Retro Sixth Boro 58

February 2013 saw Patrick Sky still working in the boro. 

The walkway still flanked the west side of the Bayonne Bridge, which allowed images like the ones that follow. Sun Right and Suez Canal Bridge were regulars. Since then the 1993 Sun Right has been scrapped.  The 2002 Suez Canal Bridge continues to work under the name Suez Canal.   Container capacity for the two vessels comes in at 2205 and 5610, respectively. 

Winter 2013 saw these pipelines getting staged and buried across Bergen Point.  I believe they were these for natural gas, somewhat controversial at the time.  If so, it’s interesting to note the message here on “natural gas” compared with a shift in attitude that seems to be gaining traction.

It was the view of vessels rounding Bergen Point in the morning light I enjoyed the most back then. 

Let’s follow Sun Right around, here assisted by Ellen McAllister and Marjorie B. McAllister. Out below, that’s Shooters Island, Port Ivory, and Elizabethport in the distance.

 

The benefit of the lower bridge was 

proximity to the vessel and 

crew.  Obviously, that proximity was also its drawback; the global fleet increased in size and air draft with the obvious impediment to container ship traffic in the boro.  

I recall the crew below seemed eager to have their photos taken.  I wonder where these guys are, a decade on.   See the whole series differently here. 

All photos in early February 2013. 

1000+ Days Ago

Note:  If you haven’t read “my” long comment to yesterday’s ‘SterCrazy 3 post, I added much more info from Robin Denny about the Bug roadster there.

March 23, 2017.    So how many folks are standing at a high point of the Evergreen ship?

Two?  Six?  More?

 

It was something of an optical illusion, because the lower roadbed was in its last days.

On April 2, 2017 . . . Maersk Kolkata was one of the first vessels to “thread the needle” and shoot through the

opening, where a roadbed had been for almost a century.   Time flies.

A week and a few days later, April 11, 2017

the “opening” in the lower roadway had grown to the point that it was difficult to imagine it’d ever been there.

Photos by Will Van Dorp, who did another post in April 2017 showing other vessels “shooting the needle” here.

 

 

Bayonne Bridge Transformation 3

Here was 1 and here, 2.  As others of you, I’ve been waiting for the walkway to open;  it’s been closed since August 2013!!

Today’s photos are all from the past six weeks, and my way of saying that workers are still active on this bridge

 

See the same guys above and below?

My son works in a fairly high “man basket,” but I doubt he’s ever

been in one this high.  These must extend to nearly 200′?

The next two photos I took earlier this week.

 

Since the Bayonne Bridge has appeared on every blog post (as header photo) I’ve done, I do know it better than any other bridge locally. Happy holidays from Will Van Dorp.

Bayonne Bridge Transformation 1

More of the Great Race soon . . . but a bit of back story.

When I moved to our fair metropolis in 2000 and started paying attention, I was taken by the Bayonne Bridge, so enamored in fact that I choose it as the header image for this blog in 2006, and now out of stubbornness– or something– have kept the old view.

I renewed my focus on the Bridge in 2011, “turning” became the key word in the titles.  Click here to see posts I did for its 80th, 84th, and 86th anniversary of initial construction, and here I marked the 80 mark again twice.   Over 10 years ago I alluded to the raising for the first time here.

Here’s a single post that looks at the change from 2011 until 2017.

For a baseline, let’s use sunrise April 24, 2008, looking from the west, those two boats are Justine McAllister and Huron Service, now Genesis Victory.

And from the east, December 2011, and that boat was Barents Sea, currently known as Atlantic Enterprise.   As to the bridge, note the box-grid work (not a technical term) on the Bayonne side of the arch.

From Richmond Terrace (Staten Island) perspective, here’s the bridge in February 2012.

By September 13, the box grid was covered, possibly to allow sand blasting.

By January 2014, the cover was off the box grid.  Yes, that’s Specialist.

By October 2015, the box grid was being extended upward, as

the vertical supports were being erected farther into Bayonne.

Here’s a December 15 view, showing the symmetry of the construction.

Here’s March 2016, and you can begin to see the location of the raised roadbed.

Here’s a view from May 2016 from the west side of the Bayonne shore.

By August 2016, the new span has been completely defined.

Here’s a closer up, showing the old level–still poet traffic–and the new level, along with the device used to place pre-cast portions of the new road bed.   The tug is Taft Beach.

Here, as seen from the west side, is most of the bridge in September 2016.  Note the gap still remaining on the Staten Island side.

By March 23,  2017, the upper deck was open to wheeled traffic, and the lower deck was ready to be dismantled.

Here’s a closer-up of that opening.

By April 2, a gap existed, and

by April 11, 2017, ships that might have scrapped  year before were shooting through the opening that grew wider by the week.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who will continue this progression soon.

Gunhilde

Yesterday morning two container ships with length (loa) of 366 meters or more occupied dock space in Port Newark.  To my knowledge, no longer cargo ship has yet called here, and since they’d each been in port more than a day, I figured I’d get some photos of them outbound under the Bayonne Bridge.  One was 366 m x 48 m (144,131 dwt), and the other was possibly 367 m x 42 (116,100).  Either would be great, both would be superb.

And remember last month I had the photos of JRT Moran underway moving astern?  Well, check out the photo of James D Moran below, on a towline with the 367 m Gunhilde.

I’ll identify these tugs (l to r) so that you can trace their evolution in this turn.  James, Brendan, JRT, and Kirby tethered to the stern.

 

Translating that 42 m breadth, I count 17 containers across.

James D efficiently drops the line and pivots to starboard.

 

Here I assume Brendan is still on the portside.  Was Miriam (farthest left) involved all along or simply passing through?

In that clutch of three Moran tugs, 18,000 horsepower labors.

Kirby Moran is still on the towline.

 

x

Ringkøbing sounds like a pleasant place to visit in summer, not really a port.

So here’s a puzzle:  Gunhilde left port around noon yesterday, but by evening she was back after merely traveling to the outside of the Ambrose Channel , making a wide turn to port, and then re-entering the Channel to anchor overnight in Gravesend Bay.  As of this writing, she appears to have set out for Norfolk once again.  Any stories?

Also interesting, if the AIS info was correct, Gunhilde arrived in NYC after a nearly 19-day voyage from Salalah, the old spice and incense port.  Look it up.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who wonders what Gunhilde‘s air draft is.

And as it turned out, the 144, 131 dwt vessel left port  . . . after dark.

 

RORO and FLOFLO 2

Here was the first in this series of titles, from almost seven years ago.

The barge with green containers, the bridge, and the Glovis roll on-roll off (RORO) vessel all look great bathed

in January morning light,

a bit of wolf moon light thrown in as well.

I don’t know if this RORO has called here before, but she is less than a year old,  

and you can tell.

She leaves our fair city for Tema, Ghana.  I’d love to see her in tropical light.  Anyone there reading this?

And here’s the FLOFLO for today, this common goldeneye who flew onto this water and will flow off north when the days lengthen and the sun gets hotter.   The last other type of FLOFLO–the one that floated Peking out– was documented here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s eager to hear from folks in Ghana on this vessel.

Jetster Inbound

The flight back home through LaGuardia the other day chilled with its turbulence but thrilled with scenery.  I used my phone rather than camera to avoid hitting the window with the lens.

Here we enter  NYC airspace over Raritan Bay.  Imagine this on a clock face at the 0800 and heading clockwise. The land is the SW corner of Staten Island.  That’s Outerbridge Crossing over the Arthur Kill (AK), and the cargo vessel following the ever-so-strange channel is SCT Matterhorn, all 538′ of her outbound.

Here we look at the creeks in Freshkills Park, Isle of Meadows, and then Carteret NJ on the other side of the AK;  just off the left side of the photo is the location of the marine scrapyard featured in my documentary, Graves of Arthur Kill. 

A few seconds later, our Embraer 190 crosses the KVK;  dead center is the Bayonne Bridge and Shooters Island at the confluence of Newark Bay (to the north, or right on this photo) and the Kills . . . Arthur and Kill Van.  We’re now at about 0900 on our clock face.

Here’s my favorite shot of the series . . . the entire length of the curvy KVK.  Exiting the Kills and bound for sea past the Staten Island Yankees stadium is the 751′ Hoegh Asia.   I’ve no idea who’s on first.   The salt pile and the IMTT tank farm are key landmarks.

Below are the twin peninsulas of MOTBY, with Bayonne Drydock and the Bayonne Cruise terminal directly across that peninsula.  In the lower rightmost patch of green on this peninsula you can locate the statue dedicated by Putin . . . yes, THAT Putin.    The peninsula to the right–the Global terminals Bayonne— accommodates container ships and ROROs. In the distance Newark Bay Bridge and the rail bridge to its right cross Newark Bay.

Slightly farther north, you can see Global terminals, the Weeks Marine yard, the Greenville rail docks serving NYNJ Rail, and Sims scrap yard in Jersey City, where an unidentified bunker loads.

Approaching 1000 on my clock, here’s the confluence of the Hackensack (nearer) and Passaic Rivers, forming the SE point of Kearny NJ where they become the north end of Newark Bay.  Several hundred ships were built in the Kearny yard–this side of the point–in the first half of the 20th century. The Passaic disappears here into the tall buildings of Newark NJ.

Behold the meadowlands, and if you want to read a good book about that marsh, here’s a review of Robert Sullivan’s book, one of my all-time favorites.  Captains Bill or Hughie give fun tours there too.

So remember this flight is headed into LaGuardia from the NE, so that puts us at 1400 on our clock face, and that means we’re over New Rochelle this point in the approach pattern and that’s Hempstead Bay beyond Sands Point, with Execution Rocks Light looking like a submarine near leftish  center of photo.   The top of the photo looks SE across Nassau County.

It’s City Island, the most unlikely part of the Bronx, to which it’s connected by the City Island Bridge.

And just before landing . . .  it’s Throgs Neck …  and a few seconds later, touch down.

All I can add is that I was glad for a portside window seat on the Embraer.  All that water, that’s what I call the sixth boro.  More Jetster soon . . . .

 

Suez Canal Bridge

or Bridge.

Below is a photo I took in October 2011 . . .

Also from October 2011, when the bridge looked like this,

squeezing under the roadbed looked like this, and

the McAllister stern quarter escort looked like this . . .

the mighty Maurania III, that is.  Here’s the complete post I did back then.

But five and a half  years have elapsed, not without change.  So earlier this week, Suez Canal in the KVK and under the Bayonne Bridge looked like this.  See the worker above the new roadbed?

See him now?

 

So this week it was Marjorie B on the stern, and

 

Ellen forward.

 

 

I hope to be around and doing this five and a half years from now to see what there is to see.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Yesterday I mentioned the request to help the Roaring Bull ferry project, and that’s now fully funded. Thank you.   Here’s another and more somber request that you might consider, the Captain Joseph Turi Memorial fund.

People on the Boro 21

If you want to see what I’ve done with this title in the past, click here.

I’ll reveal this set of photos without explaining what’s going on.  Check out the six people in this photo.  They divide into two groups by “uniform,” but how are they related?

 

I might add that these photos are shown in reverse chronological order.

 

See the two men (or one of them at that moment) atop the superstructure in the photo below?

Now we’re moving forward in time again.

 

So the two groups of six total men in the top photo have nothing to do with each other.  The ship’s crew wearing orange were simply photographing the bridge work, demolition at this point.  I can’t say if they communicated, but my guess is that at their closest they were within 50 feet of each other.

 

All photo by Will Van Dorp.

 

Rounding Bergen Point 3

Before returning to bends around points on other rivers, I want to share some photos I took yesterday, first in a while at Bergen Point.  Here’s the set-up out of Newark Bay.

I’d love to know the tension of the line up from Marjorie.

Ellen pushes on the port stern quarter, and

Robert counters on the opposite bow.

It’s gusty.

But someone calling the shots up there knows how

to rotate

just right.  A year from now, it’s possible there will be gaps in that lower roadbed, if any of it left at all.

 

I’ve no idea what the clearance was yesterday, and I’m eager for that walkway to be re-opened.

 

Another job is almost complete here as of late morning Friday, but the work never ceases, as traffic into the port can be said to

be ever lining up.  There are 30 (I believe) of these Ever L ships, liberal, lasting, lovely, loading, lifting, lucid, laden, lucky, loyal, linking, and more.

Lambent left Shanghai in early November  and will be back in Panama Asia-bound late next week.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.