Calusa, Delaware to Jonathan

Hot to sweet . . .  could have been a title too.

I hope obscure titles are not too off-putting, but I just realized that in late August 2019, I encountered Calusa Coast on the Cuyahoga while she was still on her contract to push liquid asphalt around the Inland Seas, aka the Great Lakes.  To be liquid, asphalt needs to be over 250 degrees F, so that assist tug Cleveland here is close to some very hot liquid, safely enclosed in steel barge Delaware.

 

Two years ago, Calusa Coast and barge Delaware were nearing their contract.  

Nine months ago, my friend Jack Ronalds caught the unit newly in salt water at the Strait of Canso.  Earlier this week, I caught this unit, Calusa Coast pushing

sugar barge (technically, dry bulk barge) Jonathan up from coastal Florida to Yonkers. 

That structure midships on Jonathan is a hatch crane.

As of this morning, they are still discharging at ASR, the sugar refinery.  I’ve caught Jonathan and Sugar Express there on other occasions.

Come to think of it . . .  Yonkers must be hot and sweet there now.

All photos, WVD.

18 Hours

Last week I did a lot of driving, to the Outer Banks and back for a project.  I saved some time headed north by crossing from Lewes to Cape May by ferry.  Although it was quite foggy, I did see a few vessels.  Can you identify these?

 

By now, I suspect some of you have identified this tug . . .

Of course, it’s the 2007 tug formerly known as Barbara C and Arabian Sea and now called Saint Emilion.  On the ferry crossing, I caught these photos at 1700;  after an overnight and some work, I was headed home and caught her here at the VZ Bridge, 18 hours later.

So, 18 hours then to run the length of the Jersey coastline, and switching from towing to pushing once at the southern edge of the sixth boro.

After catching these photos of Saint Emilion, I waited a bit longer and caught these photos of Calusa Coast, traveling light, on a voyage from the GoM to the watery boro.

All photos here all foggy, WVD.

Random Tugs 323

Enjoy more late afternoon photos here . . .  like Alexandra, passing in front of a number of cranes, both on the water, near the water, and atop buildings.

Ava transits the Con Hook Range, with three East River bridges in the background.

Miriam heads in the direction of the Bayonne Bridge, with two Arthur Kill bridge and the Linden refinery in the background.

Janet D with a crane barge passes here in front of a lower Manhattan, and a reprise of those cranes.

Brian Nicholas here brings DS159 eastbound for a refill.

Ellen McAllister weaves between KVK vessels on its way to a job.

Gulf Coast transits the KVK in front of Sailors Snug Harbor, with cranes at Caddells defining points in the western sky.

And to close, it’s Calusa Coast with barge Delaware, recently returned from five or so years in the Great Lakes.   Note the Statue, the south end of Ellis Island, and the Jersey City wall of buildings in the distance.

All photos, WVD.

Other Peoples Photos 84

Timo Pajunen took this photo back in 2010.  Here are my questions for you:  whose livery?  what mission?  what was McArthur‘s original mission?  I’ll answer at the end of the post.

Charles Ritchie took this.  Hawk YTL-153 has fine pedigree:   in 1941, she was built and launched in Pearl Harbor and was present during the attack.  Since 1980, she’s been based in Narragansett Bay, operated by Specialty Diving Services Inc.  Do I see this correctly that she’s being operated from a topside helm?   Here is Charles Ritchie’s project.

When I posted Brad Ickes’ photos a month back, I forgot to post the best shots of Cable Queen he had sent.  I hope this makes amends for my having misplaced them.

The other day I noticed Cable Queen is docked back at her usual spot, nestled in a corner just west of the Moran dock.

These days there are photos everywhere of the salvage of incorrectly-ballasted  RORO Golden Ray.  This structure, as I understand it, incorporates both a saw and a lift.  This photo and the next two come from Chris Roehrig.  These photos from gCaptain are stunning.   The yellow structure over the wreck is Versabar’s VB 10,000, a heavy lift vessel launched in 2010. 

Moving the deck barge around with portion of the wreck are Crosby tugs, Crosby Star, a 4200 hp boat, below and

to the left.  The real eye-catcher here is Kurt J Crosby, here alongside Crosby Leader.  Kurt J, according to the company website, packs a whopping 16500 hp!  Have a look at their photo of the 2000 build. Crobsy Leader, dwarfed and mostly obscured here, itself is rated at 15000 hp.  Seeing these behemoths at work would almost make a trip down there worthwhile.

Jack Ronalds sent along these photos from Strait of Canso.  It’s Calusa Coast and her

tank barge Delaware.  They’ve spent some years working on the Great Lakes and are now returning

to salt water.  They have returned to the sixth boro, where I photographed her 13 years ago, but I’ve not yet seen them this visit.  For a treasure trove of Jack Ronalds/marine traffic photos, click here.

Getting back to that first photo, MV McArthur began life in 1965 as NOAAS McArthur (S330).  She was decommissioned in 2003. In 2006 she was purchased by Blackwater USA (you’ve heard of them and their founder Eric Prince?) who offered it as a “warship for hire.”  In the murk, Blackwater USA morphed into a series of other private security businesses.  MV McArthur became Eaton while operated by Saracen International.  At last record, the Norfolk VA vessel flew the flag of Comoros and was called Maandeeq,  and since AIS showed her last in June 2019 in Bhavnagar district of Gujarat, India,  just north of Alang, I don’t think she’s chasing pirates anymore. 

For a crazy tangent, Gujarat is the 9th largest state in India by population.  At 9th place (of 34), it has a population greater than Italy, South Korea, Spain, Poland, etc.  It’s way larger than Canada, whose population is currently at 37 million.  India’s largest state by population, Uttar Pradesh,  is 200 million, which would make it the 8th largest country in the world by population, bigger than Russia, Mexico, Japan, etc . . .   But I digress.

Many thanks to Timo, Charles, Brad, Chris, and Jack for sharing these photos.

Related:  If you’ve not yet read Chris Maag’s story on NY sixth boro shipping, you can read it here, and enjoy the photos/video by Chris Pedota as well.

 

 

Virtual Erie Canal 1W: Lake Erie to Lockport

Preface: The title 1W indicates this is a west-to-east trip, almost 200 miles between Lake Erie and the cut into Onondaga Lake, not far from Three Rivers, where previously we left the Erie and headed north on the Oswego.  Many smaller recreational boats traveling between the Lakes and the Atlantic follow this west-to-east via Lockport route to avoid using the Welland Canal. Click here for regulations regarding smaller craft in the Welland Canal, considered one section on the Saint Lawrence Seaway and entirely in Canada.

I have to be frank; I’ve traveled this part of the Erie Canal much less frequently than the portion we just finished, and most of my photos are from 2014, so if you’ve been through here more recently and stuff has changed, please update me.  Also, I’ve not been on the water between Black Rock Lock and Pendleton NY.  There may be gaps, omissions of key features in this part of the guide.

That being said, thanks for booking another trip. Virtual trips can magically re-position you; even time travel is possible.  For food, drinks, or a more comfortable pillow, though, you’re on your own.  Remember, doubleclick on a photo to enlarge it.

 

Welcome to Lake Erie, the lake with the seiches,

now looking east toward Buffalo. The Canal is named for this body of water.  It could have been named the DeWitt Clinton Canal, the New York Canal, or anything else.  But mercifully it was not.  “Erie” is an abridged name for a Haudenosaunee people whose more complete appellation was closer to “Erieehronon,” meaning people of the cat, possibly a long-tailed cat.  I add as much info as I do about First Peoples because so many places bear references,e.g., Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lackawanna, Tonawanda, Niagara . . . etc.

 

If we were heading west, here‘s some of what we’d see.  But the rainbow attracts us to look east.  See the white structures on the horizon near the center of the photo?

That’s Steel Winds, an energy project built on a former brownfield, technically in Lackawanna,  where part of the Bethlehem Steel plant was once located.

Grain elevators were invented in Buffalo and made the city rich, a past place of the future.  Since 1959 when grain shipments out of the midwest began to bypass the city via the Welland Canal and the St. Lawrence Seaway to anywhere in the watery parts of the globe, much of this infrastructure was left empty, left to be reimagined.  Oh . . . that white vessel shrunk by the elevators of “silo city . . .”  yes, that’s SS Columbia, a project that plans to bring this steam vessel to the Hudson River.

Some elevators still operate;  not far from the General Foods/Gold Medal Tower is the plant where to this day, as your nose will tell you, they make Cheerios and other breakfast cereals.  I learned this by walking there one day and smelling, Cheerios. Another day, it was clearly Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Buffalo has a lot of interesting architecture, but the Liberty Building, one of my favorites, is germane to our virtual tour;  twin Statue of Liberty replicas on the roof face one east toward the eastern terminus of the Erie Canal and one west toward the Great Lakes.  Buffalo is a boom and bust city of the canal, reflected by its population size:  1820–2k people, 1850–40k,  1900–350k,  1950–580k, and now declining and approaching 250k.  There really is so much in Buffalo, which in 1900 was the eighth largest city in the US;  today it’s around #50.

Of course, we’re getting ahead of the history here;  none of this would have happened if Buffalo had not become the original “western gate” of the Erie Canal, aka the back door of the Atlantic.  Things could have turned out differently if a town to the north had been chosen.

Everyone knows about “wedding of the waters,” but I want this ceremony, performed on Seneca Chief‘s return to Buffalo, to be as well-known.  One of the confusing aspects of historical research is that names like Seneca Chief get adopted widely, as with this steamboat not long afterward.  As an aside, given what DeWitt Clinton expressed about the Iroquois, of which the Seneca were part, I’m puzzled by this choice of name, unless by that time the name of the Lake had already been divorced from the people.

Calusa Coast, once a regular in the sixth boro, now works the Great Lakes.  Here she passes Buffalo’s Erie Basin and heads for the Black Rock Lock, an entry point for our eventual turn east into the Erie Canal.

The western terminus of the Erie is in the Tonawandas.  Remember my caveat about my relative unfamiliarity with this part of the state, relative to the other side of the state.  Here‘s a summary of some attractions of the area, although even I know they’ve skipped the carousel museum, the Wurlitzers, and the Richardson boatyard.  At the beginning of the boating season, new Richardson boat owners would take part in a mass “sailaway” transiting the canal to salt water, as shown in this delightful video from 1935.  A 1941 Richardson docked alongside the canal back in 2014.

Pendleton is a few miles east, and then a bit farther, it’s the deep cut,

one of the hardest sections of the canal to dig, and it was dug before 1825, i.e., without materials and technology available for the Barge Canal.  As soon as this part of the canal opened in 1825, the Seneca Chief procession departed for New York City. More on the rubble removed here later.

 

See the locks ahead, beyond Lockport’s “big bridge,” which should be called the wide bridge.

 

Once east of the big bridge, we are at locks E-35 and E-34.

We started this leg of the trip on Lake Erie, currently above average height, . . . at 570′ or so above sea level.

We’ll end this post here, above E-35, heading east.  Using the distance table from part 1 of this series, Syracuse lies 146 miles ahead and at 370′ above sea level, and Waterford, 319 miles . . . and 15′.

All color photos by Will Van Dorp, unless otherwise stated.

 

CB 2019 H

Today’s post takes us from Port Colborne to Cleveland.

I’ll do another post about the MRC yard later.  You can click here to see what these two looked like last year.

Algorail is nearly gone and work has already begun on Algoway.

At the Buffalo breakwater, Kathy Lynn was standing by with barge to receive concrete rubble, I think.

NACC Argonaut departs the Buffalo River for Bath, ON.

Manitoulin heads west.

Paul L. Luedtke tows scow #70. Is that Ashtabula in the background?

GL Cleveland assists barge Delaware out of the Cuyahoga…

until Calusa Coast clears the RR bridge and Cleveland returns to the barn.

 

 

All photos Will Van Dorp

 

Freshwater Tugs 8

I’m back near the sixth boro now and have photos for at least through early October, at which time I leave on another gallivant.

So here’s step one in catching up.  Up the meandering Cuyahoga, here are Iowa (1915) and Oklahoma (1913);  these boats were built to work and last.

 

The vintage GL tugs may just be replaced for the next century by this design:  Cleveland, launched less than six months ago . . . 2017.

Click here for a recent article on Cleveland.

Cleveland in this series was doing assist for 610′ x 78′ sand barge Ashtabula powered by 142′ tug Defiance. 

Here’s Elizabeth Anna in the Lake Erie port on Erie PA.

Elizabeth Anna (ex-Bear) last appeared on this blog here.

In the entrance to the old Buffalo River, here’s Daniel Joncaire II, a NYPA tug

launched in late 2015 by Great Lakes Shipyard in Cleveland. NYPA uses the tug for ice boom installations near its hydropower units on the Niagara River. I’m curious now about Niagara Queen II and William H. Latham. 

I’ve always had misgivings about my series title “freshwater tugs” and here’s a good illustration why:  Calusa Coast–here with Kirby barge Delaware–was until a few years ago a regular in the saltwater and brackish , in and out of the sixth boro.   Here she is in the Niagara River headed for Black Rock.

Beyond her stern here is the combination Buffalo Intake Crib Lighthouse. 

And to close out today’s post, it’s Sarah Andrie, another tug that’s made the transition from saltwater to fresh . . . the former Caribe Service.

She’s making her way here upstream into Lake Erie from the Welland Canal.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Go West 10

Daylight on leg 10 saw us near the Ontario, Ohio, and Michigan border, where we met GL Ostrander pushing Integrity.

We pass the abandoned amusement park at Bois Blanc,

Canadian Coast Guard’s Caribou Isle,

and ferry Ste. Claire moving cars between the Amherstburg, ON and Bob-lo “island marina community.”

Here’s the channel looking south.

Furuholmen heads north to Sarnia,

and our vessel’s twin, Grande Caribe, meets up in Wyandotte.

 

Meanwhile traffic continues down bound–like Sam Laud and John D. Leitch.

 

This post closes out with a regular down in the sixth boro . . . Calusa Coast pushing Delaware.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

 

Random Tugs 150

Following up from yesterday’s post . . . tug Chesapeake is larger, more powerful than the other Patapsco-class tugs.  It also has more windows in the wheelhouse.  In addition, the photos of Chesapeake and Susquehanna were taken in Baltimore and Savannah, resp.; not in NYC’s sixth boro as were the others.

For today I’ll start with a mystery tug, one I’ve not found any info on.

I’d love to know more.

Also, in Baltimore, it’s Annabelle Dorothy Moran.

Click here to see my first shots of Annabelle almost three years ago as she sailed underneath the Brooklyn Bridge.

And another boat I know nothing about . . . McL?

Donal G. McAllister is Baltimore’s McAllister ex-YTB.

New England Coast is another boat I’d never seen before . . . docked here at the Dann Marine base in Chesapeake City, MD.

And approaching Chesapeake City from the south, it’s Calusa Coast, a frequent visitor to the sixth boro. I photographed her first here, over eight years ago.

 

 

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

Rock Juice 2

It surprises me sometimes what titles I’ve not re-used.  This blog has little grand design;  I choose to let to drift serendipitously according to what I see or what you choose to share, and I am grateful to you all for sending along photos and suggestions.  Rock Juice the title came out of a conversation some time back with one of you;  thanks and I think you know who you are.  Here was the first in the series.

Diane B pushes a load of it in John Blanche.

Magothy . . . and  . . .

and I missed the barge info.

Dory and Port Chester . . . .  And notice just forward of Dory‘s wheelhouse, it’s

Navigator . . . doing something at an oil dock.

Ditto Mary H, over between the Empire State Building and BW Kronborg.

Ditto Kimberly Poling.

And McKinley Sea . . . with the icicle hanging from a scupper hole as evidence that oil is going for heat.

Last one for now . . . Calusa Coast getting ready to hook up to a barge to take . .  well . . . down the coast.

All photos yesterday by Will Van Dorp, who has to run.