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I know it’s not summer yet, but this post best follows on Summer Sail 5 here, so . . . this choice of title. I also have catchups of some sixth boro events soon, and the fleet comes in this week, just before I go back to the lively Lakes.
Currently in the boro is the 1930 Capitán Miranda, a three-masted schooner of the Uruguayan navy, a vessel that had been destined for the breakers in 1978,
but then got a new lease on life.
Her namesake is a Uruguayan mariner of a century ago.
More on the Uruguayan navy can be found here,
and the country itself here. Before clicking on the link, guess the population size?
I’m not sure how long they’ll be in town, so if interested, hurry on down.
All photos, any errors, WVD.
Try this: a cruise from Buenos Aires to . . . Milwaukee!! These folks are currently doing it.
Below is my screen capture as they were leaving the sixth boro. Here‘s my blog post of them along the west side of Manhattan.
Post by the robots as WVD is away.
A Jules Verne novel set at the southern tip of South America goes by the fabulous title, The Light at the End of the World. Richard Hudson passed through here recently and sent along the photos in today’s post.
It’s USS ATR-20, built in Camden Maine, launched in January 1943 and ending her days in Ushuaia, Argentina. The shipyard is now Wayfarer Marine, which I should do a post about one of these days. The sixth boro–as does The Graves of Arthur Kill– has its very own disintegrating ATR here.
Fishing vessel Don Herman makes its way past the glacier in Seno, Chile.
Here’s a smaller fishing boat near Isla Riesco.
End of the world aka Strait of Magellan, find tankers there? Of course. Here’s Sloman Herakles.
Ditto ROROs like Fuegino.
Canal Cockburn . . . they fish there too.
Puerto Eden . . . some folks live their whole lives there and like it.
Here are two more pics he sent a few months ago; I’m impressed with this tender made of repurposed styrofoam.
Note Issuma in the background to the right. Here are more.
Many thanks to Richard for this. Follow his progress along the edge of the world here.
Santa Marta harbor . . . sees HR Recommendation arriving in port, from Houston, methinks.
Ditto Thor Energy.
And Baldock, here being bunkered by Intergod VII.
Dole Chile is likely there to pick up tropical fruit to ship north, to our ports.
Stern to stern here, Dodo with a stern bridge, and the other with a less common bow bridge.
Industrial Faith . . . quite the winner as a name.
At sea . . . it’s a hull down Houston.
Alessandro DP . . . at sea.
And in Curacao, facing Caracas Bay, it’s Stena Discovery . . . for a spell now under port arrest.
At sea . . . Hafnia Taurus. Maraki also . . . is back at sea.
And finally . . . in the Rotterdam area, the 2014 Vietnam-built Lewek Constellation, deep sea pipe layer.
Many thanks to Maraki and to Fred Trooster for these photos.
Just before 0700, Medi Osaka rounded the bend, low in the water as a galleon from the Andean mines. Only two hours before, under darkness, Medi Osaka‘s soon-to-be berth was still occupied by Global Success, which had just completed discharging its payload of road salt, at least the part of the load gong to Atlantic Salt.
Many media reports notwithstanding, there is road salt around. Not all suppliers have been out.
This clam shell has been steadily emptying out holds.
Granted the salt has been leaving almost as quickly as it has arrived, but
count the trucks . . . a dozen and a half waiting here . . and more.
For JS and others who know the place, yes, I’m atop the salt pile looking down on Leidy’s . . . not far from Sailor’s Snug Harbor.
The trucks are there loading salt from Global Success even before Medi Osaka docks.
There’s 36 feet of water here and then some.
Note the crew watch the vessel inch up to the docking barge.
The next post will show the linemen ferrying the lines to shore crews running them up to the bollards.
Meanwhile, temperatures were almost to 50 F by the time I left here.
The link here may show the first glimpse I had of Balder. Let me share my getting better acquainted, but first . . . the foto below I took 13 months ago. Note the different colors of salt, reflecting
different provenances, as explained in Ian Frazier’s New Yorker article below. Buy a copy to get the rest of the story.
Without this vessel, all of us who drive the roads or walks the sidewalks and streets within the metropolis surrounding the sixth boro would be at greater risk of slipping and crashing. Framed that way, Balder could not be better named. Here’s what Kimberly Turecamo looks like from Balder‘s bridge.
On the far side of the channel, that’s Dace.
Here’s what has come forth from Balder‘s belly, a bit of the Atacama Desert on the KVK. Huge tractors load the trucks that come to a highway department near you today.
This 246′ arm, reaching nearly to Richmond Terrace, offloads at the relatively slow rate of 8oo tons per hour.
And here’s the hold just emptied, one hold of five. Notice the ladders and the tracks at the base of the hold.
Click here to see the unloading machinery in action.
Navel, perhaps?
Here’s what gets even the last pound making up the nearly 50,000-ton payload onto the salt dock.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Thanks to Brian DeForest of Atlantic Salt and the Balder crew for the tour.
It’s appropriate that this was Salt 6. You’ll understand as you go through this post and the next one.
Just like it’s appropriate that this Cat is prowling.
Wonder what’s the relationship between this dark shape arriving and safe driving and even on safe walking on streets in the lit-up Manhattan in the distance?
Balder is in port with almost 50,000 tons of crystals from the deserts of Chile aka road . . .
. . . salt.
She drifts in silently and crews make her fast.
Can you imagine doing this in a February or any other cold month sixth boro?
Well . . . it happens
again and again, ship after ship, with utmost concern for safety.
Balder (2002) features a self-unloading system.
Once all lines are secured along with customs check and other paperwork, partial crew change . . .
While some of the city sleeps, Balder’s arm stretches forth and the Cats get to work.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who is very appreciative for Atlantic Salt terminal manager Brian DeForest’s permission to be in the yard.
Two words juxtaposed in this headline from May 1914 NYTimes are not ones I expect to see . .. “Roosevelt” and “tug.” Click on the image and (I hope) you’ll get the rest of the article.
Below is Aidan, the Booth Line steamer which returned the former President from Belem, near the mouth of the Amazon.
On October 4, 1913, Roosevelt boarded the vessel below—S. S. Van Dyck–-for Brazil. Departure was from Brooklyn
Pier 8, to the left below. Click the foto to see the source.
What’s driving this post is Candice Millard’s 2005 The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, which I just finished reading. Learning about the namesake–Candido Rondon— for the vessel in foto 8 here while in Brazil last summer prompted me to finally read this book. Ever know that the ex-US President was stalked by invisible cannibals as he and Rondon led a joint Brazilian/American group down a 400-mile uncharted tributary of the Amazon, now referred to as Rio Roosevelt (pronounced Hio Hosevelt).
Well-worth the read!
Here was 9 in this series, mostly taken by my daughter last summer near the mouth of the Amazon. And since the holidays allow me to finally get the narrated version from her, I’m adding a set. She took all of these in Brasil, most in the Amapá state, with a trip over to the Pará state. . Yes, bowsprite . . . there’s a meia here too.
Note the river tugs Merlim and Excalibur, and the small boat moving in
to touch up hull paint.
Passenger vessels come in all shapes.
Passengers find a place where they can hang on, or
not.
Cargo transfers happen under way.
Sleeping quarters are air conditioned.
International commerce
is nearby.
Tug and barge transport is common.
More soon.
Thanks Myriam. Maybe I’ll be your assistant next summer.
For more workboats from this area, click here. For a tug aka rebocador on a Brazilian beach, click here.
Here are segments 1–5.
New York City is one of those places where tens of thousands of restaurants serve food from every imaginable region on earth. Scroll through the NYTimes restaurant list for a small sampling. Ditto music venues with sounds of the world.
The vessel below caries a mundane product that also travels from an obscure region. Guess?
It’s not oil, like the product Scotty Sky delivers. Oil itself is quite exotic in that it arrives from geological eras in our planet’s unimaginable past.
er . . . make that Patrick Sky. Sorry.
And Patrick Sky delivered nothng to our mystery vessel, named for a Norse god, Balder. Either that, or the name derives from a landscape that more denuded now that before . . . balder? Actually the cargo comes from a place that nearly a century and a half ago saw a mineral-motivated War of the Pacific. And the product is . . .
salt. New yorkers can pride themselves that their roads, come ice and snow, sport Peruvian salt.
Balder picked up this load in Ilo, Peru. See her recent itinerary here.
So in a few weeks–maybe–when this salt ends up on streets and sidewalks, pick some unmelted granules up and smell it.
x
You may catch hints of kiwicha and quinoa, and hearing strains of charanga, you might find your feet moving to the beat of a diablada.
And I know it’s all driven by economics, but of course, New York state has its own salt mines. For Balder in drydock, click here. For specs on its “self-unloading/reclaimer system,” click here.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
tugster: a waterblog 
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