Christmas Eve 2020

Having seen the forecast for December 25, I did my watch on Christmas eve.    These are the latest sunrises of the entire cycle . . . photo taken around 0745, and the sky was still reddish and offering very little light.   Fort McHenry and survey boat Christina cross. Yes, Christina . . . namesake you know who. 

Diane B was pushing John Blanche deep in the water with heating fuel.

Fort McHenry passes my station.

Ocean Endeavour was heading in ahead of the strong winds . . . or maybe just to be at the dock for Christmas.   Note the Staten Island ferry off her starboard and a tip of Twin Tube off port stern.

 

By now, it’s a little after 0800.

Twin Tube is the ultimate sixth boro Christmas boat;  there’s no Santa or reindeer, just a competent captain and enough horsepower to get alongside ships.

The reindeer . . . they’re atop the tarped salt pile.   Santa may have abandoned the sleigh, however.

All the above photos were taken before 0900.  The photo below. . .  it’s W. O. Decker, currently getting work done upriver, but ensconced between Wavertree and  work barge Progress a few years ago . .  .

All photos, WVD, who wishes you all Merry Christmas and gifts of life, health, and happiness however you find it.  And one more . .  . bravo to the Normandy crew for the decorations.

Coffee Barges Extraordinaire

See it there, the modest red covered barge between Wavertree and Peking?  The steel covered barge is called Progress today.   Once it transported coffee from ship to shore.   I’m making a note to myself:  learn more about these.

And right across the East River to the right of the firehouse at Fulton Landing, that modified but still modest white barge used to be Erie Lackawanna 375.  It too transported coffee.  More on this later.   I took this foto 6/16/2009.

Here’s another modified coffee barge, this one just south of Camden, NJ, now the floating office of McAllister in that waterway.

It’s a counterpart to this McAllister office on the KVK.   So given all these repurposed coffee barges I knew about, why

did it take me a day short of seven years doing this blog to go to Bargemusic, the EL 375 barge in the foto above?   Shame on me, posing in the “shadow selfie” below, for waiting so long to check out this extraordinary barge.

I trekked out there yesterday in spite of the gusty sub-freezing weather to hear some music and have a look.

It was warm inside and the smell of old wood  . . . I felt immediately welcomed.  Note the brick fireplace to the left.  Some wood from American Legion lives on here.

Jung Lin was warming up on the Steinway, as

was Andy Simionescu.

I didn’t–and one shouldn’t–take fotos during the performance, but during intermission, I went out onto the pier to see the view from the “back” of the stage.

Here’s  the obit of founder Olga Bloom–with more info on her barge project– from the NYTimes almost exactly two years ago.  From this article, I learn this was her third barge, that it was built around 1900, and that Peter Stamford was instrumental in getting it permission to dock at Fulton Landing.   Here’s a spring 1978 article on what may have been Bargemusic’s first season.  Here’s a link that gets you an interview with the current president and calendar of upcoming events.  By the way, at 2:48 in that interview, a Bouchard tug passes eastbound on the East River.

Credits to those who offered marine trade skills and others can be found here.

Request:  the bargemusic site credits a Captain Hearnley as the one to tow the barge to this location.  Can anyone say anything about him?  Does anyone know the name of the tug or . . . have a foto of that tow?  When was the former EL 375 last  hauled?

Final shot for today, a foto from 8/27/2010 of Volunteer passing bargemusic.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  If you have never been to bargemusic, you’ll thank youself if you go there SOON.

For two more repurposed barges serving as cultural centers, click here and here.  Pennsy 399 will deliver sinterklaas to Kingston this coming week.

Around the Sixth Boro 3

Here was ASB 2.  There might be eight million stories in the naked city, but in its primary boro aka the sixth boro at least half again that number of other stories could be told  . .  by the collective whoever knows them.

Captain Zeke moves with the diverse stone trade past folks waiting below our very own waving girl and

all those folks waving and taking fotos from the ferry and every other water conveyance.

The 1950 Nantucket‘s back in town . .  for the winter.

Yup . . . no one could have predicted these . . .

back when Shearwater was launched in 1929.

A cruise ship shuffles passengers as Peter F. Gellatly bunkers.

Kristy Ann Reinauer stands by a construction barge.

Mary A. Whalen . . . is a survivor from another time.

A barge named Progress has returned to South Street Seaport Museum, here between Wavertree and Peking.

Emerald Coast is eastbound on the East River.

Two views of Adirondack, one with WTC1 –or is it 1 WTC or something else–and

another with the Arabian Sea unit.

And Sea Wolf heads north . . . .

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.