Retro Sixth Boro 29

August can be hazy, and it appears that some August days in 2010 were, as below when Colleen McAllister towed dredge spoils scow GL 501 out and Brendan Turecamo (?) moved Bouchard barge B.No. 260 westbound in the Kills.  Colleen has now traveled from sun to ice out to the Great Lakes, where the 1967 4300 hp tug is currently laid up.   Brendan is alive and well and working in the sixth boro.

Kimberly Poling, then in a slightly different livery than now,  pushed Noelle Cutler in the same direction.  Both still work the waters in and out of the sixth boro.

These days I just don’t spend much time near the sixth boro at dusk, but here Aegean Sea pushes a barge northbound in the Upper Bay.  Aegean now works the Massachusetts coast, and I recall she’s made at least one trip back to the Hudson since 2013.

On a jaunt on the lower Delaware, I caught Madeline easing the bow of Delta Ocean into a dock.  The 2008 4200 hp Gladding Hearn tug is still working in the Wilmington DE area. Delta Ocean, a 2010 crude carrier at 157444 dwt, almost qualifies as a VLCC. She’s currently in Singapore.

Madeline is assisted here by Lindsey, the 60′ 1989 Gladding Hearn z-drive boat rated at 2760 hp.

Duty towed a barge downstream near Wilmington.

Recently she has sold to South Puerto Rico Towing and Boat Services, where the 3000 hp tug is now called Nydia P.  I’d love to see her in SPRT mustard and red colors.

I traveled from the sixth boro to Philadelphia as crew on 1901 three-masted barkentine Gazela.  In upper Delaware Bay, we were overtaken by US EPA Bold and Brandywine pushing barge Double Skin 141.  Gazela, like other mostly volunteer-maintained vessels, is quiet now due to covid, but check out their FB page at Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild.   US EPA Bold, now flying the flag of Vanuatu and called Bold Explorer, is southwest of Victoria BC on the Salish Sea. She was built in 1989 as USNS Bold.  Brandywine, a 2006 6000 hp product of Marinette WI, has today just departed Savanna GA.

Getting this photo of the barkentine, and myself if you enlarge it, was a feat of coincidence and almost-instant networking, the story I’ll not tell here.

On a trip inland, I caught Tender #1 pushing an ancient barge through lock E-28B.  I believe Tender #1 is still in service.

From a beach in Coney Island one morning, I caught Edith Thornton towing a barge into Jamaica Bay on very short gatelines.  Edith is a 104′ x 26 1951-built Reading RR tug that passed through many hands.  currently it’s Chassidy, working out of Trinidad and Tobago.

Here’s another version I shot that morning. For even more, click here.

The mighty Brangus assisted dredge Florida.  Back in those days, the channels of the sixth boro were being deepened to allow today’s ULCVs–like CMA CGM T.Jefferson— to serve the sixth boro.  If I’m not mistaken, Brangus has been a GLDD tug since it was built in 1965. Currently she’s in the Elizabeth River in VA.

Here she tends the shear leg portion of a GLDD dredging job.  See the cutterhead to the left of the helmeted crew?

On another hazy day, a light Heron heads for the Kills.  The 1968-built 106′ x 30′ tug rated at 3200 hp was sold to Nigerian interests in 2012.   I’d love to see her in her current livery and context.

Java Sea resurfaced in Seattle as part of the Boyer fleet and now called Kinani H, seen here on tugster just a month ago.    The 110′ x 32′ tug was launched in 1981 as Patriot.

And finally . . . probably the only time I saw her, crewboat Alert.  She appears to be a Reinauer vessel.

All photos, WVD, from August 2010.  If you want to see an unusual tugster post from that month, click here.

For some unusual August 2010 posts, click here.

 

 

Retro Sixth Boro 8

One satisfying thing to me about these retro posts is noticing how much the local fleet has changed.  All these photos I took in November 2008.  Coral Queen was scrapped at least eight or nine years ago.  Maersk Donegal has had two name changes since 2008, now know as Santa Priscila, and no longer calls in the sixth boro.

SPT Guardian, still under the same name, is currently operating out of Lome, Togo.  Note the NJ State Police boat alongside.  I don’t know if they are still using that boat.

ITB Groton is gone as well.

The huge K-Sea fleet in the boro has dispersed.  Solomon Sea is now Emily Ann,

Falcon, I believe, is still Falcon but wears Vane livery,

Davis Sea still has the same name but Kirby colors and operates in the Gulf,

and Aegean Sea carries the same name but works for Burnham Associates in my old stomping grounds north of Boston.  NYK Diana has moved to the Pacific to the US West Coast.

This Rosemary McAllister has been replaced by another Rosemary McAllister, and has spent only part of one day in the sixth boro.

Stapleton Service takes the prize for the greatest number of name changes, three since 2008.  She’s now Michael Miller.

Buchanan 15 has become Dory, although I’ve not seen her in a while.

Coral Queen‘s smaller fleet mate was John B. Caddell, which became a hurricane Sandy victim:  grounded, sheriff auctioned, and scrapped.

I made a jaunt upriver aboard the only and only Half Moon–now sold abroad– in November 2008, and saw

Champion Polar but she’s now

–ice bow and all- dead and likely scrapped,  as well as

a more intact Bannerman’s Castle.

All photos by Will Van Dorp in November 2008.

 

 

Road Fotos 36

Here are the previous ones.

One of the joys of driving is the serendipity–even if guided . . . thanks, GT–of noticing the entirely unexpected, like the device below.  Any ideas?  If GT hadn’t mentioned this, I probably would not have thought twice about this weathered industrial object.  And it’s for sale.  For the right price, it can be on your boat.

A clue is that the device above is located geographically between the tin building below and Boston, where this road trip ends.   The tin building is Gallery 53 on Rocky Neck.  I’m guessing it once had a seafood related purpose.

A bit down the coast is Salem.  The brick building with cupola in the distance is the old Custom House, where Nathaniel Hawthorne once worked.

I had forgotten that this replica is Hudson River built. There was a trade with China already 200 years ago.

 

I’ll have to come back to the North Shore when all these vessels–Adventure, Friendship, and Fame–are sailing.

 

Continuing southward . . . we arrive in East Boston, and Jake.

Here’s another device on a rooftop.  Fiat Topolino?

If you know the area, you’ll guess I’ve been heading south on 1A, and now I’ve parked and am walking over the McArdelle Bridge.  Anyone know anything about that red vessel that looks a bit like Augie?

My tour of Luna recently is what lured me to this area around Chelsea Creek.  Here’s Luna resplendent.

Anyone know the story of JW Powell?

And the red and the white sailing vessels farthest from the camera here?

Over yonder is Aegean Sea, formerly of the seas of the sixth boro.

This bullnose will likely never again see the water.

And here we are at the end of this stretch of road . . . it’s Roxbury High Fort aka the Cochituate Standpipe.

So here we are . . . it’s a whistle from the SS United States!  Are there any developments in her refurbishing?  For some interior shots of her I took two years ago, click here.   Here are some other photos taken on the SS United States.

As to the particulars on the whistle, here’s what I learned this morning from SW:  “The whistle from the United States is a Leslie Tyfon, size 300DVE-5.  [Click on that link to hear one of these.]  It was purchased in 1986 by my uncle at auction I believe through Marine Technologies  Brokerage Corp. out of N.Y.   We have a letter of authenticity and it is currently for sale to the best offer.  Last recorded offer was $10,000.00.  We feel it is much more valuable.  It was on of three steam whistles from the forward stack of the ocean liner.  My uncle purchased the large forward whistle.  Thanks for your curiosity.”

All photos taken by Will Van Dorp.

Many thanks to GT for the heads up and to Steve for the info on whistle.

From the Line Locker 14

Here were 11, which clarifies the title . ..  I hope.

I’ve had these fotos from Seth Tane for quite some time.  I looked at them today while culling fotos from my library.  Foto shows Foss tugs moving the Sauvie Island Bridge span into position near Portland, Oregon.  Foss tugs visible are (I believe)  the larger PJ Brix and Jim Moore.

This foto also shows Daniel Foss. The bridge move happened in late December 2007;  see page 6 of this Foss publication.  Looking up info on the Sauvie Island Bridge, I stumbled on the clever Flickr assemblage of fotos with the string “island bridge” in the name.  Try playing with it to see bridges with those two words juxtaposed from everywhere.

Like I said, I was scrolling through and culling my 2008 fotos.  Joan McAllister . . .  haven’t seen it in a long time.

Ditto Crow.  Has she been scrapped?

Here’s a summer 2008 treat, tandem pushing Aegean Sea and Caribbean Sea, although still on Roehrig colors.  The K-Sea colors on both have yet to come and by now both have been repainted.

Later in summer 2008 I took this, M/T Great Gull . . . now operating near the Panama Canal.

And  . . . last one for today, Odin passing the stern of ITB Groton, also sold foreign. ITBs like Groton, obsolete now, were technically catamaran tugs.  Just forward of where the stream of water is exiting the hull is the “bow” of the tug;  look above it and you’ll see the “seam” where tug and barge conjoin.   I posted about ITBs here back in late November 2007, and since

I’ve been enhancing my fotos on this blogs, let me add a few to that post here.  Here I’m looking between the “hulls” of the catamaran and toward the stern.  Note the portside prop.  For scale, note the size of the “lift basket” and yard worker.  The aftmost portside portion of the “barge” fits into the groove.

Here’s the aftmost port starboard side of the barge.  These two fotos were taken in the Brooklyn Navy Yard GMD November 2007.

Thanks much to Seth for starting this 2007/08 flashback.  I feel like a veritable John Titor after this glance back at how much the harbor has changed in five years.  All fotos except otherwise attributed, are mine.

And totally unrelated . . . prepare to laugh yerself buttless  bad lip reading the NFL.   This one is a guaranteed laugh-producer too . . . what they really said in the first debate.

Commotion 3

I’ll entertain the thought that a better word than “commotion” describes my point here.  Maybe teamwork, collaboration, collective effort, community . . .”   When Nathan Stewart brought a light barge in on the hip the other blustery day,  Aegean Sea tagged along, part of a day’s work.

No pinning was involved here; really, it was more

about the smaller Aegean Sea reaching

the pivot

point and countering the wind.

The strategy seems straight forward and simple but with huge equipment and high stakes.

Today is the 39th Earth Day in the US, and this is all I’ll do in recognition.  I marched in one of the first “earth day” parades on April 22, 1970, but for anyone living in the US today, our relationship with the environment is immensely more complicated than I imagined it –can it be 39!!!– years ago.

Also, 730 afternoons and sunsets!!! ago schooner Anne left New York.  Bravo Reid . . . although for me . . . the watery places devoid of face to face human contact would  leave me intolerably, unbearable lonely.  He does have a shore crew, a real but also virtual community assisting him to his 1000 days at sea goal.

And finally, here’s my tribute to another person of superhuman ability to sustain the loneliness of solo sailing, Robin Knox Johnson.  Happy 40th anniversary of his feat, which happened with much less terrestrial support than is possible today in 2009.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Random Ships 9

Two ships exited the KVK and headed for sea in the same half hour Wednesday morning.  One was Athens Star, a Star tanker, obviously.

Way in the distance, Responder, at  Athens Star‘s bow, backed her down while Aegean Sea (?) watched.  Athens Star (73,699 dwt) launched from Germany in 2005.

Majestic Maersk heads for sea, carrying as cargo a boat or two . .

high atop the containers, although I’ve no idea where to.

As for her own provenance, Majestic,  here escorted by Ellen McAllister,launched from the Odense Yard in 1990, a place she

shares with quite a few large containerships.

Images:  WVD.

Provisions

Necessities, sometimes they go lacking.   What if you need something, a necessity?   Say . . .  it’s your turn in the galley and you want to bake  bread and discover the yeast’s gone bad . .  . or you’ve scrambled eggs and discover you’re out  of salt . . .  If you’re on land—easy.  If you’re in mid-ocean–impossible.  If you’re on the sixth boro, it’s a challenge, but

places exist

to come ashore to grab those

quick provisions so that

the next task gets done with renewed energy.  Here’s such a place, and there should be many more such places and next to big supermarkets.  Necessity, the mother of … intervention.

Related only through the authors, check out Henry’s channeled solstice thoughts here.

Tomorrow, more on the boat show.

Random Pairs

I think of the phrase “ships passing in the night.”  Random encounters also happen at dawn  (like Donald C and McAllister Brothers),

December afternoons (like Maryland and Evening Mist), or

mid morning ( like Aegean Sea and Laura K Moran), and every hour in between.  Sometimes they prompt a spin for second glance,

sometimes they lead to joined forces (like Jill and Kristy Ann Reinauer) and other times

there’s  just a perfunctory  wave as they steam by (like Thomas D. Witte and Christian Reinauer)

The challenge is to know when to steam by, when to get a second and third inquiring look, and when to form alliances.  Form ye alliances while you might . . . hmmm . . . is that like “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may . . .”?  Rest of Herrick’s poem is here.

Photos, WVD.

Four

days left til the race . . . and Specialist II sprints about,

Laura K flexes line,

Vera K. holds station,

and Dean does what Dean needs to do . . .

Here’s a nose-to-nose contest foto from last year: Nathan E. Stewart v. Lucy Reinauer.

Four is also the number of K-Sea tugs in this foto: from left to right, Adriatic, Baltic, Caribbean, and Aegean.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp unless otherwise stated.

Surprises

Hmm . . . I thought . . . a McAllister tractor decked out in flags. I wonder who . . .

Rosemary? Anyone know when she arrived?

Wonder where she’s headed?

And next came the new Seas with a novel way of working too, two tugs and four sand scows.

In tandem, like horses on my grandpa’s 20th century farm, except somehow underwater this Seas team represents 4800 horses.

At a certain point, Caribbean took them alone and Aegean returned to base.

Let me see . . . a flagship and lots of sand . . . might they be going where Rev. Billy is going?

Photos, WVD.