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The day brightens a bit, but I stayed between Newburgh–to my back–and Beacon.
Whenever a boat passed, the gulls followed, feasting on the small fish stunned by the props.
The town below gets its name from the mountain, Mount Beacon.
Local squalls obscured the area north of Newburgh-Beacon.
Following Sarah Ann northbound was the indefatigable Buchanan 12.
A few miles upriver Buchanan 12 swapped these scows out for a loaded set, and in a few hours, returned southbound.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Pre-foliage spring is optimal time for seeing the landmarks along the Hudson. This one is near Wilderstein (scroll), but I’d never seen it before.
Esopus Meadows cannot be missed either down bound or up. Get on the wrong side, and you’ll regret ever being here. Click here for tugster posts showing the light in all the seasons.
I wonder what the crew on the anchored bulker thought of the Beaux-Arts structure on the bank. I wonder what some of foreign crews coming up river think of the river as a whole?
Comet heads northbound with segments of dismantled TZ Bridge. The first specific example I’ve heard of reuse is here, in Mount Vernon.
At first glance, I thought this was odd snow accumulation on the banks,
closer up . . . an auto auction lot.
Tilcon operates one of the most conspicuous quarries along the river, seen here last week from the water and here
from the train. Quarrying has been a major activity along the river. And here finally I see the derivation of “trap rock,” which this crushed aggregate is sometimes called: trap, as in stairs, for all those Dutch speakers out there.
I’ve been curious about this large crane near Chelsea NY since last summer. Now my best guess is that it’s related to NYC Water Tunnel No. 3. Any DEP readers help out?
Just below the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge, we meet the Buchanan 12 and her herd of barges, heading up to Tilcon for trap rock. For many more views of Buchanan 12, click here. We met her just as she left the sublime highlands.
Of all the many posts I’ve mentioned Bannerman’s in, here and here are my favorites. For close-ups, click here. In this era of gun questions, here’s an article with specifics of his unregulated trade.
Breakneck Ridge looked particularly ominous with afternoon sun cast shadows. It appears MTA trains will stop there if you have a ticket.
And movement on a ridge in Little Stony Point . . . a photographer. Like me. And the “point” . . . it was once an island.
South of here, more beautiful scenery awaited, but I got distracted and took no more photos in the fading light of late afternoon.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Of all the area Tilcon sites, this one at Clinton Point is the most conspicuous one as seen from the river.
If you’ve taken the train northward along the Hudson, you traveled just inland from this structure.
To see the cavity quarry behind the silos, click here and go to page 57 of what has become one of my favorite books. The quarry, where rock has been dug since 1880, dwarfs the shoreline buildings.
Buchanan 12, a regular on the river doing Mississippi style assemblages of scows, here prepares another group for travel downstream.
I wonder if Tilcon welcomes visits by reporters . . . as this one in Illinois does.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Here was 1 in this series.
About a month ago, I caught up with Buchanan 12 moving crude materials, as is almost always the case with Buchanan 12, aggregates, one of the basic elements for most construction projects.
According to this lohud.com story, about three million tons of aggregates were shipped on the Hudson in 2014. My guess is that it’s higher today, since there’s long been rock in “them thar hills.”
Some aggregates further move east toward the Sound, as these in the East River are.
Mister T is a Blount built tug.
And these seem mixed aggregates.
More statistics on aggregate production–including a listing of all the types–can be found here.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I took these photos over a two-day period in late July, traveling the entire 130 miles of the Hudson from the Battery to Troy while on the trip from Narragansett Bay to the “source” of the Chicago River. RV Shearwater here surveys the river/bay; that’s Willy Wall on the horizon left, so the Battery is behind us.
The Tappan Zee nears completion: the gap on the left side is all that needs to be bridged. The Left Coast Lifter will then become the “left coast lowerer,” I assume.
Infrastructure materials come out of the ground here in Haverstraw,
Viking passes below Osborn Castle,
summer play happens in the Hudson,
Buchanan 12 pushes more raw materials for infrastructure,
a tribe paddles over to Bannerman’s,
a truck lifts three vessels in imitation of Combi-Dock III,
Vane’s Delaware pushes DoubleSkin 50 upriver,
Spring Sunshine offloads aggregates at Caymans, where
a 400-ton 12-story structure awaits (then) its float down to NJ [more on that soon],
yacht named Summer heads south for Key West,
raw materials that once rolled on roads await the trip back to the blast furnace,
a horde does sun salutations on shore,
the American goddess Columbia trumpets at the top of a needing-to-be-updated soldiers/sailors monument in Troy,
and an oracle wearing a sea creature hat and using an old-school device taps out verbiage suggesting I’m headed for Ithaca and not Chicago, although I’m pleased with that too.
All photos and observations by Will Van Dorp, who is grateful to the oracle.
Somewhat related: Click here for a CNN Travel clip called “Liquid City” and starts out with the sentence “most people think NYC has five boros, but there’s really a sixth one; it’s the largest one and it connects all the others.” I heard it while waiting at the airport in Indianapolis the other day and was stunned. Do you suppose Justin Davidson reads tugster?
For blog posts written by folks going first northbound and then southbound on a LNV tug, click here and here.
Legs 2 and 3 are West Point to Kingston, and then Kingston to Troy to lower the boat for clear passage through the Erie Canal.
Starting below, leaving West Point,
passing Buchanan 12,
HR Otter,
looking back toward Catskill,
meeting
Craig Eric Reinauer,
in awe in Coeymans seeing Eli (which I first misread as ELF) and
Ocean Tower,
passing port of Albany and BBC Vela,
seeing Slater in the morning light, and finally
after tying up at Troy, reconfiguring the boat for the Erie Canal.
Leg 4 starts at noon today as we head for a night in Amsterdam.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
I considered calling this “random vessels,” since I haven’t used that title in a while, but here is a tighter focus for a few days: tugboats. Here I also randomize the backgrounds and seek out some vessels infrequently seen. Like the rare and exotic Shelby Rose and
Jay Michael and Vicki M and
Patricia with her racing stripes up against the gantry arms.
Wye River and James E. Brown here cross the south end of Newark Bay, where
Sandmaster has been tied up for (?) nearly a year now.
Sassafras did a circle in Erie Basin recently, and
Thomas, the Weeks tug, strode into town, picked up a barge and headed straight for Texas! The first time I saw Thomas was January 2009. Remember what memorable event splashed into the Hudson around the middle of that month?
Buchanan 12 here is light and seen from almost her prop wash. I hadn’t noticed the Boston registry before.
Quantico Creek stays local a lot, but Severn I don’t see much.
Here’s Tangier Island behind . . yes, Gerardi’s Farmers Market.
OK . . . that’s it for today. All photos by Will Van Dorp. More random tugs tomorrow.
Bravo to the organizers and participants of the 2015 NYC race. It starts with a muster…
L to r: Catherine Miller, Robert E. McAllister, Eric R. Thornton, Mister T, Buchanan 1, and Buchanan 12
which looks different as you shift perspective.
Add Red Hook and Sarah Ann, with a jet ski for scale.
Add Thomas Witte.
Take a close up on Mister T with John J. Harvey in the distance.
It’s great to see race newcomers like Sea Scout Ship 243 out of Rahway NJ, and
By this point, some boats like Robert E. McAllister start to get impatient.
Muster then turns into a procession, filing straight toward the starting line and
showing the colors
as some newcomers catch up.
James William used to be a Moran boat.
Next stage . . . it’s the tension on the starting line, feet digging into the starting blocks and muscles tensing, sort of.
There are 11 boats here, including Margot pushing a set of rock barges and not racing.
They’re off!
and water starts to cascade away from the bows…
froth by the ton.
But when the quick minutes of the race have elapsed, the first boat down the course is the impatient Robert E. McAllister.
And almost as in a triathlon, the dash down the course changes and the pushing starts.
All manner of paired struggle ensues.
And we need to leave. All photos here by Will Van Dorp, with thanks to Bjoern and crew for my ride.
The most unambiguous sign of spring is a recreational boat in the sixth boro.
Margot always ranges widely . . . . but when the Erie Canal is still closed for the season, she’s more frequently in the sixth boro.
Buchanan 12 is back doing stonework . . .
big scale. In winter I’ve not seen this. Ice preventing it maybe?
Black-hulled USCG vessels are more common in winter. I’m not sure what Sanibel (WPB 1312) was doing in town.
Another indisputable sign of spring . . . is that big sliver . . . in a vulnerable position vis-a-vis the gull.
All kidding aside, it’s an impressive boat for a guy who immigrated to the US at age 16 and got a job washing dishes . . . if that’s true. I wonder who’s taking that selfie there? Is that a selfie with a circle of friends, a huge boat, and a bridge in the background?
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
World’s End is not some lamentation about the single digit temperatures we’ve seen in these parts; it’s one of the great place names in the Hudson Highlands from 40 to 55 miles north of the the Statue. Enjoy these summer/winter pics of this curve in the vicinity of World’s End. West Point is just to the left, and we’re headed north.
Birk Thomas–of tugboat information.com– took this photo in just about the same place less than a week ago.
I took this two summers ago, and that’s Pollepel Island in the distance.
Same place . . . Birk’s photo from last week. Visibility is so restricted that the Island cannot be seen.
And here are two more shots of the same view in summer, from off Cornell and
Patty Nolan. That’s Buchanan 12 heading north in the photo below.
Photos 2 and 4 used with thanks to Birk Thomas. All others by Will Van Dorp.
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