Random Tugs 270

Here’s another calendar’s worth . . . starting with Josephine.  I have many more of this bot coming up soon.

Capt. Brian heads out through the Narrows to meet a tow.

Cape Lookout returns for her anchored barge.

Nathan G delivers a brace of scows.

Ava M heads out for a job.

The “new” Kristin Poling returns to her barge as well.

Ellen and Bruce A follow a job.

St Andrews heads east and

Ernest Campbell, west.

Challenger, some weeks ago, brings a Weeks crane up for a lift.

Stephen B has some additions to her paint job since last I saw her.

CMT Pike heads back across the Upper Bay.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who can’t believe it’s already mid-November 2019!!

 

 

Mixed Craft 2

Here’s the previous post of this focus.  I had others ready to go at one point, but  . ..  ships sail, horses leave barns, and ideas slip away.  Yesterday I spent one hour on the Upper Bay and concluded that it’s a diverse place, starting with this water rising up and obscuring whatever lay beyond it.  Of course, I knew what it was, but I recall the first time I saw such a misting–in the Gulf off Kuwait–and my brain could not process what my eyes were sending it.

Regular and irregular cargoes juxtaposed, boxes and rocks.

Framing a shot puts together what is actually quite far apart.

I’ve done a number of posts on winter fishing, but fall fishing must be super right now, with some fisherman torn between landing that next fish and

 

staying out of the path of YM World and all those tugs assisting it into Global terminal.

 

I know foreshortening plays a role in giving a sense of crowding, but there IS undeniably some crowding going on here.  The ship DID sound a warning at one point.

And that mist in the top photo . . . it came from Firefighter II.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who still has lots of photos from the trip from Montreal.

 

 

Meeting the Fleet 2019a

See that lineup . . .   it can mean only one thing, and it’s not the invasion of 300 enemy warships. 

Here are some of those meeting the fleet . . .

And here the fleet, part of the vessels . . ..

Three Forty Three does the honors.

The lead gray ship has a unique appearance, seen on this blog here from about a year ago.

 

LCS-5 will be docked on Staten Island, a tour I might be interested in doing.  For the complete schedule, click here.

 

Ellen McAllister, following her to the dock, is another product of Wisconsin shipbuilding.

 

Following the LCS was DDG-109, USS Jason Dunham.  Please read the story of the namesake here.

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More tomorrow, but here, passing in front of USS Jason Dunham and USS Milwaukee, is the 98-year-old HMCS Oriole, with an interesting bi-national history you can read here.  HMCS Oriole has appeared on this blog twice before, once on the West Coast and once on the Great Lakes.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, whose previous fleet week photos can be seen here.

 

Other Peoples Photos 72

Many thanks to Robert Simko and Lee Gruzen for sending me some photos and lots of questions yesterday morning.

This large gray vessel–SS Cape Avinoff (AK-5013)–arrived under tow

from, I believe, National Defense Reserve Fleet on the James River, where it has been used for training.

As SS Cape Avinoff is moved stern first closer to GMD Shipyard in Brooklyn, Chris Kunzmann got this photo.

Many thanks to Robert, Lee, and Chris for use of these photos.  Can anyone confirm why she was moved to a NYC shipyard?

Robert publishes The Broadsheet.  Click here and here for info on GMD Shipyard.

Previous posts involving “dead ships” can be found here.

 

Above the Highlands 3

It’s late afternoon when Bruce A McAllister with Double Skin 40 passes my spot, followed

by Marjorie B McAllister, with B. No. 262 behind.

From the south with a motley set of barges . . . .

 

 

it’s Frances. Afternoon light is starting to highlight Mr. Bannerman’s place.

 

That IS a short wire, a necessity given that Marjorie has no upper wheelhouse.

 

 

These low hanging clouds have never left today.

 

 

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who wants to remind you of the Canal Conference in Staten Island coming up in two weeks.

Front Line

Did you hear about Peak Pegasus, the vessel racing to get US soybeans into China before retaliatory 25% tariffs are slapped on?  More on Peak Pegasus at the end of this post.

Well, these two container ship had no need to hurry into the sixth boro, yet here’s something I’ve never seen before . . . two container ships entering the Narrows in quite close succession.

Obviously the passage accommodates all, but still . . . a new sight for me, the reason I return here again and again.

See QM2 in the distance to the right?  I caught her first arrival here 11 years ago.  Dawn was too late for me to catch it.  That ominous sky got me thinking . . . storm clouds.  Locally I was just concerned about getting spots on my lens.  But then I thought about the story of Peak Pegasus, the impending trade war.  I could see those as storm clouds, and shipping . . . this is a front line, like every seaport in the US.

Take the value of all the imported cargo on Maersk Buton and

add to it the value of whatever’s on OOCL Berlin . . . and every other ship entering a US port for the foreseeable future and add the product of that and  .25 . . . the sum’s rising.  Ditto  . . . whatever is on Bomar Caen–headed for Colombia–might just be less attractive if .25 gets added to the price of those goods.  Maybe Colombia is not affected.

I’m by no means an expert in much, and please educate me if I’m wrong, but these storm clouds seemed appropriate this morning.

All photos and sentiments by Will Van Dorp, who first read the name of the Maersk ship as butoh, which would have been much more interesting.

Peak Pegasus plowed at top speed to make port, but  . . . she failed.  More here.   Here’s a story from the same vessel from a few months back.

Morro Redondo Express

Rt Hon Paul E. Martin called here before a month over three years ago, that time carrying the same type of cargo.

I took these photos yesterday, and believe it or not, I felt only a few drops of rain.

The Martin is the second self-unloader to call in the sixth boro in three days, which must be some sort of a record.

Eric and Bruce did a magnificent job of spinning the bulker around.

Once spun around, foot by foot she was moved with precision to the dock.

 

To get this cargo here, Martin traveled three weeks and transited the Panama Canal.

 

Can anyone tell me the meaning of the “10H VOID” marking just below the name and CSL class of the freighter and the “VOID7” marking just above the water line?

And where is Morro Redondo, you ask?  It’s on the island of Cedros, a bit over 300 miles SSE of San Diego, CA.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Until an hour before posting, there were two Canadian self-unloaders in our harbor, which is truly remarkable.  Algoma Integrity, as of posting, is not even 10 nm outside the Narrows.

 

Weather 11

Here are the previous weather posts.  Below . . . that’s easy:  it’s a local shower;  Evening Tide and Evening Light were in the rain, and I was not, yet.

But a half hour later at the opposite end of the KVK, the clouds were truly wild.  Is there a word for these conditions?  Again, it wasn’t raining at my location.

Air currents swirled beyond the busy waterway, l to r, Stolt Loyalty, Stone 1, Phoenix Dream, Kimberly Turecamo, and Hoegh Seoul assisted by Bruce A. McAllister.

The Stolt tanker passes Graecia Aeterna before meeting the wild swirl head-on.

Add one more tug to the mix.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’d like to know what you call this type of fast-moving dispersal of fog.

 

 

Random Tugs 211

Here’s what’s on the surface and

here’s a bigger picture.  That trio in the sky following Bruce A McAllister tails us as well!

Big Jake once

trafficked the sixth boro as Juliet Reinauer.

Over at the Brooklyn passenger terminal, Jonathan C waits,

canvas on the fenders, to assist Crown Princess out.

And given my scarceness in the sixth boro, the only image I have to date of the new Capt. Brian A. McAllister has the tug concealed by Alex and Eric.

And then out on the Sound, it’s John P Wronowski and escort,

headed for the barn.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who recently stumbled onto an interesting blog, now added to my blogroll under a seamsters.org  Damn autocorrect . . . I really typed aa seasisters.org          the “aa” being there to keep this near the top of my links.

 

Random Ships 56

The top photo here comes from Brian Thigpen.  Last Monday, the first 13000 teu container ship–OOCL Berlin— entered port, and I missed it.  Bravo to Brian for photographing it.  I suspect soon the 14000 teu and then subsequent records will be set. Escort visible here is Eric McAllister, I think.

With larger ships, escort procedures seem to be changing also, like tugs coming in sets of three and meeting the vessel outside the VZ Bridge.  Just a few years ago, nothing of the the size of Northern Justice–8400 teu–was calling here.

 

I really should get more photos of the ships passing through the sixth boro and heading anywhere from Yonkers to Albany.  Here’s Western Aida along the cliffs of the UWS, 

leaving the Palisades to port once under the GW.

Here’s Spottail westbound on the KVK, assisted by Ellen McAllister and  Bruce A. McAllister,  and soon to pass

Stolt Pride, 2016, showing a new look for Stolt.

Thanks again to Brian Thigpen for use of his photo.  All others by Will Van Dorp.