Exotics 29

In my view, the sixth boro sees the regular traffic, the less regular, the new ones (new hulls or just new names) and then there are the exotics, vessels that might ever call here only once.  Vos Star is certainly an exotic, even though it had been working off SE Long Island for the past month.  I knew it was in Elizabethport and hoped I would be able to see it when it departed, and I did!

VOS expands to Vroon Offshore Services, and Vos Star is designed and equipped for a number of offshore services, in this case, assocated with offshore windfarm support.

The joy of shooting these photos as a vessel travels west to east is that you get lighted image as it approaches and then dramatically backlit photo as it recedes.  This was daybreak yesterday.  Had it departed an hour earlier, I’d have no photos to show.

The 2016 Fujian-built vessel is 223′ x 49′ and homeported in SW Netherlands. 

I’m not sure what its next job is, but AIS showed its next stop as East Dunkirk . . .  Belgium France.

Safe travels.

All photos, WVD.

 

Exotics 28 Follow-up

Not quite a month ago, I caught HOS Mystique‘s arrival in the boro here. The other morning I caught the 250 class MPSV from a closer vantage point.  

The H in HOS is Hornbeck.  Back when I started this blog in November 2006, Hornbeck had a fleet of tugs and barges, many of which are still a familiar sight passing through the boro as Genesis Energy, since about 2013. Find more on the Hornbeck family and series of companies here.

But to get back to HOS Mystique, she represents the smallest multi-purpose supply vessel at HOS at this time.

She came off the ways in December 2008 at Leevac Industries in Jennings LA, making her a Jones Act vessel.

 

 

So maybe someone can tell me why she carries no information about port of registry on her stern . . . .

All photos and any errors, WVD.

From the Line Locker 35

Ideas get thrown into the “line locker” aka “catch-all space in my brain” when I read and sort.  We all read different items in varying ways:  skim the news, scan for a reference number, word by word for meticulous directions . . . .  A friend describes himself as bouncing through life repeatedly attracted by the next shiny thing . . . yet he gets a lot of work done.  I’m drawn in by shiny things too, and some of those i share here, like seeing an ice cream boat for sale.  Click on the image below to see what you’d get for almost $220k.  I think the price is a bit steep.  Excuse the verizon ad.

Here’s a shiny thing I noticed the other day as I was studying a map of the north side of Staten Island.  See it . . . ?

Here’s a closer look . . .  to the right of Reinauer Transportation.  In fact, when last I drove by here on Richmond Terrace, I noticed a new business sign next to the Reinauer gate . . .   WindServe Marine, the folks who have taken delivery of this crew transfer vessel.  Should I expect one of these days soon we’ll see Windserve Odyssey transiting the KVK?  Has it already been in this port and I missed it?

How about water taxis in another country?  I’m surprised by the informality of these transits. Click on the image for the video . . ..

Having seen this and more, I wondered about the word for skipper or captain in Japanese language.  And the answer is su kippa and kya pu ten.  Other loan words are bijinesu (business), konbini (convenience store), and more.

HT, frequent commenter on the blog,  sent along this good news about a “maritime careers” grant won by Noble Maritime Collection. 

Here are three great youtube channels I sometimes watch: 1) for sixth boro and environs, Tim B at Sea, excellent explainer.  2) for the Upper Mississippi, marktwained, showing a very different barge handling.  And 3) Schooner Issuma and Richard Hudson, who has put more sea miles on his sailing vessels than Henry Hudson ever did.

 

And finally, the other day I broke down and created an Instagram account.  I learned in doing that that tugster is a fairly widely used account name.  WTF!@#$!  I made the name up 15 years ago, thinking it unique, a variation on what makes the words “teamster, gangster, jokester, pollster . . . .”  Here’s only one of the pages of folks using tugster in their Instagram account.  Coincidence or not?  I’m baffled.  For what it’s worth, I’m not that impressed by Instagram so far.

We can leave it here.  By the way, my Instagram account name is vandorpwill.  Someone had even beat me to my name!!

 

Explorer

What’s this?

I’m just trying to figure this out.  My best guess is that suspended from a 20-ton capacity A-frame is a set of underwater hands, a sampling device, a seafloor-drill, all tallied 14 tons of instruments  and tools in a seafloor frame. 

I can’t tell you the division of labor between the equipment lowered/raised through an approximately 10′ x 10′ moon pool by the 90′ derrick and the seafloor drill.  My guess is the the seafloor drill can function at great depth.   Note the Panamanian registry.

All those portlights . . .   relate to the 50+ crew the vessel can accommodate. 

The helideck . . . 62′ diameter, can accommodate helicopters of the Bell 412 type, i.e., up to about 3.5 tons. 

If you didn’t click on the equipment and specifications link earlier, my source for all I pretend to know here, you can click here now.  Since she was anchored in Gravesend Bay yesterday, the tide pushing her stern toward shore, I managed to get my first photos of her stern.   I have seen the vessel, working to amass wind farm bottom terrain data, several times since January 2018.   With the green light to transform South Brooklyn Marine Terminal into a dedicated wind farm construction hub, I suspect some interesting and exotic vessels will be transiting the Narrows in the next few years.

All photos and attempted interpretation, WVD.

Maybe a reader out there can explain how this equipment really works and what super-detailed examples of bathymetric chart of the New York Bight look like.

Exotics 15 and 16

I could be wrong, but a raft of unusual vessels coming through the sixth boro recently is related to priorities set and now contracts signed by a NYS agency created in 1975 called NYSERDA.  Three organizations you’ll be hearing a lot from are Equinor Wind US, Ørsted A/S, and Eversource Energy, and their projects Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind.  Click here for a map of the target areas.

Geosea is one of these vessels.

She has accommodations for 70 crew, 

some of whom you see taking photos as they enter the Narrows.

 

As of this posting she’s in port in Elizabeth NJ.

 

Also in port this morning–and hence the rainy photo until I get a better one–it’s Regulus, a US-flagged platform supply vessel.

Here’s another, taken earlier from a slightly different angle.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s always welcoming of others’ photos, particularly now in relation to wind farm related developments in the sixth boro.

Click here for my series related to the already functioning offshore wind farm along the NE coast, Deepwater Wind.