Old Year 2016

This is my Janus post . . . which I’ll start with a photo I took in January 2007 of an intriguing set of sculptures, since licensed to Trinity Church in Manhattan.

Since I’ve tons to do today, comment will be minimal.  The photo below I took near the KVK salt pile on January 14, 2016.  Eagle Ford, to the right, has since been scrapped in Pakistan.

The history of Alnair, photo taken in Havana harbor on February 4, 2016, is still untraced.  It looks like an ex-USN tug.  Click here for more Cuban photos.

This photo of JRT Moran and Orange Sun I took on March 12.

This photo of Hudson was taken in Maassluis, very near where my father grew up,  on April 4. Many more Maassluis photos can be found here.

Sandmaster I photographed here on May 6.  since then, she’s moved to Roatan, I’m told, and I’d love to go there and see how she’s doing.  Maybe I can learn some Garifuna while I’m there.

June 1, I took this, with Robert E. McAllister and an invisible Ellen escorting Maersk Idaho out the door.

July 14, I saw GL tug Nebraska yank bulkier Isolda with 56,000 tons of corn through a narrow opening and out the Maumee.

August 23 I caught Atlantic Sail outbound past a nearly completed Wavertree.  And come to think of it, this is a perfect Janus photo.

September 9 at the old port in Montreal I caught Svitzer Montreal tied up and waiting for the next job.

October 18, I caught Atlanticborg and Algoma Enterprise down bound between Cape Vincent and Clayton NY.

November 4, while waiting for another tow, I caught Sarah Ann switching out scrap scows in the Gowanus.

And I’ll end this retrospective Janus post with a mystery shot, which I hope to tell you more about in 2017.  All I’ll say is that I took it yesterday and can identify only some of what is depicted. Anyone add something about this photo?

I feel blessed with another year of life, energy, gallivants, and challenges.  Thank you for reading and writing me.  Special thanks to you all who sent USPS cards !  I wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2017.   Here’s what Spock would say and where he got it.

Here was my “last hours” post from 2015.  And here from the year before with some vessels sailing away forever.   And here showing what I painted in the last hours of 2013.  And one more with origins “oud jaardag” stuff from the finale of 2011.

Port of Havana 2

Let me pick up here, a closer up of the mystery tug Alnair from yesterday’s post.  I have no further info, but one reader–Thanks, L–wrote to suggest that Alnair looks like a YTB.  I’d thought so, too, but in Cuba?

So consider this one, not my photo, but if you click on the photo and do a search for YTB, you’ll find that until May 2006, this “Cuban” tug was known as Apalachicola YTB 767.  So could Alnair be Chesaning YTB 769, for example?

Al Mendares looks to be a small tanker named for the river that flows through Havana.

 

And here from the seawall  . . . MSC Opera, which as of this writing is across the Yucatan Strait in Mexico.

The red vessel is Vega, a trailing suction hopper dredger.

And finally, this ungainly vessel is a ferry.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

For more on YTBs, click here.

 

Port of Havana 1

Click on the photo below to learn more about it, taken in late January 118 years ago.

Here’s that same location last week.  Sorry about holding the camera crooked;  if I straighten it out now, the 1845 lighthouse disappears.

The guys sitting on the seawall to the extreme left are tour bus drivers.  Did you notice the two tour buses on the central ridge line in the photo above?

A little farther into the port I saw Sea Wolf A, 72′ x 23′ built by Damex in Santiago in 1996, and in spite of this info, not laid up. You can find more info here by using the “find” feature.

Alnair . . . I have no information on her. Anyone help?

And a pilotboat . . . is a pilotboat, not to disparage pilots and their skills in any way whatsoever.

Can you guess the white ship whose hull dwarfs the pilot?

 

Find the answer here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who was on a journalistic mission.

Click here for posts about many other ports.