So Long, Alice

I took the photo below on June 7.  My special interest in Alice stems from her being the subject of my very first blog post. 

Since then, I understand from two sources that Alice Oldendorff will be renamed.  Algoma Verity.

Verily?  Verity it’ll be when she next returns?  We’ll see.

Anyhow, here’s one source, and here’s another.  Also involved in the buyout are Harmen and Sophie.  Now they are named Algoma Valour and Algoma Victory, respectively, according to this source.

Photo by Will Van Dorp.

Random Ships 69

Let’s start with Alice Oldendorff, inbound with a hold full of Nova Scotia stone and about to turn to starboard on her (almost) final approach to Brooklyn.   Alice and I have a long history.

YM Wind makes the final approach her into Global Terminals, her first call at sixth boro docks.  In contrast above, Alice has already made hundreds of calls here, always transporting aggregates. Visible assisting Wind are Alex McAllister and Ava M. McAllister.

E. R. Montecito is a large ship, but containers are stacked 17 across, versus 20 across for Wind above.

Undine here takes on bunkers and other supplies.  The small black/red/white vessel long her stern is Twin Tube, the venerable 1951 harbor supply vessel. In dry dock in the distance it’s USNS Sisler.

MOL Emissary travels the last few miles before Port Elizabeth.

Uniquely named tanker Forties waits in the Stapleton anchorage.

COSCO Vietnam enters the Kills and passes Houston at the dock.

Since Kriti Amber is Greek-flagged, I’m guessing that’s a variation on “Crete,” but that only conjecture.

QM2 takes on fuel while transferring passengers on the port side.

And let’s call it a day with Unique Explorer.

All photos recently by Will Van Dorp, who considers himself fortunate to live in this large port.

 

Sixth Boro Self-Unloader

Preliminary question:  Where in the world is Alice Oldendorff?  Answer follows.

This profile below–not Alice— might make you imagine yourself in the St Lawrence Seaway or the Great Lakes.  But I took this photo on the Lower New York Bay yesterday.  I had not caught a self-unloader of this style in the Lower Bay since 2007!

A CSL self-unloader does call in the sixth boro occasionally.  Here’s a CSL post I did in 2010, photos in the sixth boro.

She headed into the Narrows loaded down with

aggregates from Aulds Cove in Nova Scotia.  And I’m guessing that’s here, place I hope to visit some day.

Besides stone, self-unloaders locally also offload salt, as here H. A. Sklenar and here Balder.

 

The photo below I took in July 2009, again a self-unloader bringing in aggregates,

a task usually done by fleet mate  Alice Oldendorff, who surely has had enough exposure on this blog.  Don’t get me wrong . . . Alice is also a self-unloader, but she had other cranes as well, as you can see from the photo below, taken in 2009.

Where is Alice?  Well, she’s 300 miles from Pyongyang.  THAT Pyongyang.

Here’s a little more context, showing Pyongyang to the right and Beijing top left, and heavy ship traffic.

Alice made her last stop here a couple months back, then she headed through the Panama Canal to Qingdao for some rehab.  Qingdao is also spelled Tsingtao, like the beer.

She’ll be back come summer.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

East River Traffic

I’ve done other East River series, but it’s time to start a new one.  The next 12 photos were taken yesterday over a total elapsed 11 minutes!  I happened to be near South Street Seaport in hopes of catching santacon craziness there, as I did many years ago here.

Let’s start with Alice discharging aggregates, and barely recognizable, that’s Matilde the cement making vessel.

A longer shot reveals a clutch of kayakers, which I hadn’t seen while shooting.

Down by Red Hook, I see Frances approach with two barges of aggregate.

Dean Reinauer passes, pushing a deeply laden

RTC 106.

 

Those are the stacked lanes of the BQE with the Brooklyn Heights esplanade atop.

Buchanan 1 heads in the same direction as the other two units, but at a slightly greater speed than

 

Frances.

 

 

Again . . . all in 11 minutes.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Random Ships 51

I missed this one, but I saw it on AIS.  She used to be called Eagle Hope, but I’m thinking someone’s running out of names.

I caught up with Alice though, here to discharge what she always does . . . aggregates.

Denak Voyager waited in the anchorage at sunrise and before midmorning coffee, she moved to load what she always does . . . scrap.   Can

this be the reference?

Hafnia Lupus . .  being provisioned by the venerable Twin Tube and bunkered by a Vane unit.

CMA CGM Musset gets escorted by Jonathan C Moran.  I had to look up Musset, but I’d figured it was an artist.

See that outboard skiff over off the starboard bow?

Latgale anchored off Stapleton a while back, and

there goes Chandra B, the can-do, think-big tanker passing by Energy Champion and on its way to bunker the mothership at Sandy Hook pilots.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s off on a reconnoitre.

Random Traffic March 2016

I don’t actually go looking for parallel posts;  maybe it’s just that my brain thinks and eyes see in similar ways from one year to the next in March, but here and here are posts from exactly four years ago.

Although this blog focuses on work boats, I’ll comment on backgrounds today.  What’s on the water is fluid, but all the constant transformations on the landsides here are more permanent and yet constantly evolving.  Baseline might have been 500 years ago, but even by then it had evolved.  The cruise ship here is docked at what today is called Cape Liberty Cruise Port;  thirty years ago it was MOTBY.

Frances waits at a barge anchorage near Anthem of the Seas

Over on the nearest shore, left half of the photo is evidence of work where next year an attraction called New York Wheel will spin.  I know we’re way past name discussions now, but I’m still for alternatives like Ferries Wheel or NY Wheeler Dealer . . . .  And with the reference to “pods,” I’m thinking of a series of sci-fi movies . . .

Eastern Welder fishes as New Jersey Responder exits the KVK.

The uneven, brown land just off the starboard bow of USNS Red Cloud is part of the Bayonne Golf Club, below the surface of which is a capped landfill.

Discovery Coast passes in front of Red Cloud.

Off to the left, you see current status of the Bayonne side of the bridge named for the same town.

From l. to r., there’s Chandra B, Celsius Manila, New Jersey Responder, and (I think) Robert E. McAllister.

Looking from behind the construction site for the Wheel, some miles to NE are part of the Statue of Liberty and  the iconic 1931 Empire State Building.

Anacostia (2009)  and Tangier Island (2014)  look a lot alike, but the older boat has 1200 more horsepower.

Note the double deck traffic on the VZ Bridge.

l. to r. it’s Caroline Oldendorff and Australian Spirit.

This is looking from the middle of Upper Bay across Red Hook to downtown Brooklyn.

In front of the busy background, it’s Alice Oldendorff, Rossini, and Robert E. McAllister.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

GHP&W 27

Know this water, more of a waterway than a harbor?  The distant buildings are a clue.  See the one just left of the center of bridge center, needle thin?

Here’s another clue . . . the structure near the right side of the photo, like an old time gas station pump?

Or this one left of the crane, looking like the business end of a blue crab whose pincers are down?

Or this wreck?  What WAS this boat?  I’ve asked a million people who all say they also asked a million people.  Anyone know?

And seriously, the first photo showed the Throgs Neck Bridge, the second the LaGuardia airport traffic tower, and the third . . . Arthur Ashe stadium.  The photo above with the mystery wreck in the Whitestone Bridge .  .. the second one in when you travel from Long Island Sound into . . . the East River

And that needle thin tower in 432 Park, said to be the tallest residential building in the hemisphere.  Click here for views from the tallest bathtub in that building.  And in the foreground of the photo below, truly a place of superlatives . . . . Rikers Island, i.e., one of the largest incarceration places in the world.  No gunk holing is tolerated anywhere near this place.

Rikers has literally overflowed its banks.  This is the off-Rikers portion of NYC Corrections, the Vernon C. Bain Center.   

Click here for a tugster photo of part of the Rikers fleet.  And here for Bain’s NYC floating prison predecessor.

By now, most of you know this is the East River and we’re traveling west.  Here the DEP sludge tanker Red Hook prepares to depart the Hunt’s Point wastewater treatment plant.   Click here for some tugster posts on treating waste and keeping sixth boro waters as clean as possible despite the teeming millions that live along the banks of these waters.   And if you’ve never read my Professional Mariner story on the latest generation of these tankers, you can do so here.

Between Rikers and Hunts Point, there are the North and South Brother Islands;  see my post from South Brother here from a long time ago.  The safer channel goes around the north of North Brother, but in daylight, most vessels can shoot between the two.

I’ve never set foot on North Brother, but I imagine it a terrestrial version of the “graveyard” on the Arthur Kill. 

 

A “night wharf” on Wards Island for the sludge tankers lies here just east of the Hell Gate and RFK bridges there.

This strait–between Roosevelt Island and the upper east side of Manhattan–in the tidal strait that’s known as the East River can see some fast currents. Somewhere off to the right is the vantage point Jonathan Steinman takes his East river pics from.

This is not a cargo pier.  These vessels are repairing the bulk heading.

 

Anyone know the identity of these two “houses” nestled up there in the eastisde of Manhattan cliffs?

 

These barges called the Water Club  . . . I’ve never been there.  Any personal reviews?

 

Newtown Creek awaits its fate here at a dock in Wallabout Bay right across

from the rock wharf where Alice Oldendorff has discharged millions of tons of crushed rock over the years.

After we duck under the Brooklyn Bridge, we near the end of the East River,

where South Street Seaport Museum has been fighting the noble fight to

preserve ships and the upland including the wharves.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Recrossing Paths

There’ve been plenty of people I’ve wanted to chance re-encounter, but it doesn’t always happen.  I’ve been to Southwest Harbor long ago, but I’ve never seen a Good Idea before.

I saw this WLB come into the harbor the other day and just assumed it was Katherine Walker, WLM-552.  But I was wrong.  Voila Elm, WLB-204, 50 feet longer than Walker, and  out of Atlantic Beach, NC, where I saw it a few years back.

Alice Oldendorff . . . I heard her crew talking with the Sandy Hook pilots the other day . . . .  I wish I knew how many voyages she has made into the sixth boro in the past decade!!

The Blue Peter . . . I saw it a month ago in Narragansett Bay, but got close enough for a good photo only after they’d dropped sail.

Liberty II . . . our paths haven’t crossed in quite a while.

Sea Lion . . . is a busy boat.

New York Media Boat . . .  another busy boat in duplicate.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

No Wake . . . our paths have never crossed that I recollect, but I wonder whose she has.  She seems to have some age.

All photos taken in the past week or so . . .

Two Hours on the Narrows 3

Here were 2 and the first.  This was Sunday morning August 24 at dawn.

Maersk Atlanta was headed out and

the lifters –Oops I mean Ardmore Sealifter and  . .  Ichabod Crane–were at different stages of prep to move and

and who be that . . . incoming  . .  . hull down?

with lots of deck gear . . .

why it’s Alice!!

with all her sculptural machines all

ready to discharge more aggregates on the projects hither and yon in the terrestrial boros of NYC.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who offers this in case he’s NOT back in the city for the tug race on Sunday.  On verra.

Click here for the many posts I’ve done on my favorite Alice.

Random Ships 32

Red Hook with Alice Oldendorff in background.

Lia with Stolt Effort on the far side.

Hellas sisters with Left Coast Lifter in the background.  Anyone know when the gargantu-crane will move toward the TZ Bridge site?

Ever Divine has seraphic lines . . .

Zim Luanda follows a sinuous path through the KVK with assistance from Brendan Turecamo…

… as does Hanjin Durban, escorted by Miriam Moran…

maintaining a steady course between the two container ships as MOL Excellence bounds seaward…

and encounters a sister MOL Expeditor waltzed in with Marjorie B McAllister.

So . . . what do you know about this ship?

Answer tomorrow.  All photos here by Will Van Dorp.