Retro Sixth Boro 28

I hope you all enjoy looking at these retro posts as much as I do putting them together.  I’m seeing that 2010 was the year I started to gallivant extensively, so the division for July 2010 retrospective is part a is for local, and part b will be for away.

Count the boats in the photo below!  Greenland Sea is prominent, but in the distance, find a Staten Island ferry, QM2, Susan (?) Miller, a dredge operation where I see Rae, and a Reinauer tug (Ruth?) beyond that!  Greenland Sea is now on the hard in Houma LA, the SI ferries run regularly but with fewer passengers due to the covid catastophes, QM2 is in Southampton, the Miller boats are still busy, Rae is kept in reserve for special projects designed for a 46′ tug, navigation dredging is over for now, and the Reinauer tugs have proliferated and keep busy.

Navigation dredging has created deeper channels, and the Bayonne Bridge has been raised.  Miss Gill is now in Jacksonville FL, and GL 55, the dumper scow, is wherever work may require her.

The formerly-yellow submarine is located at the entrance to Coney Island Creek, a place I’ve not been to in almost a decade.

I never did identify the wrecks at the mouth of said Creek, which seemed then to have an abundance of blue-clawed crabs.

Jane A. Bouchard languishes along with the rest of the fleet, and Cape Cod, with one of the intra-port SSS barges here,  has moved to Philly, last I knew.

Barbara McAllister pushes B. No. 262 with an assist from Ron G.  Barbara has not been in the sixth boro in quite a while, the 262 is laid up, and Ron G has been sold south.

Cape Race arrives here in Atlantic Basin, with a much-changed lower Manhattan skyline.  The former fishing trawler/now expedition yacht is currently on the Elbe, south of Hamburg.

Margot still “keeps on pushing,” although I’ve not seen her down in the sixth boro of late.

And here, Patty Nolan passes a wreck–I’ve not yet identified it . . .  maybe you have–inside Sommerville Basin in coastal Queens. Patty Nolan has been on the hard a few years.

And here’s a photo taken exactly a decade ago today . . .  an unnamed houseboat being towed from Peekskill to Queens, not a view you see every day.  It’s Patty Nolan towing with gatelines.  Here and here she tows other houseboats.

All photos, WVD, who wishes everyone health and patience in this difficult time.  Also, these “retro sixth boro” posts take us back only one decade.  It’d be great to locate more photos of identifiable locations going back 50 or so years, the fifth dimension of time photos.

 

Always Fleet Week

That’s true along the Elizabeth River in Virgina.  Naval Station Norfolk always has a formidable array, like

LPD-24 USS Arlington,

T-ARC-7 USNS Zeus,

T-AKE-13 USNS Medgar Evers,

T-ESB-3 USNS Lewis B. Puller,

lots of patrols and a fence,

T-AKR-5063 USNS SS Cape May,

and its complement of barges.  Here’s more of a description.

 

Then, there’s the R class.

 

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who suggests taking a tour if you’re in the area.

 

Port of Belfast, ME

Belfast probably has fewer people than does my block in Queens, but it jam packed with character.  In fact, I wanted to move there after spending a single weekend there two years ago.  Here and here are some posts I did from there.

Many thanks to Tom Mann for these photos, taken in July 2015. Notable among vessels in port, the exquisite Cangarda.  Here’s a post I did on it five years ago. Click here for the truly unique Cangarda, built in 1901 and almost lost several times.

This is their 400-ton crane.

From l. to r., it’s Fournier Tractor and Taurus.  In case you didn’t click on all the links above, click here to see a photo I took of the Fournier Tractor a few years back, as well as a warning sign in case anyone thinks about usurping a parking spot in front of the Fournier Towing and Ship Service office.

Notice that the blue here matches the blue on the tug below, which happens to be the 1944 Capt. Mackintire of Eastport Port Authority.

I’m not sure who the current owner of Fort Point is.  She’s the 1970 YTB-809.

Cape Race is a frequent fixture of Atlantic Basin in Brooklyn.  Does anyone know what’s current with Wanderbird, which came into Long Island Sound about two weeks ago.  Wanderbird is a similar repurposed North Sea trawler . . . as an expedition yacht.

I can’t sign off without another photo of the steam yacht Cangarda, built at Pusey & Jones in 1901, originally for a lumber magnate in Manistee, Michigan, named Charles J. Canfield.

Again, many thanks to Tom Mann for these photos.

 

Whatzit 9

I could have called this “other peoples fotos,” but these are also quite unusual.  Foto below comes many thanks to John Watson.  According to John, it anchored off Bay Ridge for less than 12 hours yesterday to bunker.   The last time this blog touched on livestock of the bovine sort was the post Cows in CATS.  What I know about the vessel follows at the end of this post.

Foto below comes thanks to Capt. Stig Samuelsson.  Take your guesses and locate the info below.  I cropped Stig’s foto slightly to obscure a giveaway.

Finally, I put in this foto that I took on Sunday:  this is a classy little cabin cruiser out of New Jersey.  I posted a foto of it last year as well . ..   I have no idea about the name or manufacturer, but my guess is that it was built within a 30ish mile radius of the sixth boro.

Answers:  John’s foto shows Shorthorn Express;  as of this writing, it’s headed up Delaware Bay, probably to Wilmington.  And it’ll load cows for Turkey.  Anyone get fotos along the way to Wilmington?  Shipspotting offers a dozen fotos, including several showing the vessel–scrapped 20 years ago–that previously bore this name.  What’s clear on those fotos is the elaborate ventilation system needed to keep the “shorthorns” happy during the passage.

Stig’s foto shows Harry, a tug built in 1887 as steam tug Stora Korsnäs 1.  According to Stig, Stora Korsnäs 1 was typical of tugs used to tow lumber along the coasts of northern Sweden.   She currently runs as a museum with a volunteer crew.  If you can’t read this, you can at least look at fotos.  It’s based halfway between Oslo and Goteborg and right across the water from the northern tip of Denmark.  Click here for a youtube of Harry underway.

Sad news:  Lady Jane MAY be not long for this world.

 Lady Jane is 1963-Belgium built North Sea trawler looking a lot like Wanderbird and Cape Race.  Tim Zim (whom I met when he visited the sixth boro a half year ago … see seventh foto here)  has been restoring her  for seven years, but recently hauled her and learned the hull was more corroded than he had thought.    He wants to give up . . . he says in the post.  But, I’m wondering if you could get a second opinion.   A friend who read Tim’s July 25, 2011 post recalled that LV-118 aka Lightship Overfalls was in worse condition and was brought back.   Details in that link about the “restoration miracle.”  Please drop Tim an email with encouragement and (even better) technical advice.

Wanderbird

Whatzit in this study?  Where is this library?  (Note:  Doubleclick enlarges most fotos.)

It depends.  Monday under a sky itching to rain the library was here as this vessel wandered

in through Hell Gate, and made her way between

Gracie Mansion and Astoria and then past

Roosevelt Island and Upper Bay-bound on the

East River, under the 59th Street Bridge with Padre Island and a mysterious black bird in pursuit.

Meet Tim Zim, master of Lady Jane, about 3000 miles from homeport  himself.  Tim, admiring the wheelhouse,  is guest aboard Wanderbird.

Until she “repositions” in the Caribbean, taking aforementioned blue macaw along, Wanderbird rests here, rafted up with Cape Race, a vessel of similar lines.  Coincidentally, all three North Sea trawlers–Wanderbird, Cape Race, and Lady Jane–launched in 1963 …. though in Netherlands, Canada, and Belgium, respectively.    Hmmm . . .  I know some very good folks launched in 1963 also, an auspicious year for launchings.

Also nearby,  for the time being,  are this Cunard vessel,

Clipper City, and Shearwater, all previous mentioned in this blog.

More on Wanderbird soon.  Do check this link for beauty shots AND historical fotos of Wanderbird.  I love the red sails.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated but important:  Click here for the agenda for MWA‘s Waterfront Conference.  Lower Manhattan Tuesday, Nov 30 from 8 am until 7 pm.  More than 100 speakers in the following formats:   2 plenary sessions, 15 breakout sessions, and 2 boat tours.     Click here for background on the MWA.   See you there.

Atlantic Basin 1

(Back in New York)  You’ve seen this before here.  No, it’s not named for a boat competition, as someone suggested to me yesterday.  The paint is spiffied up, but

imagine my surprise and delight when

Cape Race glided into Atlantic Basin yesterday under

her own power, accompanied by music from her own Cat 3512.

Ah joy!  Eggs hatch (or make delicious souffles), apples ripen, oysters open, bread rises, and projects evolve.  Click here and here for festivities in Atlantic Basin last year, and come

check out this calendar of July events planned there this month and next, including Underwater New York (Check out their “An Oral history of Atlantis“)  and a movie about Poppa Neutrino.

First five fotos by Will Van Dorp.  Composite by Carolina Salguero.  By the way, if you do Facebook, you could befriend Mary Whalen, the 613-ton ambassador (See post for 2/20/2008).

Tangentially related and from the other side of the continent, check out these blog posts (thanks to Tom Larkin)  on

Log broncs (a variation on truckable tugs)

Seattle’s Tug race

A collage of wooden boats and other delights.

Morris Canal Tugs 2

For info on where the canal is, see this post from last year.  The distant red tug you see in that link is the 1907 Pegasus recently in drydock but now getting springtime service.  I visited this area of Jersey City and posted fotos a year ago here.

So yesterday seemed ripe for a revisit–as well as an ideal time to help with the springtime chores on Pegasus.  Here, from near to far are Little G, Sandy G, Katherine G (featured here), Pegasus, and a bit of Patriotic.

In the same order, this shows a closer view of Little G, and

as seen from Pegasus,  this view of Patriotic as

well as this one.

Shooting back toward the east, a classic 43-footer,  Linda G, and

Annie G II  (whom I’d imagine as Littlest G) .  That’s the lower Manhattan skyline in the background, exactly the location from which I shot the first foto in the first link of this post.

Here’s Cape Race, featured here, still on the south side of the Canal.

Some details on these:

Sandy G (1962), Katherine G (1981), Patriotic (1937, a Bushey formerly known as Rainbow), Linda G (1943), and Annie G II (2000).  Cape Race is Quebec-built, 1963.

All fotos, Will Van Dorp.

Cape Race Mystery Solved

I had something else planned for today, but thanks to Richard’s comment, I couldn’t contain myself if I don’t post this link:  here’s the story of Cape Race.  I love the sails on that collage;  maybe a kite could be added.

Also this from Joel, who says he can “give  positive, first-hand confirmation that the Cape Race was moored in Newtown Creek for a year or so (at least) around ’05ish. It was tied up (partially to trees, as I recall) bow-in, starboard side to on the Brooklyn side just before the Pulaski Bridge.”  He adds he would “observe people out on deck in lawn chairs enjoying  frosty adult beverages on a nice late afternoon during the summer. They’d smile, wave and raise their bottles or cans to us as we [work boats] slid past the North Brooklyn Riviera!”

Richard and Joel, thanks.  I think Tim will propose you for knighthood.  And which order would that be?

Photos, WVD.

Morris Canal Mysteries 3

For “outatowners,” the Morris Canal was an energy artery in the age of coal.  A remnant of its eastern end is the inlet just south of the Colgate Clock in Jersey City (cropped out to the right below) and right across the North River aka Hudson from Battery Park City.  I’ve posted fotos from the Canal and an ill-fated raft project called Abora here quite some time ago.  I say ill-fated because the expedition didn”t succeed in crossing although all were rescued.

The Canal today serves as a marina but with some unusual winter inhabitants, like migratory birds.  Cape Race, featured here once before, has some of the lines of the activist vessel formerly known as Westra.

I know I read something about this vessel somewhere recently, but my filing system prevents me from locating that paper  now.  Anyone know more info?

Who is Cape Race?  If it had a voice, what stories of  hard work and variable waters might it tell?  With some flaking paint, the name actually reads as “CAFE PACE,” a soothing thought to file away for stress days.

And Wallaby, also in the Canal.

If I penned folk songs, this vessel looking misplaced here from downeast Maine or the Canadian Maritimes might inspire rollicking verses about emerging from fog into a metropolis perched on cliffs.  And I’d travel the dirt roads and byways singing for peanuts in legion halls, bars, canal fests, and church basements.  For now, fellow-gallivanters and I adventure whenever possible across ill-defined boundaries to haunt the waterfront for blog fotos and sometimes just to ask questions like Why Wallaby?  Why here?

Bossanova, maybe ex-Shady Lady, might be classified as a pleasure workboat. Aka “pleasure at work boat” or something?

Where has this vessel danced, rocked, roamed?

For now, no answers, but hope you enjoyed the fotos.

Tomorrow, if the sun rises, I’ll post about tugs in the Morris.

Cape Race

Cape Race was at Liberty Landing in Jersey City last Saturday and maybe still is. It’s a side trawler like the vessel Cape Sable I saw years ago in Lunenburg at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. Cape Sable–click here–was Dutch built; here’s background for the type, but I’m still curious about Cape Race. Might it be this one in the ad? Great name. Filling up the diesel tank at current prices would cost about . . . $50k!

 

Notice Lower Manhattan in the background with the silvery 17 State Street.

 

Below is a slightly smaller stern trawler hauled out on Staten Island last winter.

 

And since we’re on fish, here’s an even smaller stern trawler anchored in the Merrimack River in Newburyport, Massachusetts, my old river.

 

All photos by will Van Dorp.