Riverbanks 11

Here are previous riverbanks posts, although for some inexplicable reason, they are not indexed in order.

Name the riverbank in the image below?  

Above and below, that’s Manhattan, as seen from about 30 miles out.  It would take another four hours before we passed the 59th Street Bridge.  The darker image in the center of the photo below is Vane’s Brooklyn, which we were following.

The sunset colors below in the photo below taken about an hour after the top photo were stunning.  

Three hours later we approached the Hell Gate bridges.  See Thomas D. Witte hidden in the lights?

Passing the northern tip of Roosevelt Island, the refurbished lighthouse looked like this, compared with

this image of the very same lighthouse I’d taken only eight days earlier.  The Nellie Bly “faces” tribute there is worth seeing by day.  The main channel passes to the left in the photo below.

Here is said 59th Street Bridge looking at the Graduate Hotel (No, that’s not a 1967 movie reference.) and some buildings of Cornell Tech.

New on this bank of Manhattan are the American Copper Buildings, here 

framing a seasonally-lit Empire State Building . . . ESB.  That belt joining the two . . . that houses a swimming pool.

The repurposed Havermeyer Sugar building has just added a new but retro sign, alluding to the former enterprise of the building.

Behold the 120-year-old Williamsburg Bridge 

and then eventually the 140-year-old Brooklyn Bridge. The 113-year-old Manhattan Bridge is in between the two. 

After rounding the “horn,” we headed up the North River for the Hudson, passing other new buildings framing the ESB. This twisting pair is called The Eleventh. The ghostly white tower is the Bank of America Tower, and below it is IAC.

Notice a pattern here in framing the ESB?  The “web” of course is The Vessel, a structure whose origins by water I posted about here and here.

Looking toward the Manhattan side of the GW Bridge, that red speck at its base is the “little red lighthouse” at Jeffreys Point made obsolete by the GW itself. 

As down broke, we were north of Poughkeepsie, breaking ice and about to turn into the Rondout. 

All photos, WVD, who hopes you’ve enjoyed this phantasmagorical sequence of the five boros as seen from  the sixth.

 

Old Years 2022

I’m back and just in time for the last day of the year, which –as explained in previous years— in my Dutch tradition is a reflection day, a time to if not assess then at least recall some of the sights of the past 12 months.  A photo-driven blog makes that simultaneously easy and hard;  easy because there’s a photographic record and not easy because there’s such an extensive photographic record to sift though.

A word about this set of photos:  these are some “seconds” that did not make the final cut for my 2023 tugster calendar.  The actual calendars are still available if you’ve not ordered one;  find the order info here. I’m ordering a bunch myself. 

One windy day last January I caught a Pilot No 1–the old New York–doing drills under the VZ Bridge.  Just recently I met one of the engineers on that boat, a person with epic stories about the sixth boro.

A warm day in February, I caught JRT Moran assisting QM2 into her Red Hook berth. 

March I spent a delightful day on Douglas B. Mackie observing the water side of a Jersey shore beach replenishment project, thanks to the hard-working folks at GLDD. 

April . . .  I caught Jane McAllister heading out;  correct if I’m wrong, but my sense is that soon afterward she made her way down to South America to join the expanding ranks of US-built tugs working on various projects on the south side of the Caribbean. 

As a member of the Canal Society of NYS, I had the opportunity to see Urger up close and sun-warmed on the bank of the Oswego in Lysander NY. 

A clutch of Centerline tugboats waited for their next assignment at the base just east of the Bayonne Bridge.   Note the fully foliated trees beyond them along the KVK.

From the humid heat of western Louisiana and onto the Gulf of Mexico, Legs III–shown 

here spudded up just east of SW Pass, afforded a memorable journey on its way up to the sixth boro.  Thx, Seth. 

Back in the boro, later in August, a Space X rocket recovery boat named Bob–for an astronaut– came through the sixth boro.  More on Bob–the astronaut–here. 

In September, I finally got to my first ever Gloucester schooner race, thanks to Rick Miles of Artemis, the sailboat and not the rocket. 

Icebreaker Polar Circle was in the boro a few days in September as well.  Now it’s up in Canada, one hopes doing what icebreakers are intended to do. US naval logistics vessel Cape Wrath is at the dock in Baltimore ready and waiting a logistics assignment. 

Ticonderoga certainly and Apache possibly are beyond their time working and waiting.  I believe Ticonderoga is at the scrappers in Brownsville. 

Passing the UN building on the East River, veteran Mulberry is currently out of the army and working in the private sector.  I’ve a request:  for some time I’ve seen a tug marked as Scholarie working the waters west of the Cape Cod Canal;  a photo suggested it might be called Schoharie. Anyone help out?

And finally, a photo taken just two days ago while passing through the sixth boro during what can hardly be called “cover of darkness” it’s Capt Joseph E. Pearce on its way to a shipyard on the mighty Rondout to pick up some custom fabrication for a Boston enterprise. Many thanks to the Stasinos brothers for the opportunity.

I’d be remiss in ending this post and this year without mentioning lost friends, preserving a memory of their importance to me personally . . .  Bonnie of frogma–first ever to comment of this blog so many years ago and a companion in many adventures– and Mageb, whose so frequent comments here I already miss. 

I plan to post tomorrow, although I may miss my high noon post time because I hope to post whatever best sunrise 2023 photos I can capture in the morning.  

Happy, safe, and prosperous new year to you all.  I’m posting early today because I want my readers who live much much farther east than the sixth boro to get these wishes before their new trip around the sun begins. Bonne annee!  Gelukkig nieuwjaar!

Other Peoples Photos 99

I could call this “from the Astorian cliffs high above the East River near Hell Gate” . . . photos by Pete Ludlow.

Remember this post from January . . . ?

Here are shots from the starboard side, and with all those tanks, I’d say this confirms that that is a hyperbaric chamber getting moved by Osprey. 

How about this one . . . do you recognize the lines of Bridgeport, the Gateway tug?  Or maybe Dragon Lady?

She’s now a Mohawk Northeast Inc boat although still called Bridgeport. The fleet livery you may recall from Swift in these classic Bernie Ente photos from far too long ago . . . .  You are missed, Bernie. 

This boat I’ve not seen before, although this photo is from about a month ago.  Know the buff and green colors?

It’s Stasinos Marine’s Capt. Joseph E. Pearce, the 150′ offshore supply ship, here westbound on the East (River) Strait.

Many thanks to Pete for use of these photos, showing a new angle on the sixth boro, along with fabulous perspective on the cliffs of Manhattan…