So Long, Alice

I took the photo below on June 7.  My special interest in Alice stems from her being the subject of my very first blog post. 

Since then, I understand from two sources that Alice Oldendorff will be renamed.  Algoma Verity.

Verily?  Verity it’ll be when she next returns?  We’ll see.

Anyhow, here’s one source, and here’s another.  Also involved in the buyout are Harmen and Sophie.  Now they are named Algoma Valour and Algoma Victory, respectively, according to this source.

Photo by Will Van Dorp.

Sixth Boro Self-Unloader

Preliminary question:  Where in the world is Alice Oldendorff?  Answer follows.

This profile below–not Alice— might make you imagine yourself in the St Lawrence Seaway or the Great Lakes.  But I took this photo on the Lower New York Bay yesterday.  I had not caught a self-unloader of this style in the Lower Bay since 2007!

A CSL self-unloader does call in the sixth boro occasionally.  Here’s a CSL post I did in 2010, photos in the sixth boro.

She headed into the Narrows loaded down with

aggregates from Aulds Cove in Nova Scotia.  And I’m guessing that’s here, place I hope to visit some day.

Besides stone, self-unloaders locally also offload salt, as here H. A. Sklenar and here Balder.

 

The photo below I took in July 2009, again a self-unloader bringing in aggregates,

a task usually done by fleet mate  Alice Oldendorff, who surely has had enough exposure on this blog.  Don’t get me wrong . . . Alice is also a self-unloader, but she had other cranes as well, as you can see from the photo below, taken in 2009.

Where is Alice?  Well, she’s 300 miles from Pyongyang.  THAT Pyongyang.

Here’s a little more context, showing Pyongyang to the right and Beijing top left, and heavy ship traffic.

Alice made her last stop here a couple months back, then she headed through the Panama Canal to Qingdao for some rehab.  Qingdao is also spelled Tsingtao, like the beer.

She’ll be back come summer.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

East River Traffic

I’ve done other East River series, but it’s time to start a new one.  The next 12 photos were taken yesterday over a total elapsed 11 minutes!  I happened to be near South Street Seaport in hopes of catching santacon craziness there, as I did many years ago here.

Let’s start with Alice discharging aggregates, and barely recognizable, that’s Matilde the cement making vessel.

A longer shot reveals a clutch of kayakers, which I hadn’t seen while shooting.

Down by Red Hook, I see Frances approach with two barges of aggregate.

Dean Reinauer passes, pushing a deeply laden

RTC 106.

 

Those are the stacked lanes of the BQE with the Brooklyn Heights esplanade atop.

Buchanan 1 heads in the same direction as the other two units, but at a slightly greater speed than

 

Frances.

 

 

Again . . . all in 11 minutes.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Random Ships 51

I missed this one, but I saw it on AIS.  She used to be called Eagle Hope, but I’m thinking someone’s running out of names.

I caught up with Alice though, here to discharge what she always does . . . aggregates.

Denak Voyager waited in the anchorage at sunrise and before midmorning coffee, she moved to load what she always does . . . scrap.   Can

this be the reference?

Hafnia Lupus . .  being provisioned by the venerable Twin Tube and bunkered by a Vane unit.

CMA CGM Musset gets escorted by Jonathan C Moran.  I had to look up Musset, but I’d figured it was an artist.

See that outboard skiff over off the starboard bow?

Latgale anchored off Stapleton a while back, and

there goes Chandra B, the can-do, think-big tanker passing by Energy Champion and on its way to bunker the mothership at Sandy Hook pilots.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s off on a reconnoitre.

GHP&W 27

Know this water, more of a waterway than a harbor?  The distant buildings are a clue.  See the one just left of the center of bridge center, needle thin?

Here’s another clue . . . the structure near the right side of the photo, like an old time gas station pump?

Or this one left of the crane, looking like the business end of a blue crab whose pincers are down?

Or this wreck?  What WAS this boat?  I’ve asked a million people who all say they also asked a million people.  Anyone know?

And seriously, the first photo showed the Throgs Neck Bridge, the second the LaGuardia airport traffic tower, and the third . . . Arthur Ashe stadium.  The photo above with the mystery wreck in the Whitestone Bridge .  .. the second one in when you travel from Long Island Sound into . . . the East River

And that needle thin tower in 432 Park, said to be the tallest residential building in the hemisphere.  Click here for views from the tallest bathtub in that building.  And in the foreground of the photo below, truly a place of superlatives . . . . Rikers Island, i.e., one of the largest incarceration places in the world.  No gunk holing is tolerated anywhere near this place.

Rikers has literally overflowed its banks.  This is the off-Rikers portion of NYC Corrections, the Vernon C. Bain Center.   

Click here for a tugster photo of part of the Rikers fleet.  And here for Bain’s NYC floating prison predecessor.

By now, most of you know this is the East River and we’re traveling west.  Here the DEP sludge tanker Red Hook prepares to depart the Hunt’s Point wastewater treatment plant.   Click here for some tugster posts on treating waste and keeping sixth boro waters as clean as possible despite the teeming millions that live along the banks of these waters.   And if you’ve never read my Professional Mariner story on the latest generation of these tankers, you can do so here.

Between Rikers and Hunts Point, there are the North and South Brother Islands;  see my post from South Brother here from a long time ago.  The safer channel goes around the north of North Brother, but in daylight, most vessels can shoot between the two.

I’ve never set foot on North Brother, but I imagine it a terrestrial version of the “graveyard” on the Arthur Kill. 

 

A “night wharf” on Wards Island for the sludge tankers lies here just east of the Hell Gate and RFK bridges there.

This strait–between Roosevelt Island and the upper east side of Manhattan–in the tidal strait that’s known as the East River can see some fast currents. Somewhere off to the right is the vantage point Jonathan Steinman takes his East river pics from.

This is not a cargo pier.  These vessels are repairing the bulk heading.

 

Anyone know the identity of these two “houses” nestled up there in the eastisde of Manhattan cliffs?

 

These barges called the Water Club  . . . I’ve never been there.  Any personal reviews?

 

Newtown Creek awaits its fate here at a dock in Wallabout Bay right across

from the rock wharf where Alice Oldendorff has discharged millions of tons of crushed rock over the years.

After we duck under the Brooklyn Bridge, we near the end of the East River,

where South Street Seaport Museum has been fighting the noble fight to

preserve ships and the upland including the wharves.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Recrossing Paths

There’ve been plenty of people I’ve wanted to chance re-encounter, but it doesn’t always happen.  I’ve been to Southwest Harbor long ago, but I’ve never seen a Good Idea before.

I saw this WLB come into the harbor the other day and just assumed it was Katherine Walker, WLM-552.  But I was wrong.  Voila Elm, WLB-204, 50 feet longer than Walker, and  out of Atlantic Beach, NC, where I saw it a few years back.

Alice Oldendorff . . . I heard her crew talking with the Sandy Hook pilots the other day . . . .  I wish I knew how many voyages she has made into the sixth boro in the past decade!!

The Blue Peter . . . I saw it a month ago in Narragansett Bay, but got close enough for a good photo only after they’d dropped sail.

Liberty II . . . our paths haven’t crossed in quite a while.

Sea Lion . . . is a busy boat.

New York Media Boat . . .  another busy boat in duplicate.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

No Wake . . . our paths have never crossed that I recollect, but I wonder whose she has.  She seems to have some age.

All photos taken in the past week or so . . .

Anteojos de Sol 2

Here were the wild colors that started this series two years ago .. .

and Alice . . . always the trend setter and wanderer . . . seems headed out of the gray days in old New Amsterdam for the tropical colors of new New Amsterdam.  Notice the destination?  That’s the one in Guyana.

But I digress.  Tropical colors are a treat after some days in the cold achromatic north.  These photos come compliments of the winter refugees aboard Maraki . . . currently in the environs of Curaçao. For more colorful pics of this town, click here.

Here at the ready are Lima II and a pilot boat, and

newer sister Damen-built tug Mero.

Also in port was this International Telecom vessel . . .

IT Intrepid formerly known as Sir Eric Sharp.

Given the dominant language of this port, you’d think this local boat would be called “werken meisje ook,”  but surprises never cease.

or this be called “port service 1.”

The subject of Dutch-built tugboats in Curaçao resurrects the unsolved mystery of Wamandai, a tug that left Curaçao under some clouds and was possibly sunk by the US Coast Guard.  My letters of inquiry to various Coast Guard offices relevant to this case have turned up not a single answer, not even a word that Wamandai‘s fate is classified.  Should I say it turned up an arrogant silence?    Can anyone weigh in or help out?  Some Dutch navy vets and I would like to know.

Thanks to Maraki for these photos.

For a world of cable layers, click here.

 

Other Peoples Photos 37

Know this superstructure?  Guess the date?

Know other boats on this photo?  Actually I don’t although I see some Eklof colors.

Here’s Mary Turecamo as she appears today, i think.  I took this photo in November 2009.

And frequent contributor Ashley Hutto send this along.  Can you identify the location?

And finally, from Walter, a frequent commenter here, a novel view of Alice discharging aggregates.

These photos come thanks to bowsprite, Russell, Ashley, and Walter.   Thanks very much.

Answers to the questions are:  Mary Turecamo photos were taken during the 1986 centennial of the Statue of Liberty.  And Ashley took the his photo over near the Goethals Bridge.

 

Other Peoples Photos 35

Not New York . . . that’s for sure.  But do the colors look at all familiar?

That name should tell you why I posted these photos, taken in Skagway, Alaska, and sent along by Bob Heselberg.  Click here for more info on Lily Oldendorff, sister of Alice, who most recently appeared here on this blog.

And finally, the day before the race, I got this photo from MY former Pioneer crewmate Darell Terrance Gilbert.  Now crewing on a people mover on the sixth boro, he sees a lot of things not many folks see.  for example, back on a cold evening in January, he sent along this pic that we’ve never quite figured out.

Bob and Darell, thanks much for sending along these pics.

Two Hours on the Narrows 3

Here were 2 and the first.  This was Sunday morning August 24 at dawn.

Maersk Atlanta was headed out and

the lifters –Oops I mean Ardmore Sealifter and  . .  Ichabod Crane–were at different stages of prep to move and

and who be that . . . incoming  . .  . hull down?

with lots of deck gear . . .

why it’s Alice!!

with all her sculptural machines all

ready to discharge more aggregates on the projects hither and yon in the terrestrial boros of NYC.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who offers this in case he’s NOT back in the city for the tug race on Sunday.  On verra.

Click here for the many posts I’ve done on my favorite Alice.