Government Boats 40

. ..  make that boats and ships.  Thanks to Allen Baker for sending along this set of T-AKR 294 Antares moving out of GMD back in January 2010.  Yup, some drafts get caught in an eddy and they spin round and round never getting posted.  But I’m a believer that late is better than never.

Antares is a Fast Sealift vessel.  Other Fast Sealift ships can be found here.

Charles D and Ellen McAllister assist her stern first out and

spin her around to head for sea.

Recent other government boats include this NJ State Police launch and

this one I’ve never seen before.  (Or since, unless it’s been repainted)

One more, here’s  300 of the New York Naval Militia.

First three fotos come thanks to Allen Baker, from early 2010.  Others are mine.

Other Watersheds 9

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.

Random Tugs 92

Note: If you’re new to this blog and wondering what resources provide “pedigree” of these vessels, a fantastic reference work in progress is tugboatinformation.com       Start out by clicking the letter of the company name to find the fleets, present and past.

This is what a “Kirbyfied” Barbara C looks like today.   Scroll through to the bottom of that Kirby Corporation link to see their string of acquisitions.

Barbara C (now Arabian Sea) used to be sibling to Donald C (now Med Sea);  as Seas, you could call them once-and-future siblings.  If you squint while looking at Med Sea‘s stack, the shadow outlining one side of the logo board there almost looks like a crescent.

How long til Med Sea loses its green for white?

Will all the former K-Sea boats, like Aegean,  be repainted .  .  .  ?

Or Tasman and

Taurus?

Another tool is the NOAA documentation registry.  Here you just type in vessel name. You’ll find, e.g., that Maria J used to be called Jesus Saves.   I took this fotos last Thursday in the rich colors of 7 am near Howland Hook container port, one of my “offices,”  where NYK Constellation was having containers shifted.  By now, Constellation has been in and back of Norfolk and Savannah and is heading ultimately through the Canal and out west . . .

Best fashions-in-fur award goes to Resolute, which stated tools here says has been called that since 1975.

All fotos in the past week by will Van Dorp.   Time to head to my bread-and-butter job, two hours early, so that I can show some face time along the KVK.

Ghost Puzzles 3

Any ideas?  Note the pulley and cable fitted into the metal knees supporting columns, once vertical but now leaning to almost “two o’clock.”

Here’s a decaying and woebegone version of what Lehigh Valley 79 preserves.  This may be younger edition, even.  And note the metallic vessel over in the lower left corner of the foto;  it’s foto 4 in this post.

Is this an elements-diminished Orange, built 1914 in Newburgh at T. S. Marvel Shipbuilding?

Read the text between the two intact portholes?  Here’s what John wrote on Opacity five years ago:  ” Truly a sad and melancholy scene, one that truly saddens the heart of any enthusiast of classic harbor ferries. That ferry was one of the old diesel-electrics operated by the City Of New York from 1959 to 1966. The wreck in this picture is either the remains of the SEAWELLS POINT or her sister, JAMESTOWN. These two ferries were built in 1926 by the American Brown Boveri Electric Corporation of Camden, NJ. During the 60s, these two boats operated between E. 134th St in the Bronx, and Rikers Island, until a bridge was built in 1966. The ferries last ran on October 31, 1966.”

Sewell’s Point was initially delivered as  Greenville Kane in November 1926;  later it went as Palisades before rechristening as  Sewell’s Point.  Anyone have fotos of her operating in conjunction with the 1964 World’s Fair?

I wonder  what passengers these decks have trod . . . and from and to what missions, tasks, assignations . . .   this makes me think of the Edna St Vincent Millay poem . . .  By the way, the top foto above shows the underside of the wheelhouse of Sewell’s Point, where cables moved between the wheel and the rudder.

And this . . . looking forward . . . quadrant submerged and sheltering a crab;  with H-bitt once worn shiny with line now gone,

an engine head long gone cold

a house top rearing back like a stallion dying from the hind legs forward . . .   and is that a collar between the boiler and the longago-toppled stack?

Alas, what once was Ned Moran . . .  and a half decade ago looked like this . . . or this even before.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Whatzit 8

Any guesses?  Something new at Coney Island?

Here’s a slightly different angle.

Different vessel but this foto’s dedicated to Paul Strubeck, who may just decide he needs to go shopping, eh, Paul?

Those horns signal the approach of Remember When, yesterday docked in North Cove, Manhattan.  That’s the Winter Garden just beyond the bow.  Thanks to Harold Tartell, see her invisible parts here.

Here’s Remember When entering the harbor a few days back.

I’m intrigued about this vessel;  when it entered the harbor two weeks back, I couldn’t find a name or anything anywhere.  Anyone know?

Enter yacht Kiwi, from Boston.

This was my first time to see this stylish boat by Ken’s Marine.  Seriously, in this post, this is the first vessel I could truly envy.  Bravo, Ken.    Name?

And this orange vessel . . . it was too far away to identify when I spotted it and took this foto.  Anyone identify?  It was headed for the George Washington Bridge when I took this.

So back to the two first shots . . . they showed the spars of the dynarig aboard Maltese Falcon, built in Turkey.    Maltese Falcon sports 15 square-rigged sails stored in and automatically deployed from the three free-standing masts.

You might call Maltese Falcon today a “used yacht,” not that that would diminish the vessel:  it was completed for Tom Perkins in 2006, who in turn sold it to Elena Ambrosiadou in 2009.  I’d love to see it under sail.  If I put details together in those links, Perkins launched the vessel in 2006 after investing about $200 million and sold it three years later for about $100 million?  Depreciation?  Poor math on somebody’s part?  Has anyone read Mine’s Bigger. .  about the building of this vessel?

Maltese Falcon’s presence in town  brings to two of the three largest sailing yachts in the world bathing in the sixth boro in May 2011.  Word of the sixth boro must be getting out there.  Now you can call Maltese Falcon a yacht, or a second-hand houseboat . . .  but it does rank right up there with the most exotic houseboats in the world, those on Dal Lake in India.

Bottom foto here thanks to Saskia deRothschild;  all others by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated but tied to yesterday’s book tip post, gCaptain’s John Konrad has been doing some fantastic posts recently–as most of you probably know.  My favorites related to the anniversary of Deepwater Horizon tragedy and great fotos on the ice in the Arctic.

GP

If the repurposed green-painted police launch in the sixth boro can be called Big G, I guess this is gargantuan G, although judging by the weldprints in the portside bow, it has a history; for two decades it was an icebreaker/sealer named Polarbjorn (153′ x 38′ x 17′)  launched  in Norway in 1975.  Then, 15 years ago, it was chartered by

Greenpeace.   I wish I could be around when the history of the 21st century gets written because I’d love to know who the winners will be and (among countless other groups) how Greenpeace will then be viewed.  Even “losers” who fight good fights would be interesting to see through “future history’s long lens.”  They do know they have enemies . . . many of them, but sometimes I’m proud of who considers me to be an enemy.   Compare the bow in the foto below with what you see in this video at 1:30.    The comments in these two videos bespeak the controversies.

Arctic Sunrise has been docked at Chelsea Piers for the past few days, at the same location where Steve Irwin docked almost a year ago.

I didn’t get a tour, but I wondered about the sign “pigmy deck,”   one I’ve never seen before.

For more on criticisms of Greenpeace, click here.  For Arctic Sunrise‘s mission in NYC, click here.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Turning 70

On this blog, you’ve seen spinning the king and turning Tabuk, get ready for turning 70, which never looked so good.

That 70 is CVN-70 aka USS Carl Vinson, recently

departing San Diego for points west.  These fotos come compliments of Michael Torres, who just a few weeks back sent spectacular fotos of the return to port of Splendor of the Seas.

The orange numbered tugs make up part of the Edison Chouest fleet.  I believe these tugs make up a small minority of American tugs with forward-mounted azimuthing drives, or ATDs, in this article by Gregory Walsh in Professional Mariner.   

For my mostly east coast eyes, these tugs are a distinctive as Michael’s fotos stunning.  I’ve written about them before here. 

The names are quite unusual also. 

SDMs 7, 8, 10, and 14 turning CVN 70 . . . that’s unfamiliar

nomenclature for my east coast ears.  I’ve got lots to learn about these, but

for now, I really appreciate getting these shots from Michael.

189 Ghost Ships

In Random Tugs 60 I mentioned a wish to locate fotos of the ghost fleet that once occupied the freight train shore of the curve in the Hudson between Stony Point and Jones Point.

Many thanks to Joseph and Harold for the following fotos.  Joseph had previously sent this.  Harold sent this . . . among many others.   First, Joe’s pics show what 189 anchored vessels looked like from the air as well as

closer and

still closer.

And now, they exist only in memory.  Here’s the link Harold sent along to what is also called the “mothball fleet,”  once rafted up where Buchanan 12 now pushes stone.

Joe Herbert and Harold Tartell . . . many thanks.

Dave Williams  suggested I look up info on how ghost vessel APA-97 went from being USS Dauphin to SS Exochorda to SS Stevens, as in Stevens Institute of Technology, which I now share with you.  This also leads me to CVE-1 Long Island, another vessel that served as a dormitory.  I’d love to hear from someone who lived in either SS Stevens or  Long Island . . .  or otherwise have knowledge of life aboard.

Graveyard 4

A few months back, I did a “Graveyard” series, in which the ferry New Bedford was mentioned.  It’s the vessel with the tilted steam stack on the left.  Some might see an eyesore.  I see this looking south, and

this looking north.

And we can all see this looking back:  hospital ship for those wounded at Normandy, or even vacation vessel for those traveling from Rhode Island to Block Island for relief.  Do you have any recollections of sailing aboard her, either your own or vicarious ones from an older relative or friend?

New Bedford‘s story deserves to be remembered, preserved on film, even if the actual vessel is beyond hope.  As does that of ILI-105 aka Michigan (sister of Day-Peckinpaugh).  From low tide today, I got this foto

and this.

There’s still enough of her to identify the vessels above, not like the ones a little farther south

or this one with (I believe) long unsupported hand-operated bilge pumps,

or these (That’s Outerbridge in the background.),

or these.

But this one has almost decipherable writing  (doubleclick enlarges)  on front of the house.

It’s Blue Line 101, built on Staten Island in 1933.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, checking out another graveyard near you soon.  Spoken in less ghoulish terms, just trying to take inspiration from John A. Noble.  Thanks to Jeff Schurr for identifying Blue Line 101.

Unrelated:  I like naturepainter’s fotostream!  There are kindred spirits (like him and me) who find each other via the internet and blogging.  Naturepainter, keep up the great work!

Salish Sea 5: The Canal Mostly

July is officially “gallivant month” this year, but as an update on yesterday’s “Bridge” post . . . the tow got somewhere out of foto range before daybreak;  when I got up to check progress on AIS at 5 am local time, it was already south of the Holland Tunnel vents.  I guess we’ll have to catch the mobile bridge when it heads from the Weeks yard up to its home over the Harlem River . . . later this month?  Also, since I’m out yon and hither this month, check Bonnie’s blog for sixth boro events.

Not on the Canal . . .  check out Royal Argosy . . . and find something strange about her design.  My answer at end of post.

Crabber Wizard, 1945 built by Brooklyn’s own Bushey yard, and one of the feature vessels of “Deadliest Catch,”  served as a YO-153 Navy oiler and a molasses tanker before its transformation into crabber in 1978.  Some YO-153s are now local reefs.

Another Bushey oiler-turned-crabber is Blue Gadus, launched two years earlier than Wizard.  Brooklyn’s yards have sent boats to the seven seas, above and beneath.

Like Wizard and Blue Gadus, Sahara hopes for a second life.  Any guesses about her previous life from this stern shot?

She was a also government ship,  R-101 Oceanographer, launched from Jacksonville, Florida in April 1964, now possibly transforming into a yacht.

Freemont Tug Co.’s Blueberry began life in 1941 in Tacoma as a 65′ buoy tender.

Ranger 7 was originally built for the United States Forest Service in 1926, but I’ve located no vintage fotos.

Maris Pearl is a repurposed 1944 Navy tug.  This foto was taken outside the Canal.

Amak was built in Goble, Oregon in 1916 and worked in Ketchikan, Alaska.

Newt, 1924.

Skillful?  Maybe, I just have no clue about her past.

And this returns us to Royal Argosy.  Notice what feeds into the forward stack . . . or rather, what does not feed into it.  It’s a faux-funnel, maybe-smoke from nowhere, a mild form of “amelioration.”

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.