Weather 3

Sunday March 14, Red Hook (Brooklyn) and looking to the southwest.  The bulker beyond Houma is Darya Shanthi, Weeks crane 529 offloading  salt.

Sky darkens quickly over Staten Island.  The dark plume apparent beyond  the Bayonne can be seen

zoomed in here, probably from the Bayway refineries although it looks like an ominous cyclone.  For a real waterspout foto, see this old tugster post.  Notice the Upper Bay’s  jade green water, like some tropical lagoon where coconut palms might sway and firefishes play.  In fact, didn’t Rudyard Kipling write a poem about Gowanus Bay, and something like “across the fetch from Gowanus Bay, where the sturgeon fishes play, and the dawn comes up like thunder turning Jersey into day.”  Right?

Clouds swollen and unstable with fluids, which they are, move

northeast.  Time to get back under cover.

Time elapsed in the top five fotos is less than an hour.

Below, Monday March 15, Rosebank (Staten Island) and looking northward toward a Manhattan moisture encased out beyond tanker W-O Ashley Sea.

Monday March 15,  St George (Staten Island) and looking at the aftermath on the bulkhead of the storm of March 12-today.  Gusts recorded at JFK Airport topped out at 66 mph with 4–6 inches of rainfall in the metro area.  Breezy and

(to coin a term) debris-y.  Stuff in the water that should never have been there got spewed onto land and

stuff like this ladder that should have stayed fastened down floated with the tide.  Imagine this debris multiplied one million fold floating in the EGP of the Pacific.

Someone this morning compared the storm with the “great white hurricane of 1888,” that had gusts of 80 mph and 40″ of snow in metro New York.  That link in the previous sentence makes an interesting read.  By the way, assuming a conversion of water to new-fallen snow as 1 to 6, that 6 inches of rain would have been close to 37″ of snow.  Right?

But it wasn’t, and weather for the weekend predicted (for those who don’t mind some goosebumps) t-shirt temperatures.

For Matt Soundbounder’s take on the storm from his perch on City Island, click here.  For bonnie frogma’s record of dead umbrellas and sunken sailboats, click here.  For the NYTimes slideshow of storm damage in the area, click here.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Seven Seas 2

I’ve no idea why some days a single fleet seems to predominate among boats coming and going past my various offices along the KVK.  By the way, “offices” just means anyplace from which good fotos can be had; peaceful places all but low on creature comforts.  Yesterday snow-white and orange was all I saw.   All but the first two fotos, which come compliments of Jed and Allen Baker, respectively,  were snapped in less than an hour and a half yesterday, with no other moving boats in sight.

Below, from left to right:  Ross Sea, Greenland Sea, and Lincoln Sea–all featured here before.  I’ve seen Ross and Greenland in their previous lives as Normandy and Emma M Roehrig, but Lincoln Sea in “robin’s egg” blue predates my tugster life.  For a description of Lincoln’s Sea first appearance, read this 2004 article by the stellar Staten Island foto/scribe, Don Sutherland.  I’m speculating that Greenland Sea was once robin’s egg blue as well, given her former life (pre-Emma M)  as S/R Providence.  Can anyone confirm?

Here’s Taurus profile and

stern view as she worked her way into the notch yesterday.  By the way, tanker in the foto above is Jose Stream.

Here’s Lincoln Sea stern view.

Baltic Sea headed for the fuel dock as

Bering Sea and Houma (left to right) leveraged

a barge into a dock before heading back

west over behind Shooter’s Island

separately.  By the way, Bering Sea must have previously worn maroon paint as Stacy Moran.  In the distance is the waterfront of Elizabeth, NJ.

And while we’re dealing with Seas, Ashley Sea over by Stapleton.  Uh . . . this might be a different fleet.  By the Way, Ashley Sea was built at New Century Shipyards in Zhangjiagang, China (fish farm country up the Yangtze River from Shanghai) in 2007.

Last eight fotos by Will Van Dorp.

More color changes coming soon.

Related:  Do any West Coast readers have fotos of K-Sea’s Tiger?

Related to “Night Light” post of a few days back . . . a 200-foto profile of the Gowanus Canal from this morning’s NYTimes submitted by readers.

Also, check out this restored 1910 tug on a blog called Peregrine Sea.