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Some things like winter fishing in the harbor appear not to change in a decade, but
Houma will never again move Mary A. Whalen. Houma, built at Jakobson in 1970, was scrapped in 2017. PortSide NewYork currently has a berth for the tanker and many other activities in Atlantic Basin, Red Hook.
B. E. Lindholm, built in St.Paul MN in 1985, is alive and well, currently dredging off Fire Island.
This Kristin Poling was still working 10 years ago, definitely a survivor from before WW2 and also definitely then in her home stretch. Byearly 2012 she was scrapped.
In March 2010 I also had a chance to gallivant off to Baltimore, home of NS Savannah. If my calculations are correct, she was in service for 10 years total, and now in mothballs for 48!! Truth be told, she was a prototype, a demo ship with limited cargo capacity but also passengers. Her beautiful lines were designed by George S. Sharp. Recently she was at the end of a towline, a sight I’m sorry I missed. A wealth of info and video as well as smart comments can be found on this demo vessel here in a publication called Atomic Insights. Let me quote a small section to tease you into reading the article: “By technical measures, the ship was a success. She performed well at sea, her safety record was impressive, her fuel economy was unsurpassed and her gleaming white paint was never smudged by exhaust smoke.”
Cajun stood by Chios Voyager near the Inner Harbor Domino Sugars plant. Cajun still works along the east coast US. Chios Voyager, built 1984, has been scrapped.
And a somber last photo . . . I caught El Faro in Baltimore 10 years ago. Little did I expect then what we all know now.
All photos, WVD, in March 2010.
For your quick peruse today, I offer the inverse of yesterday’s post: I went to my archives and selected the LAST photo of something water-related each month of 2019. So if that photo was a person or an inland structure, I didn’t use it; instead, I went backwards … until I got to the first boat or water photo.
For January, it was Weeks 226 at the artificial island park at Pier 55, the construction rising out of the Hudson, aka Diller Island.
February saw Potomac lightering Maersk Callao.
March brought Capt. Brian and Alex McAllister escorting in an ULCV.
April, and new leaves on the trees, it was CLBoy heading inbound at the Narrows. Right now it’s anchored in an exotic port in Honduras and operating, I believe, as Lake Pearl.
A month later, it happened to be Dace Reinauer inbound at the Narrows, as seen from Bay Ridge.
June it was MV Rip Van Winkle. When I took this, I had no inkling that later this 1980 tour boat based in Kingston NY would be replaced by MV Rip Van Winkle II. I’ve no idea where the 1980 vessel, originally intended to be an offshore supply vessel, is today.
July . . . Carolina Coast was inbound with a sugar barge for the refinery in Yonkers.
Late August late afternoon Cuyahoga,I believe, paralleled us in the southern portion of Lake Huron.
Last photo for September, passing the Jersey City cliffs was FireFighter II.
October, last day, just before rain defeated me, I caught the indomitable Ellen McAllister off to the next job.
November, on a windy day, it was Alerce N, inbound from Cuba. Currently she’s off the west side of Peru.
And finally, a shot from just a few days ago . . . in the shadow under the Bayonne Bridge, the venerable Miriam Moran, who also made last year’s December 31 post. Choosing her here was entirely coincidental on my part.
And that’s it for 2019 and for the second decade of the 21st century. Happy 2020 and decade three everyone. Be safe and satisfied, and be in touch. Oh, and have an adventure now and then, do random good things, and smile unexpectedly many times per day.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who will spend most of tomorrow, day 1 2020, driving towards the coast. Thanks for reading this. Maybe we’ll still be in touch in 2030.
Weeks 533 has credibility: she lifted the USAir Flight 1549 Airbus A320 out of the Hudson back almost 11 years ago and more. So the other day when I was on my way to “yon” and saw her “hither” and she was working with Susan Miller, I decided to linger and inquire.
That’s when I noticed the pier 11 Wall Street float was partially submerged, and a heavy lift crew was aboard securing cables.
Besides that crew, one tug and Susan Miller, even the Green Lady was craning her neck overtop the ferry and over in my direction, paying attention.
When I managed to board a conveyance and get to the middle of the East River . . .
I saw there were actually four tugs involved, two Dann tugs and another Miller tug.
Once the landing barge was lifted over the spuds and large pumps installed–I think that’s what I saw–Susan Miller whisked the barge away to be repaired, rehabbed.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who calls this another feat for Weeks 533.
Lots more tugster cranes here.
She arrived in the harbor almost six years ago, just before the annual football event, and that’s why I called her that. Speculation about a name change then from Left Coast Lifter had been rampant, but so far as I know, she has remained LCL.
Above, that’s the last photo I took of her by the TZ Bridge, with Hook Mountain in the background, and below, that’s where she now waits, likely to be down rigged.
I suppose speculation now will be her next destination. Meanwhile she’ll be a part of the temporary landscape at Weeks, skyline, or crane forest, and she’ll be photographed, as I’ve done here here with MC-41 Snazzy Kitty,
Lady May, and
Thomas J.
Check her out before she’s lowered for travel.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Other large cranes I’ve posted include Paul Bunyan, Grasse River, Pelicano 1, and Herman the German. Then there’s the Chesapeake 1000.
I know others witnessed dawn this morning as the big pink ship came in . . . .
By the way, if you were naming this ONE “bird” ULCV based on this morning’s color, which bird
would
you choose? Nah . . . it wasn’t that. More later.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
The Narrows is a prime location for me to get photos of vessels coming in from sea if they have AIS because I have several hours notice of arrival for any traffic going anywhere into or through the Upper Bay, eg., on their way to Brooklyn berths, the North River, or the East River. I can walk around or–in case of rain or cold–sit in my car.
The downside is that it’s a wide spot, so even the zoom can draw in only limited detail.
Having said all that, here’s a shot from Bay Ridge over to the Sandy Hook Pilots station, showing (from far to near) the current black hull-yellow trimmed pilot boat mother ship New York No. 1, its eventual replacement currently with a blue hull, and the smaller boats. Lop off the thin upper wheelhouse and paint the hull/trim, and make a thousand more modifications . . . and you’ll have the new mother ship.
My goal was to get photos of Commander Iona, which I did and posted here. Unexpected was the arrival of Dina Polaris, which I’d first seen only a month and a half or so ago.
Mister Jim has been a regular on this blog and in the sixth boro surrounding waters since she first arrived a few years ago.
The Severn Sailing Association came through the rain with a whole host of sloops . . . from closest to farthest: Commitment, Intrepid, Valiant, Courage, Invincible, Renaissance, Daring, Brave, Warrior.
Rhea I. Bouchard headed in with her barge, but by this time the rain was falling so hard I couldn’t confirm the name/number on the barge.
Magdalen headed out, passing a sloop and
R/V Heidi Lynn Scuthorpe, a first sighting for me.
Click here for more info on Heidi Lynn and Monmouth University’s Urban Coast Institute. Click here for a more technical article from Workboat on this vessel.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who feels compensated for staying out in the rain.
I saw Nauvoo (Heidi Lynn‘s previous name) years back and I posted a pic here. I also saw Beglane.
This exact title–sans the number–goes way back to 2007 here. The orange vessel doing surveys in 2007 has been replaced by the one below, which I’d not seen until very recently.
The USACE has several survey boats in the boro, as
does Rogers.
Alpine Ocean has been surveying the harbor and the bight for some time now . . . with R/V Shearwater, which I’ve seen as far south as Norfolk.
Shearwater is 110′ loa; clearly here you see how Dina Polaris shrinks her size, the latter has five times the number of berths.
She was in briefly and out this past weekend, so I devote more space to her.
And while we’re in this general group, I couldn’t pass up this vessel, which I’ve not seen. She may be the one doing working on the WW2 tanker wreck Coimbra, 30 miles south of Shinnecock Inlet. Has anyone gotten photos of her?
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who wishes you all a happy may day . . .
I walked along the Hudson and past the Vessel the other day because it was flat and scenic. I also wanted to see what progress was happening at Pier 55, aka on Diller Island.
Beneath, from small boats . . . these workers attended to several of the 132 pots that make up the island.
Michael Miller stood by Weeks 526, as
at this moment did Shawn Miller.
Meanwhile, coming upriver was another Weeks crane, the 533, with Susan Miller on port bow and
Elizabeth supplying power.
At a certain moment, Shawn departed the 526 and headed over to the Weeks 533
to assist.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who recently saw Weeks and Miller tugs working on 533 here.
I’d say a “dance of cranes,” but then you’d think of the plumed type. So plethora will have to stand in. If you look at any links in this post, check out this one from November 2007, where the gantry cranes appear to tango . . . or duel with booms as blades maybe . . .
Suddenly I had cranes on my brains, like these shoreside ones around the slight bend from Matthew Tibbetts.
Or these over by USNS Pomeroy, which last had a rehab in February 2014.
Busy discharging salt with clamshells are the shipboard cranes on Sinop, and then
there have recently passed lots of cranes on barges like this one moved by Emily Ann and
whose logo I don’t recognize,
this one pushed westbound by Joyce D. Brown and whose logo I’ve
not noticed before either,
and this Weeks 524 around sunrise moved
by Susan Miller.
And to close this post out, this endangered crane, ice-encased and non-functional on a 6-above days.
All photos taken in 2019 by Will Van Dorp.
More cranes from 2010 here, and from 2009 here and here and here.
That’s enough for now.
Click here for the 43 previous posts if you don’t understand the title. If your thoughts on being the image below were of high heels sans the rest of the impractical shoe, mine were the same. Of course, you can read Weeks 526 clear as day, so . . . whatzit?
Here’s a bit more context. That’s the Hudson River, old pilings for old Pier 55, I believe, just north of old Pier 54.
Piers of Manhattan once welcomed ships and ferries, cargo and passengers transitioned between land and water there. Then people patterns changed and these piers little by little have transformed.
So what is it?!@#@!!
Come back in a few years and hang out at new Pier 55, the on–then off–then on again park idea funded for $250 million by Barry Diller. The project reminds me of the vessel, another Heatherwick Studio creation.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, with a cell phone. I’ve been losing a grip on patterns these days myself.
Before I started blogging, Pier 54 hosted the Nomadic Museum, for a half year or so. I loved it.
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