Other Peoples Fotos 29

All these photos come from bowsprite, who is known to scale the cliffs and trees of lower Manhattan to photograph and sketch the ships go by.  From auspicious time to time, she shares her photos with me, as she did recently.

Northbound . . . Stad Amsterdam in formation with a sludge tanker.

This past Sunday she caught Topaz.  Some years back, I caught Skat, a yacht built by the same yard.

Here and here were photos of Stad Amsterdam I’ve taken in recent years.

The Intermarine vessel (Industrial Echo taken on April 6) is evidence of expansion of wind power generation upriver.  Thanks to David Silver for identifying the ship.

In the foreground Gateway tug Bridgeport (Thanks for the help!)  and in the distance the all-knowing, never shrinking from difficult work Michele Jeanne.

As we move through these photos, bowsprite must have descended the trees or cliffs, because here she’s incorporated early spring arboreal detail into her compositions . . . Gran Couva (with “lower” Jersey City) and

Afrodite and Stad Amsterdam and

Voge Freeway.

For the current tip of bowsprite’s opus, click here.  For the most recent tugster post showing her work, click here.  Her photos clearly show the variety of large vessel traffic northbound between Manhattan and Jersey City/Hoboken.

I am grateful to bowsprite for her permission to use these photos.  To see and buy her work online, click here.

Bowsprite’s People Movers and More

Care for a shot of Melville?  ““Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries–stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for ever.”

Paraphrase that a bit, take liberties,  and you might come up with:  “When you gallivant, chances are you’ll end up in the water.”  If Melville were around the sixth boro these days, he might add something about the likelihood of seeing folks with digital cameras and–if among those gallivants there’s a bowsprite–inks/charcoal pencils too.

The whale lives

here, 100 miles plus east of the sixth boro’s easternmost reaches and if you go

up these stairs marked by a rendering of the orange ferry John F. Kennedy, you’ll

see this . . . 38 pieces of bowsprit’s art on display.

The exhibit called “Working Girls of New York Harbor” is up now til the end of May.

And if you feel a thirst that water fails to quench, the exhibit is located one floor above stainless steel vats filled with thousands of gallons of fermenting, living brews.

Here’s the front of the exhibit postcard, with evidence that bowsprite has turned her gaze and inked what she saw in increasingly distant waters.

Oh . .  and the opening’s tonight in Greenport.  Gotta run.   More Greenport soon.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Along this stretch of  . . . bird habitat, Meow man has signed in . . .

and an official boat might just be verifying the authenticity.

Meanwhile, I’m just over two miles off the center of the VZ Narrows bridge . . . doing some of my own verifying.  Those round objects . . . half a dozen of them  . . . are they . . .

. . . could they be . .  see that one splash . . .

harbor seals?    This one seems to negotiate for that rock with . . .  a ruddy turnstone . . . ?

See the press release here for the NYC Audubon tours here.

Read here about the seal scientists who were on board yesterday also.

What is that canoe-shaped object in the upper left side of this photo?

Anyhow, forget about the cold and book a seal and bird tour  . . . on only a few Sunday trips left.

Thanks to bowsprite who suggested this as a birthday present.  I may go out and take this trip again to get the photo I missed of a squadron of long-tailed ducks  circling our boat.

We stayed on the west side of Swinburne Island (it should be renamed Seal Island.) as MOL Endowment arrived with a delivery along the east side.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.  Nearly three years ago I reported on a seal I interviewed on Fire Island.

Somehow . . . don’t ask me how . ..  meow man seems to have “signed” what used to be a white ceramic mug that usually occupies my desk.  How DID he deliver that?  . . . !@#@!!

Really Random Tugs 17

This is the series for photos from all over.

First, from Bob Stopper, who makes it his business to –among other things–document Erie Canal life up in the  county where I grew up, it’s  . . . can you guess what’s under all that snow?

It’s a hibernating Grouper.  I’ve done more than two dozen posts on this boat, which I keep hoping comes back to life.   Here’s a post that shows her working on the big lakes, the northern coast of the USA.

And from the Maraki crew currently getting their passports stamped in the Conch Republic . . .  some Stock Island residents . . . like Robert W. Tomlinson (ex-YT-399 Numa) and

Dutch tug turned yacht Itinerante (ex-Havendienst 1, Vulcanus).

Here’s one of my photos:  that’s Iver Foss tailing the big ZPMC Shanghai-built crane as RORO Hoegh Shanghai follows them in through the Narrows last week.

Some photos from Brian DeForest . . . Joyce D. Brown delivering a crane barge as

RORO Don Juan rolls some vehicles off and some others on over in Port Newark.

Here’s are two photos lacking a photographer both showing Tradewind Towing Rachel powering USS SS Mount Washington AOT-5076 on its final voyage.  The photo below I screen-grabbed from the Crystal Serenity, which is now off Japan.   Mount Washington is at the scrapyard and Rachel is preparing for the next job.

This photo comes from the Gatun Locks webcam.

Bowsprite caught these three last week:  apparent L to R, Arabian Sea, Mediterranean Sea, and Patricia in Red Hook.

Thanks to Bob, Lucy my sister, Franco for standing in the cold with me at the Narrows, Brian, bowsprite, and the remote cameras for these photos.

Government Boats 27

What on earth–or on the river–could cause all these NYWaterways ferries to stick so close to the terminal?  Like fish in a weir . . . must be something big around . . . although I see no vessel between Resolute and Robert E. McAllister on AIS . . .

Praise the day!  Bowsprite–who loves gray or otherwise stealthy and can sometimes clear away the miasma and draw them, if you ask her nicely– ascended to a rooftop yesterday to see what MIGHT lurk between the two aforementioned tugboats.

Here is the current bearer of that name, but there’ve been at least six prior iterations.

She passes the clock–now being restored–and the light

but I was not there.  So here’s my chance to place another government boat in the proximity of Robbins Reef.

Bowsprite, my favorite harbor illustrator,  snapped all fotos except this last one above–of USACE Hayward–which I took.

For another of her ink renderings of sixth boro details, click here.

NYC Tugboat Race 2013 c

And the winner of the speed race . . .

in a record setting 0 days, 0 hours, and precisely five minutes and 0 seconds . . ..

. . . sorry . . .  this is part of the day too; click on the foto for bowsprite’s rare foto coverage.

The winner   of the speed event will be revealed, uncovered, somewhat shorn  . . . at the end of this post.  But first, besides the tattoo contest, other contests include line toss.

Jamie of Susan Miller shows how it’s done.

Then . .  there’s sanctioned, precision pushing.

Can you spot the difference between the white-and-green tug to the right above and the one below?

Vane had twins in the race, and one near-clone.

I’m not sure what this event would be called . . . mustering maybe.

There’s sizing up and

retreat.

On the pier, winners wear not laurels but spinach . . . .  Someone inspired by the anthropological study of the Nacirema people might write this up as a study of a late summer ritual called Ecar Toabgut.

There are raffles that landed some this bowsprite print of a boat that represents–I believe–the first Vane participation in this race on

September 2, 2007.

And after the race–if it hadn’t happened before–boats might pose with the great Lady.

Here are some of the crew of the fastest boat . . .

Resolute.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Congratulations to the crew of Working Harbor Committee for their work;  many thanks to all the companies and crews for participating.

And let’s make this Tubing Tuesday, with a video of the race in NYC, the one in Gloucester and this tour in port of Antwerpen . . al  this same weekend.

How to Swim FROM a Tugboat

You may have seen this foto sequence yesterday of Orlando Duque diving from a helicopter near the Statue of Liberty?  Well . .  more on the foto below later in this post, but the diver here is in fact she who inspired my post today by her instructions on how to swim from a schooner . . . a few years back.

If you’ve looked at bowsprite’s link above, you’ll notice that my instructions begin differently.

1.  Choose your location, and few locations are as enticing to me as the Hudson north of the Bear Mountain Bridge, where I hiked a few months back.

2.  Select a tugboat.  Buchanan 12, here managing eight stone scows just below Breakneck Ridge,  is photogenic but absolutely the wrong choice for this.

Nor should you choose Kimberly Poling, here headed southbound on the Hudson in the same bends.

Patty Nolan, however, fits the specs perfectly.  You may remember Patty here  from a few years back looking just a little different and facing a dilemma.

3.  Here’s where I concur with bowsprite’s first item:  find a captain who will let you off the boat.    We did.  The dock worker here belongs to the blue-hatted union.

And off we go in search of an anchorage.  Now I know that since contemporary life comes with an infinite lists of troubles and limitations,  to relax . . . and celebrate life  . . . you gotta do it!

The mature days of summer demand celebration.

4.  Anchor in a safe location.  Bannerman, haunting in springtime, seems more welcoming in late summer.

5.  Check the equipment.  Will Patty the figure figure be enticed to come up out of her cabin by this gold lamé?

6.  Set up the sturgeoncam

and deploy

the crane.

7.  Swim . . . without the strap or

or with, in a variety of entrance styles.

8.  Board the boat when the day is done . . . if you can figure out how.  I need to work on that one.  Or sturgeoncam here might have to swim down the Hudson . . . .  In late summer, that’s not a bad option.

Would you believe this waterspotted lens proves I followed Patty and crew all the way back to Bear Mountain?

Do you think I’d conclude this post without a video of tugster swinging from the crane?  Click on the foto to see.

Don’t let Labor Day find you without a Hudson River dip in your experience.

By the way, from the local paper, one of my favorite weekly columns,  twelve places you should also visit in the Hudson Valley. 

Sea Wolf Moves Yankee

No, this isn’t the January River.  I leave for there today, but this . . .   !!  These next four fotos come from the perspicacious bowsprite, taken yesterday afternoon.   The tug in the foreground is Sea Wolf is 1982.  In the background is –of course–Ellis Island, 1900.  In between with the yellow stack is

Yankee, 1907.  Her long history includes a stint as Machigonne moving passengers across the sixth boro from Ellis Island to other boros and to NJ.   The tow began at the far right of this foto.

More tugster on Yankee when I return, but before then, I’m sure there’ll be other info.

Six plus years ago, a friend Mike caught these fotos of Sea Wolf‘s sister–Sea Lion–moving an unusual vessel named Abora III out of the Morris Canal to sea.   The reed craft made it more than halfway across the Atlantic.

All fotos by bowsprite.  Advance notice came thanks to Rod Smith, who once worked as deckhand on Yankee and who will have his own account of this move . . . to Brooklyn.  Here (2007) and here (2011) are my previous posts with Yankee fotos from New Jersey.  Click here to get some backstory–and video of Sea Wolf departing with ferry– from a supporter who wanted to keep them on the watery edge of Hoboken.

Now, I pack and head south myself.    Vou escrever mais em breve.

Other People’s Fotos 23

You may once have ridden this vessel.  Thirty months ago you could have made a bid on it.  Eighteen months ago it was topheavy and listing.  Two weeks ago Paul Strubeck caught this foto.  Might you call it a major haircut.

Around the same time, Paul caught this vessel in Verplanck. That looks like Cornell to the left also.   I don’t know what Cormorant‘s future will be.

I caught Planetsolar on my way outatown, but bowsprite studied the first solar-powered circumnavigator up close and impersonal and shares these fotos.

Inside these caps are props.  Click here and here to see the props.

Enjoy these views starting with this view looking forward along the portside and moving counterclockwise around the boat.

Click here for a compilation of clips taken over two years on Turanor PlanetSolar.  And if you have 40 minutes to watch this video from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, you could like it.  I especially liked the  Singapore dry dock section beginning around 31 minutes in.   And from yesterday’s NYTimes, here’s a story about the boat’s current research mission.

Many thanks to Paul and bowsprite for these fotos.

Speaking of bowsprite . . .  if you’re local and free on Saturday, come  down to Pier 25 where she has organized the craft market called Radio Lilac, named for the 1933 lighthouse tender there.

Tale of Two Tugboats

The two tugs in question really have nothing to do with each other, although almost all these fotos have been taken in the past month.  Bluefin, launched summer 2009, waits on the hook with Penn No. 80.  Although the colors haven’t caught up, the unit–one of 16 Penn Maritime tugs and 18 heated barges– is now owned by Kirby, in exchange for almost $300 million.

This foto and the others of this unit you can enjoy thanks to bowsprite.  The red tug–Reliant–is about 20 years older than Bluefin.

Each designed for its own purpose, Bluefin is 111 feet, whereas

Reliant . . . 30′.

Coho, launched November 2008, on paper is an identical twin of the 4000 hp Bluefin.  I took this foto in October 2009.

Here’s a foto I took of Reliant over on the west side of Bergen Point a few years back.

Thanks to bowsprite for contributing the fotos of Reliant over at WorldFi ferry terminal.  All others by Will Van Dorp.