You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘sirens’ category.
Soon after this shot, the queen of hearts and troupe danced for the judges with this on a loud sound box. That makes for a good day, even though I can’t remember Alice, a rabbit, or the dormouse. But that’s one of the things I love about the parade . . . good music and dancing.
After then parade, Gypsy Funk Squad played on . . . Here’s my phone-recorded sample of King Jack Neptune playing the oud, with a mermaid queen, percussion and dancers. Hear more oud–related to the lute–here.
Of course, Dick D. Zigun, honorific mayor of Coney Island, always leads off the parade with his drum and band.
I’ve never seen this sort of Mexican dancer in the parade, but they surely raised the bar for quality.
And of course, mermaids can make politics much more palatable than most politicians or media marketeers.
But mostly, it’s exuberant music and ecstatic dancing.
How many starfish have you seen trumpeting?
And high octane drumming overcomes stasis.
Enjoy the photos, the solstice, and the strawberry moon.
Click here for mermaid parade years and here for annual solstice mermaid migration years.
All photos here by Will Van Dorp, who WAS a judge!
. . . aka a jumble.
I took the foto below of Stephen L. Colby (St. Louis, MO-built, 1967, 144′ x 40′) on 1/4/2013 in Cairo, IL. Yesterday, the boat sank into 14 feet of water farther north on the Mississippi.
Below, s/v Concetta meets Charles D. McAllister (Jacksonville, FL, 1967, 94′ x 29′) in late October.
Twin Tube (Blount, 1951, 64′ x 19′) passes the polytube rack. If you click on the link in the previous sentence, you’ll see the very next completed Blount project was of Ceres, a “grain elevator.” A google search turned up no fotos. Anyone know of any?
I took this foto a week and a half ago. Currently, Grande Sierra Leone has left Dakar bound for Cotonou, passing the older Grande Buenos Aires en route.
Bow Hector in the Kills a few days ago . . . now in Morehead City. Bow! Hector!
Taft Beach . . . shuttling dredge spoils, inbound.
Sludge tanker North River noses past 118,000-bbl barge Charleston.
On Marathon Day, this was Explorer of the Seas ( I think) approaching the Narrows, as seen past the stern of Transib Bridge.
A few days ago . . . it’s Challenge Paradise. I wonder if that’s ever a command. . . .
And at the same moment, crude oil tanker Felicity. By the way, I passed between felicity and challenge paradise . .. steering clear. Both vessels are currently southbound off the coast of the Carolinas.
Finally, in the Buttermilk, it’s MAST’s r/v Blue Sea, passing Wilson Newcastle and McAllister Responder. Responder and Charles D. are two of the triplets built near the end of the run at Gibbs Gas Engine, currently a place to sleep and stroll. The last time I saw Roderick-the third triplet– in the sixth boro was here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Consider this tugster’s November version of the summer solstice parade. Enjoy these eight fotos. They call themselves the water nymphs with music provided by typewriter, although a google search comes up with no further info. The music–see the bass player in one foto–was hypnotic also, but you’ll have to imagine the sounds, though this–sans voice–might be the reference.
Why eight fotos?
Well . . . November 26, 2006 I did my first post. Tomorrow I start my eighth year and I hope to continue as long as it’s fun for all. Thanks for reading, commenting, sending along suggestions, corrections and fotos . . . and so much more. This is my 2285th post and have been blessed with 1,204, 899 hits as of posting. Again . . . thanks all.
All these fotos by Will Van Dorp, who loved the dances.
Foto below was taken on July 3, 2012. Charles D. McAllister . . . featured here dozens of times, was assisting British Harmony (see name on lifeboat) out of IMTT Bayonne . . . for sea. Where? Doubleclick enlarges fotos.
Related: note the follow-though handwork demonstrated by the line thrower below. Where is he? He’s not throwing the line to anything belonging to British Harmony, but he is in the same watershed.
Ditto this tug and barge. Where it it? Notice the water color. Notice the name on the barge.
MANAUS on the tug is the best clue.
All fotos in this post except the first one were taken by my daughter, Myriam, who’s on the Amazon all summer as a grad student. I bought her a camera and said . . . “tugster needs you,” and she’s been following through since mid-May while I’ve focused mostly on my end of the sixth boro, not hers. More on this later in this post. That’s a sweet ride below.
She’s based in Macapa and took this and all the others from her workboat. No, she doesn’t drive it.
Cargo moves by vessels like this, and
this. Right now Ikan Suji is Shanghai bound with a hold filled with Amazonian raw materials, I’d bet.
My guess (and I’m often wrong) on this cargo is navigational aids in the making.
I wish she’d caught the rest of the ferry . . . but there are fewer possibilities for a bow than a stern. I’d never imagine this house/stern arrangement.
NYC’s sixth boro . . . as all areas . . . have their
government boats.
Behold two Amazonian “rebocadores ” Excalibur and Merlin. Click here for Smit Rebras including some interesting newbuild fotos. Thanks to Harold Tartell for suggesting looking here.
But, not unexpectedly, vessels on the Amazon and its many fingers are as diverse as the population of that great country.
This could be the Mississippi,
as could this.
From Macapa to Manaus upriver is 500 to 600 air miles. Stadt Gera, in Macapa today, was in the sixth boro and on this blog a year and a half ago.
And here’s why I put the foto of Charles D. McAllister and British Harmony first: British Harmony is about halfway up the Amazon to Manaus as I write this. One really can get anywhere watery from the sixth boro. Knowing that and having concrete reminders like this are not the same.
From fishermen, people with cameras along the KVK, and Macy’s barge waiting for the 2012 Independence Day fireworks . . . to kids in wooden boats like this . . . all seen by crew on British Harmony on the same trip . . . I find amazing.
I hope you enjoyed this glimpse of another watershed. Myriam certainly has the gallivant gene. Here’s some self-disclosure. 39 years ago (!!) I traveled to my first professional job about 500 miles up the Congo River on a huge tugboat named Major Vangu, pushing four deck barges. The tug had 8 or 10 “staterooms” and a bar/restaurant for paying first class passengers. Second class were on a barge with shade, and third class slept among the cargo (barrels of fuel, trucks, crates of beer, misc . . .) on the other barges. It took four days and nights to get from Kinshasa to Mbandaka, near where I spend the next two years. The reason for the choice of a tug was the airplane was non-functioning and roads to get there would have taken weeks. Making this realization today suggests the need for a long river trip next year. . . . hmmmm . . . .
This post is inspired by Jed’s extended resume of last April here, and a “lightbulb” comment by Maureen. Thanks to you both.
Related: Several times I tried unsuccessfully to find good profile shots of Major Vangu, which sank in 1979. Anyone have ideas on finding fotos of the old Onatra vessels like Major Vangu?
Related: In writing this post, I stumbled onto this blog by an artist in Belem, a major Amazonian port.
With apologies to Johna, here are the pastries, a merman,
a merbike, but no meryak!! Guess that one will challenge us til next year.
Horns aplenty (more than in Pamplona Seattle) feted the solstice, as did
hooks on lures,
harlequins of
many genres,
spiral horned,
orchestrated horns,
harlequins with parasols,
and here . . . beyond the cowboy in blue toga, library maids and masters with a classic edition of Jules Verne . . . .
By the next day, revelry had migrated to Red Hook, where theatrical scenes of fund-raising on behalf of PortSide NewYork took place, involving officers of
someone’s flotilla bearing keys to the city. By the way, if you can make it to the Community Board 1 meeting TONIGHT by 6 pm, I’ll see you there. Important!
And someone commented . . asking what this mermaidographer looked like, click here and go to #9; thanks for these to Claudia Hehr.
Cheers. Summer is here . . . and I may tomorrow be agallivantin . . .
Meanwhile, if anyone got good pics of the librarian mermaid/mermen contingent . . . please share?
aka . . pastries pasties and paint, starting with the self-described “naked cowgirl.”
Why
gild
the
lily?
I’ll
just
put up
fotos
but
further
remain
mute.
See you at south Brooklyn aka Isle of Coney next year.
Happy summertime.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Coney Island–the reef–has existed within the sixth boro since time immemorial, this gathering has occurred since 1983, and tugster has blogged it since 2007, drawn by the natural beauty of creatures–like this one— with
their altruistic sensibilities, their
bio-diversity, their
breathing behavior in dry–if muggy- air, and … more.
But I couldn’t help noticing yesterday that . . . as the mermaids school on this reef, so does another species . . . camera-bearers. Even chief-liaison Dick Zigun has cameras turned on him.
And mermaids themselves sport cameras, maybe as mimicry.
But yesterday the camera-bearers were everywhere!
They schooled–dare I say swarmed–each time a seamaid emerged out of the reef.
Not that the mercreatures seemed to perceive threat; in fact,
it looked like mutual enjoyment
a case of fun, fanfare,
flourish, and frippery.
And camera-bearers feasted at every turn.
And how do you suppose I got these fotos of
such lovely creatures, who
traveled by a range of
conveyance?
More on that tomorrow . . . and the pasties and paint verson of the story.
OK, all fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
Totally related: in the third foto from end above . . . one mermaid sported a tugboat atop her hear but my shot was blurry. Also, I missed a shot of the “librarian mermaids,” which, if anyone got, I’d love a link or a copy.
#1 was here.
It’s June. Might you be suffering from hypoclupea . . . deficiency of herring? Read what the celebrated neurologist Oliver Sacks writes about treatment here, as published in the New Yorker two years ago. Hypoclupea can leave you blase, bleached, apathetic . . .
dried out . . . as Miss Callie herself is feeling these days. To see Miss Callie in her element among the fishes, click here.
Even on Coney Island, the painting near the boardwalk looks off because this siren has taken to eating . . . @#@! dogs, and they’re not even hot.
Go fishing . . . whether you use bunker for bait and catch your own, or just
exchange cash or credit at the nearest purveyor of “new catch holland herring,” and you’ll find your zest for life just
returns! You might even end up seeing mermaids without having to go to the latest Depp/Disney show.
All fotos by will Van Dorp, who has lots of unrelated odds and ends and who just might not post tomorrow.
Translated info on the fleet at a “loggers” festival in Vlaardingen on the Rhine this weekend. “Logger” in Dutch is “lugger” in English.
From Uglyships’ Bart, here’s a video on an uneventful loading of the loading of 15! tugs onto SSHLV Fjell in Singapore bound for Maracaibo via Cape Town. Here’s a Reuters article on same.
And finally, last but not least, you’ll see a new image of “tugster” on the upper left side of this blog; click on the image and you’ll see part of an article that appeared in Jack Tar Issue #5. Watercolor is by Herb Ascherman of Cold is the Sea blog. Another great example of his work is cover on Jack Tar #5.
Finally, if you find yourself in Manhattan Saturday, look to the water: I know of at least one swim around the island race going on. New York has enthusiastic swimmers!
Happy solstice!
The solstice happens in a week. Is your household ready, mobilized. Can you safely take it out onto the highways and wetways?
Thoughts of anything but summer . . . with its adventures and gallivants . .. are elusive, for me. Dana Spiotta writes of that in tomorrow’s NYTimes magazine, recounting a voyage on the Erie Canal by rowboat with Tide and Current Taxi‘s very own Marie Lorenz. You could go fishing: both Marlin and Minnow are currently in the sixth boro.
You could just go sit by the water and see all there’s to see. I saw a classic loon yesterday–who dove before I could snap evidence. This Corsair passed more slowly, less skittishly.
A week from now you could swim around Manhattan . . . or volunteer to keep swimmers safe by emailing cweber@nyc.org
You could swallow new herring and gin. Here’s more info.
In a week you could go to the Clearwater Festival.
This foto from last year comes from Yen. I know where, like these monks, I’m going . . . .
Next Saturday . . . the sea will again boil with hot blood and creatures rarely seen will emerge and parade. It’s the 29th
annual Mermaid Parade and Ball!!!
Thanks, Yen, for that foto.
Here was the first post in this series. Some months back I wondered what this vessel was; only by the time it had sailed a thousand miles southward did I realize it was a dredger, B. E. Lindholm. If only I had gone around the barge here at the east end of Caddell’s . . . . But I was in a hurry that morning. Kenny Wilder took these fantastic dredge fotos for which I am grateful. All my hopper dredger fotos are too far away to demystify the bottom vacuuming business. More Lindholm fotos can be found here.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock has a hopper dredger in the harbor right now, but my shots are
always too far off. This trailing suction hopper dredger is called Padre Island.
Here’s a GLDD clamshell submerged and probing the topography of the bottom of the bay,
emerging,
and re-submerged.
Here’s a hydraulic excavator. The equipment is mammoth.
Deeper, deeper, the task seems herculean and somewhat futile at the same time, except it’s not.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
To see how the huge dredger Leiv Eiriksson is put together, click here.
Dredging . . . besides being essential work of the harbor, it reminds me of how my consciousness works: each morning, whatever the hour, when I wake up, my perception is affected by whatever topography of my memory is then exposed. It may be peaks or valleys or even human-created highs and lows. Stuff resolved or not but accepted last week or last year needs to be dealt with again and again. Not that I’m a slow learner, just new perspective brings new doubts, refreshed hopes. Unsettling, pun intended. I suppose this makes a post about dredging an apt end-of/beginning-of year post.
Related to dredging is dealing with the nagging stuff that comes up in many of our consciousnesses as relates to getting along with people. A type of post I’m thinking to add is an advice column. Being on Georgia backroads now with only a quite blank laptop, I have no sixth boro fotos to illustrate, but here’s a an example, which–@!%&*#@–sounds so much like Shakespeare that I’ll just modify this synopsis of Midsummer Night’s Dream. . . except this writing happens to be midwinter.
Sample advice seeker whom I’ll call “December dredgerist” —-
Dear Tugster, My crewmate Mori (married to a lubber Elfin Princess . . . aka EP) feels profoundly attracted to Tori (a lubber), and Tori feels deeply attracted to Luis. EP loves Mori but also–being elfin–has strong attractions and liaisons with a plethora of fairies, sprites, nymphs, mermaids, and sirens, and other magical creatures of the forests, islands, tidepools, hills… all of which is fine with Mori, who understands elfins and their openness about Mori and Tori. There is neither pressure to change anything nor complications that exist, but (I’m writing for Mori) Mori wants to know if you could dig into your experience to help Mori either attract Tori or deal with her lack of attractedness to him without turning into an ass. Many thanks… December dredgerist.
My response: Dear Decemberist: Tell Mori that change is the only constant, and since I have no control over the elves, sprites, and other magical creatures that make stuff happen in your/my lives, just . . . do what you’re doing–be sweet or salty or neutral according to your custom and … ride out the hurricanes, calms, ebbs, surges. May your anchor hold tight in spring tides as in lows. Dress warmly, and always wear a life jacket.
Lame, maybe? Any advice for either the advice giver or the advice seeker? Much appreciated, and Auspicious 2010! Enjoy the midwinter’s full moon. I’m starting to make my way down the Savannah watershed.
PS: If your advice to me is to call off this column and terminate the personals-dredging, I’ll consider it.
Unrelated: check out the mini-tug on Gypsy pirate wench! Fair winds to her as she joins Amistad!
tugster: a waterblog 
Recent Comments