2020 Calendar March

Here’s the photo I considered using on the March calendar page and taken about five seconds before the one I did use.  On March 9, 2019 at 0726 . . . I love the light here, but the tug seemed too small to be the subject on a calendar page.  I do love the purple skyline against the orange sky.  Color aficionados might describe the outline of buildings with words like mauve and carrot with traces of grapefruit and squash fading into hints of cyan.  I like the glint of sunrise on the port side of Alex, likely returning from an assist.

In July 2019, I caught the next two of Alex, assisting CMA CGM Otello outbound for sea.  Note the design differences between Alex and Capt. Brian A. off her stern.  The 4300 hp Alex was launched in 1985 and spent her first five years assisting submarines for Electric Boat.  She then was sold and worked in Puerto Rico and Florida until 2008, when she was sold to a Maine company. McAllister bought her in 2012, and I believe I first saw her in the sixth boro in 2017.  Capt. Brian A. McAllister arrived here in 2017 and brings 6770 hp to the job.

 

In these November 2019 photos,

Alex and Ava M assist Arthur Maersk in rounding Bergen Point.

All photos, WVD.

Unrelated here, but followup to the No.11Asomaru post of a few days ago, it has happened again.  Sunday evening AIS showed a Tiong Woon Ocean 17 signal coming into the sixth boro, escorted by two Moran 6000s and

following or coinciding with MOL Paradise heading here into Global in Bayonne.   Lucien’s comment the other day seems to explain this .  . a glitch . . . but since this is the third tme I’ve seen this, I wonder how common it really is and whether others have noticed it.  As of 0500 this morning, Tiong and Paradise left for Savannah, and as of posting, she was off Ocean City NJ, appearing as a gray signal.   Tiong Woon Corporation (TWC) is a Sri Lankan holding company with tugboats, but no #17.

Here’s the one I saw last year;  anyone who knows Port Elizabeth, shown, knows that Oat, IMO 9291630, a tanker 800′ x 137′ , would not be at that berth and atop the container ship there.

Is this corrupted signal a frequent occurrence?  Is this evidence of colliding or commingling parallel universes?

No. 11 Asomaru Mystery

I’d been watching No.11Asomaru for a few days, wondering what the story was.  It appeared to coexist with containership MOL Courage, the green symbol surrounding the smaller gray one.  It did this screen grab Friday morning . . . yesterday.  When I saw there was a Asomaru No.8  and it was a tugboat, I thought possibly there’d be a tugboat riding on the containers, and I made excuses to avoid work and zoomed out to the Narrows.

There I saw MOL Courage anchored, an unusual spot for a container ship.

Several Moran tugs were standing by with it.

When the MOL vessel headed in, I leaped into motion and followed it, hoping to catch a glance of the Japanese tug.

 

But I saw nothing, except containers.

Later in the day, I checked on MOL Courage in Port Elizabeth, and sure enough, the

gray icon for No.11Asomaru is still there.

Can anyone explain this signal?  I saw a similar signal once before last fall . . . supposedly an unspecified vessel on a container ship, also in Port Elizabeth.

I’m puzzled.

Dd you catch my reference to leaping into motion . . .   Sorry . . . I couldn’t pass up that opportunity, given today’s date.  Previous leap days’ posts are here and here and here.

All photos, captures, leaping imagination here, WVD.