITY, NY/USA – FEBRUARY 25, 2016: The 24 meter (78 foot) scallop fishing vessel the Carolina Queen III, rests in surf in the Atlantic Ocean off Far Rockaway on the Rockaway peninsula of the borough of Queens in New York City. The boat ran aground at about 2am and all the crew were safely evacuated by the US Coast Guard.”   Of course, there are also the related stories about the USCG 25′ RIB attempting a rescue and capsizing in the 10-12′ seas, and its crew, trained and geared up for such a possibility, safely swimming to shore;  and the rescue of Carolina Queen III crew by helicopter.  Photos here.  A number of the RIBs can be seen here.

Salvage plans are underway.  The fishing vessel–to my untrained eye–seems to have held up well, a tribute to its builders as well as to the fact of coming ashore on the sand.  Those builders are responsible for two of the newest tugboats in the sixth boro as well.

I’m sure the owners and crew of the vessel feel sick right now.

 

But looking at John’s remarkable photos, I’m struck by their allure.  The calm water, patches of blue sky, reflection of a beautiful machine misplaced on soft sand  . . .  contrast sharply with how the scene must have appeared to the crews Wednesday night when the wind and spray made the decks feel like hell, a time of uncertainty and fear.

I’ve previously done a set of posts on a vessel ashore here.  And from South Africa four years ago, these photos from Colin Syndercombe and another fishing boat astrand.

Thanks again to John Huntington for use of these photos.

For a photo of Rodriguez Boatbuilders’ 2015 James E. Brown, click here and scroll.

For a sense of how shipwreck has attracted photographers of four generations of a British family, click here.

 

Tis the Season

Tis the season . . .  to keep your eyes and ears on the weather.  In 1938 . . . before hurricanes had names or we had satellites to track them thousands of miles off, a big one came ashore on Long Island, a once-a-century-or-longer storm.   Do you know this structure below?

Here’s the ocean side view . . .

 

and the inland side.  To the right and up the Acushnet River are the ports of

New Bedford and Fairhaven.  Click here for info and photos on the building of the barrier.

The benchmark storm for the sixth boro is Sandy, and an event this past weekend happened on a location wiped out by the storm, Rockaway Beach at 106th Street.  Click here for posts/photos from my friend Barbara that chronicle the before/after in that part of NYC.  Welcome to the first annual Poseidon parade.

 

and a temporary replacement for Whalemina, the glacial erratic rolled away by Sandy.

 

Of the 10 worst hurricanes of the 20th century (judged by impact on the US), almost all happened  in September.  Since that link leaves off Katrina (??), I add this one.

Thanks to Barbara Barnard for the Poseidon Parade photos;  the ones from the Achushnet are by Will Van Dorp, who will have photos from up the Acushnet soon.   Technically, this fits into my “other watersheds” series.

LNYBL Addition Close Up

Here was the first post  . . .LNYB . .  being Lower New York Bay.  I’m wondering, though, if this might technically be the corner of New York Bight, not the Lower Bay.    The “sixth boro” nomenclature  . . . blurs the distinction.

The Rockaway Lateral pipeline project is . . . partly about pipe.  How the pipe gets “injected” into the earth is illustrated in this video.  Bear with the first 45 seconds . . . the remaining 4 and a half minutes are illuminating.

Thanks to a secret salt for these photos of taking on pipe and provisions.

Here’s a closeup of OSV Michael Lawrence, which first appeared in this blog here.

Here are fleet mates.

All above photos from a secret salt.  If I’m not way off, the photo below–not so close up–shows Michael Lawrence alongside the “pipe-injector” barge.

This last photo I took on Tuesday.

East River Delights 4

Here were 1,  2, and 3.  Looking back, my favorite of those three is number 1.  So what are the delights of the East River, other than my longstanding fixation on this aggregate carrier . . . ?

Well, clearly I’m not the only one who recognizes how delightful Alice’s presence in the sixth boro proves to be.

Thanks to the Long Island City Community Boathouse for these pics long on spirit if perhaps a bit short on focus.  My last trip with LIC Community Boathouse goes back five years already!!  On that Sobro cleanup trip I also took these fotos.

These fotos remind me that I’ve yet to get myself to Four Freedoms Park (below) on Roosevelt Island, as well as

Ship of Tolerance, which will be at the salt dock on Staten Island this weekend.   In the foto below, Gabby L. Miller is moving the Ship past the United Nations Building.

All fotos are compliments of the Long Island City Community Boathouse.

Replenished Rockaway

Aug 31.  A late summer day at the beach, where a new “towel drying rack” has been adopted and a bumper crop

of sand awaits the erosion of winter, perhaps?  All photos here taken by Barbara Barnard.

Sept 1.  A tug (Trevor?) moves a crane barge to where the “drying rack”/piping needs to be fished out for transport to the next job.

Sept 13.  The remaining pipe on the beach, no longer serving to dry swimmers’ towels, awaits dismantling and

allows for closer inspection.

This Rockaway series was of course motivated by Hurricane Sandy and the photos of Rockaway by my friend Barbara in the past 12 months.  Barbara, many thanks.   Here was my Nemo to Flag Day post, which started with a mystery house.

And now it looks like the Nola “make it right” rebuilding plan is coming to the Rockaways.  Click here for the design for “resilient house.”    Here’s an earlier article.

Click here for a project/business entirely created by the devastation of trees during the storm.  It’s not maritime, water,  or even specifically landthreshold related, but is quite interesting.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 12

Here’s where the “leverman” sits for a twelve-hour shift as the C. R. McCaskill slews port to starboard 400′ once each three and a half minutes.   Another way of saying that is  the dredge moves using a five-point mooring system: two swing anchors, two breast anchors and one stern anchor to move forward or back.  A different configuration uses a spudded idler barge;  in this case, the “swing” is longer and takes more more time.   Food gets delivered so that the leverman aka dredge operator can monitor all these screens and respond so that dredging can proceed 24/7 as long as equipment and conditions permit.  More on food later.

Slewing . . . drawing on cables attached to positioned anchors and pivoting on a stern point . . . requires that the 30” diamater hose be able to flex.  Hence, the easy curved slack before the piping to the beach.

The crewboat in the distance alternates between hydrographic survey work and other tasks.  More on that in a moment.  More crewboats in a future post.

Attachment at the stern is a ball and socket joint . . . like your hip.

Here’s the starboard GE engine, part of the power supply to the dredge.

Here is another view of the two huge hull-mounted pumps that do the work.

Another task of the crewboat is illustrated here:  recreational boaters sometimes allow their curiosity to override any sense of danger caused by a busy, slewing dredge.

The helicopter happened to be here on assignment to photograph the work from the air.

About the food, here’s  mission control presided over by Edwina Arthur, a member of the 30-50 person crew.

Food rules and pecking order are clearly posted.

Captain Randy Guidry, my host for this tour,  proudly displays the builder’s plate, Corn Island Shipyard in Indiana, where the hull was constructed.

As I stated in the previous post, McCaskill’s part in the dredging/beach replenishment has now ended and vessels and crew have moved south for the next job.

Many thanks to Captain Guidry, Jan Andrusky, and all the other fine folks at Weeks Marine for this tour.

All fotos, text, and (any inadvertent errors) by Will Van Dorp.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 11

Here and here are previous posts on a Rockaway Beach replenishment dredging operation that has now ended.   Sea Wolf is still local, but the vessel on the horizon (“atop” the red buoy) has now moved to southern NJ.  Remember, for most fotos, doubleclick enlarges.

Weeks’ Trevor was assisting in this project.

Also assisting was George W.

But here’s the powerhouse, the dredge.  Let’s take a tour.

In spite of about 16,000 total horsepower, C. R. McCaskill is not self-propelled.  To see what towed the dredge to the south, see the foto at the end of this post.    All that power moves the cutterhead on the submerged arm (called a “ladder”) that extends to the sand at the bottom of the Channel here.  At the top end of the ladder are two huge pumps (you could stand inside the pump housing) that suck the sand and whatever else off the bottom and send it as a slurry to a point on the beach some miles away.  Click here for a pdf that shows the beautiful (ok . . . roll your eyes) virgin red cutterhead with green teeth.    Each tooth weighs around 35 pounds!

Here inside the dredge are some interesting astounding facts about the machine.

See the sand colored building on the horizon off the stern of McCaskill?  That’s the area around 105th St. Rockaway Beach where the sand is headed through piping powered by this vessel.  The first few fotos in this post were taken at that beach.  There’ll be another Rockaway post soon.

Candace towed C. R. McCaskill south.  I missed her when she was in town, but John Skelson caught her here.  Click on the foto to see John’s complete shot.  Many thanks to John for use of that shot from his Flickr page.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, except for the one shared by John Skelson.  For more info on each of the Weeks tugs, click here.  More McCaskill tomorrow.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 9

Here’s a followup on the Rockaway sand pumping, and there’s gold in those sands, over $36 million worth.   Notice the dredging/pumping vessel upper right.

This was the fountain this morning.

Once the slurry exits the mouth, water flows back into the ocean and sand is pushed up the beach.

This repurposed container is project headquarters.

The top foto comes thanks to Barbara Barnard;  all others by Will Van Dorp.

Whole Lotta Dredgin’ 8

I’m back, with lots of gallivanting to catch up, but first . .  a whole lotta fotos from this morning in the sixth boro.  Any ideas what’s going on here?  What is that gray blur in the center of the foto and why are the gulls so frenzied?  Be forewarned . . . this post has so many twists/turns . . . it’s divided into parts, even though I took all these fotos in the span of less than an hour.

Part 1

Answer:  It’s how over three million cubic yards of sand is being added to Rockaway Beach . .  at least for a while.  Here’s what the NY Daily News says about it.  Here’s an article and video from Dredging Today.

And here . . . off in the Rockaway Inlet are the machines mining and pumping the sand, seen closer up in this recent  tugster post.

Part 2.  Notice  the piping coming from the stern of McCaskill.

I could not resist wondering about these birds whose name rhymes with “lovers.”

Part 3.  Follow this sweep of fotos as I turn to the left.

An Atlantic City billboard on Far Rockaway?  Is a mixed up sense of geography part of Sandy’s legacy?  I keep turning left.

A Potemkin village and that’s an A  Train station to the right?

See the silvery cars of the A train?  It’s a Boardwalk Empire set in the wasteland of eastern Rockaway Beach . . . . I was hoping to buy some of that food at those prices!

Of course, I had to look behind.

I half expected to find some Aral Sea boats back here too.

Part 4.  Once back on the boardwalk, I saw this fishing boat about a quarter mile from shore.  I’m guessing it’s unrelated to the sand piping and pumping, but   . . . who knows.

All fotos today by Will Van Dorp.