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Tugster feels so very blessed this year that I’m recognizing the top gift boat in the sixth boro. If NYC ever decided to have a water-borne symbol of gift-giving season, the most appropriate boat for the elf to ride would HAVE to be this one. See all the packages, wrapped sensibly, on the deck? While you try to name that boat, let me digress a little to use the print to push the next image farther down the page.
Digression #1: Here are my Christmas posts from 2015 2014 one about a Rockefeller Center tree that arrived by ferry one that arrived here by barge towed by a tug called Spuyten Duyvil and finally my post from 2013.
Digression #2: If you’re not from NYC or a large city, you might wonder where city folks go to cut their trees. Here’s a feature from the NYTimes about a Christmas tree vendor who’s come to the same neighborhood NYC with trees for the past 19 years.
Digression #3: Nope, I don’t get my tree from this vendor. In fact, I haven’t had a tree for . . . decades. Not interested. So here was the post I put up in 2006, about my first ever Christmas present. Here’s the story about our first Christmas tree. My father, who drove a school bus in addition to running a dairy farm, brought home our first tree back when I was 5 or 6. I think it was his and my mother’s first also, because “christmas trees” did not exist for them in pre-WW2 Netherlands. Where did he get the tree and what prompted him to bring it home, you might wonder . . . Well, as he was leaving the school with his last bus run before the Christmas break, he noticed the custodian throwing a tree into the snowbank next to the dumpster. It must have been set up somewhere in the school–the office? We LOVED that tree, and it still had some tinsel on it. My parents were willing to spring for a string of lights, which could be used again year after year, but tinsel? In my imagination, that tree was the best.
When my kids were small, I did get a Christmas tree, and we decorated it with more than a string of lights.
So have you figured out this vessel that does nothing all year round except deliver packages like these?
Of course, it’s Twin Tube, featured many times on this blog.
She is the sixth boros quintessential package boat that delivers no
matter the weather.
Merry Christmas to the operators of Twin Tube.
And merry merry Christmas spirit to all of you who read this blog today and any day.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s received so many gifts every day and doesn’t need anything more on December 25.
As we head upstream into Montreal, an orange dawn greets us from beyond Sainte-Anne de Varennes Basilica.
Closer to Montreal, a line of ships awaits, three at anchor and two down bound.
Ocean Intrepide switches the pilots.
If I’d been sleep-deprived, my first sense of Biosphere might have been a nearby planet beyond Buffalo-built American Mariner.
I recognized Balder immediately, new name notwithstanding.
And the raised metal confirmed my suspicion.
I was not expecting to learn of this direct link to a distant archipelago rich in lobsters and road salt, but one of these years, that’s a trip I’d love to do both for the destination--Îles de la Madeleine–and the journey.
I have no photos to prove it, but I wanted to experience Lachine Rapids, so I took a surprisingly enjoyable tour in one of these get-very-wet boats.
I wanted to see the rapids, because without this perceived barrier to reaching China from here, Montreal might not have become a city.
Because we tied up at Bickerdike terminal, we had the good fortune to see these Svitzer tugs and
here passing the Clock Tower.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who comes to the end of the actual trip with this post and who will now recap the same trip with some of the details left out.
Here’s the index for previous Twin Tube posts. This freight vessel is 64′ x 19′ x 8.5, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that it is one of the first Blount built vessels ever, launched in 1951. Here’s the index to all my previous Blount posts.
Twin Tube January 2013
This is how I imagine her, but recently . . .
the boom has been missing. I don’t know the story, but I’d like to.
Twin Tube April 2015
and the brants are discussing it . . .
Dec 2013 approaching the gauntlet of Balder‘s docklines
Most larger cargo vessels provisioned by Twin Tube have their own on-board cranes, so maybe the boom was removed to avoid having to negotiate the dock lines as she had to here in a blinding snowstorm back a year and a half ago.
dipping under the the boom under the lines
and then raising it again
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated but important: If you are local, free and have the slightest inclination to make merry, there’s a soiree on Lehigh Valley 79 THIS Friday night, as a means to consolidate doubloons to keep the barge afloat. Details here. See you there, if my best approximation of pirate hood. Here’s a post I did nearly five years ago. And one more.
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Rhine is currently in port offloading salt given the reported shortage of the material.
Lines were made fast Monday midday, just after Balder had left.
In the past six days, Balder had come and discharged its dozens of thousands of tons of the stuff and gone. As Corey Kilgannon reports in the first sentence of his recent NYTimes article, “Pass the salt, please” describes the business plan here.
This is what international trade looks like, whether it be Islandia heading out under a leaden-gray afternoon or
these unidentified vessels departing recently at dawn. In the photo above, the dry-docked vessel in the background is USNS Pomeroy, T-AKR 316.
The first three photos are used with permission of Brian DeForest. The others are by Will Van Dorp. And obviously, none of these photos were taken today, as another type of white stuff descends upon the harbor.
The link here may show the first glimpse I had of Balder. Let me share my getting better acquainted, but first . . . the foto below I took 13 months ago. Note the different colors of salt, reflecting
different provenances, as explained in Ian Frazier’s New Yorker article below. Buy a copy to get the rest of the story.
Without this vessel, all of us who drive the roads or walks the sidewalks and streets within the metropolis surrounding the sixth boro would be at greater risk of slipping and crashing. Framed that way, Balder could not be better named. Here’s what Kimberly Turecamo looks like from Balder‘s bridge.
On the far side of the channel, that’s Dace.
Here’s what has come forth from Balder‘s belly, a bit of the Atacama Desert on the KVK. Huge tractors load the trucks that come to a highway department near you today.
This 246′ arm, reaching nearly to Richmond Terrace, offloads at the relatively slow rate of 8oo tons per hour.
And here’s the hold just emptied, one hold of five. Notice the ladders and the tracks at the base of the hold.
Click here to see the unloading machinery in action.
Navel, perhaps?
Here’s what gets even the last pound making up the nearly 50,000-ton payload onto the salt dock.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Thanks to Brian DeForest of Atlantic Salt and the Balder crew for the tour.
I love snowy mornings . . . like this one 48 hours ago.
As of this writing, APL Pearl--Oakland registered–has just docked in Savannah. I also adore surprises: it turns out I took fotos of APL Pearl docking in Howland Hook four and a half years ago, when the vessel was known as Hyundai Voyager.
Resolute follows–well, resolutely–waiting to retrieve the docking pilot.
And what’s on the boxpile?
As I said, I love snowstorms. That’s when the most interesting fotos seem daring someone to snap them.
All fotos snapped by Will Van Dorp.
Here’s the first post I did on this vessel more than 5 years ago.
When I saw Twin Tube–a workhorse older than me– northbound yesterday, I’d no idea we’d meet up again later. What caught my attention right then was
the lowering boom, something I’d not noticed before.
Here she is, as Electra rages, westbound in the KVK, boom lowered and supplies-laden.
And then it was explained to me . . . rather, demonstrated . . . , lower boom to get into work position.
Note the operator of the ship’s crane upper left. A week ago this crew basked in sun on tropical seas.
Now they need groceries, spare parts, stores . . . .
As a resident of and a familiar with New York’s City’s SIX boros, I feel strongly that this–and not the luxury baubles and almost ancient poets–make us a city of ships.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Here was 3 with links to 1 and 2.
I’ve been so far unable to find the original use of this barge, but I haven’t expended much shoe leather either.
Click on the foto below from the July 21, 1977 NYTimes for an article on Michael O’Keefe’s barge restaurant opening. Anyone identify the tug?
Bulk commodities commerce needs some stretches of riverbank in the sixth boro. Crushed stone in; garbage out, as well as
recycled materials,
aggregates,
scrap metal, petroleum,
salt, and
desert scrapings aka road conditioner.
Products galore and more and
more.
Places to park aka dock are vital also.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
I feel blessed. Something told me to check Panama Canal AIS for Balder Atlantic bound. I noticed her Pacific bound instead . . . possibly loaded with Colombian coal for an Andes port. I also noticed she was approaching Miraflores locks–see my shots from March 2012 here–at that moment. Thanks to the efforts of bowsprite and Elizabeth on my behalf, here’s Balder‘s transit through Miraflores. Finally, why Balder . . ? Check here and here for origins of my interest.
16:45 . . .
16:56
17:04
17:20
17:31
17:34
Many thanks to bowsprite and Elizabeth for the screenshots. Bon voyage Balder . . . now beyond archipelago de las perlas . . .
I’d planned something else for today, but when Brian DeForest, terminal manager of Atlantic Salt, sent along these fotos –taken Sunday from a unique perspective, I scrapped my erstwhile plan. See the orange details in the foreground?
These are fotos from the ship, which is currently moving at 10 to 11 knots southbound off Cape May. That’s the Bayonne Bridge and
here’s the arm conveying salt onto the pile.
I’m sure this has a technical term, but I’ll call it the bracket that supports the arm when not in use.
And here’s a view into the traveling wheelhouse and
the hold.
Here is engine room info.
Finally, here’s Quantico Creek as seen from the bridge wing.
Here’s a foto I took nearly six years ago on the KVK looking off the starboard bow of a large vessel of another time–a century ago–that used to engage in a salt trade out of Chile. Know the vessel?
Answer: Peking. Here’s one of six posts I did about that transit of Peking from Caddell’s back to South Street Seaport Museum waters.
Many thanks to Brian DeForest for all these fotos, except the last one.
A thought just occurs to me: Chile’s main salt port today is Patache. Could that word be a Spanish spelling/pronunciation of the word “potash”?
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