Turning 80b

On Sunday, APL Qatar was tied up at the dock at Howland Hook.

Note the snow on the Elizabethport bank.  Imari is the smaller vessel forward of AP Qatar.  I wonder if she’s the only vessel ever named for  export porcelain??  Given the marine environment, I can’t imagine feeling safe on a vessel named for a material so fragile, but I digress.  And let me digress some more, the snowy bank a century ago was home to Crescent Shipyard, where an early generation of submarines was built.  Click here for fotos and story.

As of this writing, Qatar’s already at the dock in Savannah after having arrived and departed Norfolk.  By early afternoon Sunday, she had been backed down, nosed her way past Bergen Point and

slipped beneath the Bayonne Bridge.

Escort appears to be Elizabeth McAllister.

Will there be regrets when this beautiful bridge gets modified?

It appears here that some masts have been folded down.

On the question of the future of this bridge, read the Nathan Holth comment . ..  scroll down.  Not every agrees with the idea of modifying the bridge.

Funding to change the bridge . . . wonder why tolls have recently increased on all the bridges over the sixth boro?  Details  on bridge modification–if it’s a done deal at this point–have been scant.  Will the bridge have an 80th party?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Ever wonder what bridge was the longest steel arch prior to Bayonne’s  acquiring that distinction in 1931?  Before you find out by clicking here, a clue is that it’s also over a sixth boro waterway.

Sixth Boro Halloween

Late tonight I anticipate strolling through Penn Station as part of my transit from work to sleep; usually I run, but on Halloween it means the parade has wound down and that all types of creatures will inhabit that transit ecolabyrinth.  Halloween in New York and most places in the US produces a mix of the grotesque, macabre, sexy, and just plain bizarre.  This post is intended to mirror the spectrum of the menagerie I expect to see tonight.  Meanwhile, to see Halloween aboard MV Algolake, go to their Faceboook site.

Start with the raised Helen Parker, which capsized and sank off Manhattan earlier in the month.  These fotos come thanks to Jerseycity Frankie.   No one was physically hurt, although

feelings certainly suffered.   Here’s more on the story.

Halloween critters in Penn tonight will be diverse, hard to identify.  Any thoughts on this foto I took yesterday?

Seatrout . . . here she be!  I’ll bet they don’t serve smoked salmon on board.

Taken yesterday also . . . right near where some fisherman pulled out a 37″ striper.  Guesses?

Misplaced oculus?

It’s Tsereteli!  Enjoy these other manifestations of the Georgian sculptor.  He might write his name as  ზურაბ წერეთელი  . . .  that kind of Georgian.

In any parade, some costumes are simply unidentifiable by the uninitiated.  Like this, which stands as a piece of post-industrial sculpture just behind the A&P in Bergen Point Bayonne, between Elco Boat Basin and the old Esso yard.  Can anyone identify its former use?  Speaking of the old Esso yard, here’s an old piece of British newsreel showing response and cleanup after a quite tragic June 1966 tanker collision and explosion there.    Here’s the NTSB report.

Here’s a foto I took yesterday, tribute to the surprise pre-Halloween snowfall.  APL Qatar was about to be backed down for departure for sea.   More fotos of Qatar soon.

OK, this was a season and a half ago, harbinger of a pre-Samhain snowfall.  Get ready for indian summer.  Beginning of summer 2011–Coney Island style–was documented here, here, and here.

Finally, here’s another shot from the Lady Liberte parade.  If you haven’t done so already, check out bowsprite’s reaction  . . . at least  . . . to this vessel being in town.  “Lightship” just doesn’t have the energy of the name for this class of vessel in some other languages:  for example in Danish, it’s a fyrskib.  See fyrskibs and much much more here.

Top two fotos come from Jerseycity Frankie . ..  all others by Will Van Dorp.

Here’s last year’s Halloween post about a trip to Issuma.  Issuma today is off Alaska after having sailed east to west across the Northwest Passage!! And I could have taken a leave and gone with . . . ah silly me.

Latest word on MV Algolake and the Great Lakes in general, looks like I’ll spend Thanksgiving with my sister in Michigan, after stopping briefly in Toledo and Detroit.