Retro Sixth Boro 40 A

Happy August 2021.  And “Wow!”  That is almost always my reaction when I jump back a decade into the archives.  This riveted tug  was 83 years old when I took this photo, and I looked at that deep rounded icebreaker hull and imagined it would go on working forever.  Now it’s 93 years old, and mortality is nipping at the heels of this Canal tug and all the Canal tugs.  It and they may not be around 10 years from now.  Of course, neither might I.  She was built by Buffalo Marine Shipbuilding in 1927-28, and originally equipped with a John W. Sullivan steam engine.  Her stack was hinged so that it could be lowered for bridges. She’s 77′ by 19.5′.  If I read the archives right, Governor Cleveland is three feet shorter;  I’d always assumed they were twins.

The 1958 Blount-built green tug in the foreground has changed hands several times in the past decade;  it may be Bay Star of Port Washington now, but I’ve not seen it in more than half a decade.

The 1998 container ship was last recorded as in Aliaga Turkey in 2017, which leads me to suppose this 3802 teu has been scrapped. 

I’ve seen these East River based float planes several times recently, but I’ve not been back to their “field” in the East River in a while.   It is pricey but no doubt memorable . . . fun to travel somewhere in one of these. Anyone report having done it?  I don’t know which company then flew the red planes.

NYK Constellation, a 2007 4900 teu vessel, is currently at anchor off Vancouver, but has been renamed Tell T (Erase some of the letters of “constellation”).  That “erasure renaming” suggests it’s bound for the scrappers.

Here’s Chandra B‘s predecessor, doing then what Chandra B does now.  It even has the same crew.

I’ve heard that Ace was being converted into something . . . . what it a floating cocktail dispenser?  Seriously . . . I have some such recollection due to a query I got a few years back.  Well . . . there are orange juice tankers, so why not a floating frozen margarita or daiquiri truck boat? Can anyone provide an update on this project?  What paint scheme/name would immediately scream out “slushy float”.

 

I’ve not seen Iron Wolf out in the harbor, although I might have seen it tied up over at Claremont.

Pegasus then had no upper wheelhouse, and here it was pushing the elusive Michael Cosgrove, a 1960 Blount vessel that Charon drives for some on a one-way trip to a Potter’s Field.  

The 2000 4500 hp Vernon C has recently gotten new life as Mackenzie Rose. 

And finally . . . 2011 saw this combo do quite the tour . . . the 1907 Pegasus with the 1914 Lehigh Valley 79 alongside.  If you’ve never visited the 79, make an effort to get to it and be prepared for a treat.  Pegasus met the scrapper this past spring.

All photos, first half of August 2011, WVD.

I hope you enjoy these monthly journeys to the past as much as I do.   And to satisfy my own curiosity, I looked up the first post in the Retro Sixth Boro series. . . .

Retro Sixth Boro 24 A

March 2020 has arrived, and when I brushed the cobwebs away from the March 2010 archives, I discovered I took a lot of interesting photos that month, enough to do two posts from the 2010 March set.

Let’s start with the quirky Capt. Log, captained by the friendliest person I know in the sixth boro.  I rode along on the 63′ tanker for this story.

A fleetmate of Stena Perros , Stena Primorsk, is currently anchored off Long Beach NY.  Perros is off Santos Brasil today, 2020.  Ships are designed to travel the largest part of the planet.

Firefighter was still in service 10 years ago;  now it’s a museum in Greenport NY.  After the hauling out in this post, she was repainted in her original white/black colors.

MOL Innovation is escorted in by the indefatigable Ellen McAllister.  At 961′ loa, Innovation is more than 300′ shorter than the largest container ships calling in the sixth boro these days, and I suspect the 1996 build has been scrapped.

Back in 2010, I was not using AIS, but as I drove my car over the VZ Bridge on my way to work one morning, I noticed it entering the boro;  I was very happy that I was driving to work early that day;  I got the photos and still made it to work on time.  THAT is the logic of going to work earlier than necessary, and (almost) always carrying a camera.   Now I’m sorry to report the 1995 Jumbo Spirit is aground in a scrapping yard in Aliağa.

Maersk Wisconsin, a 2000 build, has also been scrapped.   Note the Humvees being transported.

McAllister Brothers is a 1958 Jakobson product;  I believe she’s laid up in the McAllister Staten Island yard.

Eagle Service is now Genesis Eagle.  Horizon Discovery … in the distance, she’s also been scrapped in Texas. Note the different Manhattan skyline, only a decade ago.

More soon.  All photos in March 2010 by WVD, who now needs to wash the cobwebs off.  And since learning that Jumbo Spirit has been scrapped, I decided I need one more glance.

Retro Sixth Boro 11

My rules for this series:  all photos need to have come from the month in focus but exactly 10 years earlier.  It’s a good way to notice change.

Take Capt. Log.  I used to love seeing that boat, now long scrapped.  I have photos of her as a heap of scrap pieces and have never posted them.  I’m guessing the Chandra B crew are happy to have that new boat, but Capt. Log was such a unique sight.

Baltic Sea . . .   I’d love to see a current photo of her from Nigeria.  See more of her departed K-Sea fleet mates here.  Sunny Express is now Minerva Lydia, and still working, I think.

Taurus has moved to the Delaware River and has some splotches of purple a la Hays.

Volunteer has been scrapped.

The orange June K is now the blue Sarah Ann . . . .   I still miss that color….

Charles Oxman is no longer in service . . .  I last saw her here in 2016.

APL Egypt used to be a regular here, and of course John B. Caddell . . .had only a few years left at this point before getting cut up.  For a “what’s left . . .” of John B., click here and scroll.

I’m not saying everything is gone or has changed.  Walker and Salvor still work here and –to the untrained eye–look exactly as they did a decade ago, even though these days from any distance, I  can’t tell the distance between Atlantic Salvor and Atlantic Enterprise.  And those crewing on these two vessels, I can’t tell if anyone working then on each boat still does. For Walker, it’s very likely it’s an entirely new crew.

I hope you enjoyed this glance back.

All photos in February 2009 by Will Van Dorp.

 

Chandra B

You can call this “Capt. Log gone;  Chandra B arrived.”  Log out or log off . . . might work also.  Anyone know if Capt. Log, launched 1979 and retired at 0000 hrs on 1/1/15,  has sold and if so to whom?  Click here for a Professional Mariner article  on the vessel.

taken September 2013

But the real story here is that a new appropriate-sized double-hulled tanker has taken her place in the sixth boro. Welcome Chandra B.

Here she fuels up

Positive Carry, a Feadship,  on the Upper Bay.

Many thanks to Bjoern of New York Media Boat for these photos.

Three Hours on the Sound

This follows the post where I got to spend four times as long on Long Island Sound, a truly remarkable place.  The trip last week brought sights and surprises enough to warrant a repeat trip soon.  Here, a bait boat (?) passes a renowned Plum Island facility.  Back to this later in the post.

We’re headed to New London, the name of this RORO/WOWO.

Here Marjorie McAllister tows RTC 60 past Little Gull Light.

The only house on Hobbs Island in Groton needed to have a story, and I found one when I learned it was built by the Hays family, who wrote this book a friend gave me for my 45th birthday.

Here Mary Ellen departs New London for Orient Point, passing New London Light.

Amistad awaits, for sale at the dock.

Sea Jet  . . . takes on passengers for Block Island, a place I need to visit soon.

Since our destination was Blount for the wind farm vessel ribbon cutting, I wanted to get a photo of the newly launched replacement for Capt. Log.   Click here to see the plans and specs.

Chandra B, coming to the sixth boro soon.

At the dock just south of the I-95 bridge, it’s 100′ scalloper Chief, also for sale.

Electric Boat 2 does patrols around the pens,

which enclose a submarine.  Now look closely at the tail vertical stabilizer.  Now look at the one in this “news” story about a submarine getting stuck in Shinnecock Canal.  If not the same sub, then it’s at least the same type.

But if you start thinking about it, Dan’s is having way too much fun.  This story and this one are clearly boaxes, spoofs about boats.  When I heard the story about Shinecock, I thought maybe the Hamptons PD had gotten ahold of this one, which I spotted on the North fork just a few summer months ago.

Heading back across to Orient Point, you can line up New London Ledge Light with Race Rock Light, in the distance.   Tours for Ledge are available in the summer, when the ghost is around.

On a leg between Newport and Oyster Bay, it’s Knickerbocker, Wisconsin-built by a shipyard that started out doing fish tugs!  If you’re not familiar with fish tugs–of which Urger was one–go to Harvey Hadland‘s site.

Now here, back near Plum Island, is a surprise.  I figured it was a fishing party boat, but Justin suggested otherwise, and indeed he was right.  M. S. Shahan II IS a government boat, owned by Department of Homeland Security!!

And a final shot of Plum Island just before we return to the Orient Point dock, of course, it’s Cape Henlopen, former USS LST 510. 

 

By the way, I am still looking for folks with connection to this vessel as LST-510.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

 

Post Post-Panamax Plus

Seven and a half years ago I posted on APL President Truman and  even longer ago tugster did this on Bellavia.

Enjoy a few more pics of President Truman before learning its fate.  The photo below was taken in September 2007.

March 2009.

June 2009.  Dimensions on President Truman are 902′ x 129.’  As such, she could not traverse the current Panama Canal.   Teu capacity on Truman is about 4500.

In the foreground in the photo above, of course, that’s Capt. Log, now retired.  The assisting tugs are shown below.  McAllister Brothers nearer and  . . .I can’t identify . . . astern of her.

Here from May 2009 is sister vessel President Polk, assisted by Ellen McAllister and McAllister Sisters.

Both Polk and Truman are no more.  Nor are Adams and Jackson.  All dead.  Click here and scroll to page 41.  They were all renamed President 1, President 2 . . . and taken to Chittagong for scrapping.   I’d love to find photos of these vessels being scrapped.

Which brings us to this past weekend. And this vessel.  Teu capacity is over 8000.  Dimension 1095′ x 138.’  See the crewman standing watching on the bow . . .

Near the salt pile they pass, Zim Monaco 4250 teu.

Now that the process of raising the Bayonne Bridge has become, maybe some folks will imagine widening the KVK.  By the way, if you see little difference between Pacific Link and the Presidents, count the number of containers across the stern.

And an 8000 teu vessel, as appropriate as it may be for some locations, is “compact” compared to what already sails the oceans–20,000 and up–and what is being planned: 25,000 teus and up.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Related:  MSC Oscar

Size at LA-LB

 

 

Farewell to the Old

Vessels are just machines, but I prefer to anthropomorphize them, and thus miss them when they go.  On this transition day, I want to acknowledge some vessels that I’d come to enjoy seeing but will now transition away .

Scotty Sky is a Blount design, launched as L. G. Laduca in 1960.   I took the photo in January 2011.  Click here for a photo of this vessel operating on Lake Erie.

Patrick Sky is also a Blount design, launched as L. G. LaDuca II in 1966.  Click here for info on her other names and identities. Both were built for West Shore Fuel of Buffalo, NY, and named for the family of company president, Charles G. Laduca. Click here to see a 150′ version of these Blount boats.  Click here to see an interesting but totally unrelated and now scrapped vessel called West Shore . . . fueling a steamer with coal.

Capt. Log is the smallest and newest of the now timed-out single-hulled tankers in the sixth boro.  Click here for the recent Professional Mariner article on this vessel.

The three above vessels are still fully functional tonight, phased out notwithstanding.  Crow, seen here in a photo from September 2011, was scrapped this year in the same location where

Kristin Poling, another single-hulled tanker seen here in a photo I took in March 2010, was scrapped two years ago.  Click here for a number of the posts I did on Kristin.

Out with the old . . . in with the new, mostly because we have no choice, as time sprints on.

All photos here by Will Van dorp.

Adventures in Fueling 2

Here was 1.  Part of my inspiration here is Paul’s hawsepiper blog, sorted here by the topic of bunkering.  Here’s bowsprite’s POV on this.  Another part of the choice here–other than muggy August weather–is the appearance of this story in Professional Mariner, for which I took the photos.  This post uses some of the other photos I took that cold, dark morning a half year ago.

Behold a problem of having a dripping water hose too close to the fuel inlet.

The crew of Capt. Log topped off quite a few tanks that morning, and

printed out a ticket a the end of each job.

Here’s the first post I did on Capt. Log, whose days delivering fuel as a single-skin tanker are numbered.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Tankerin’ 4

I thought I had done a post called “pushing oil,” but I seem to have mis-remembered.  The closest I can find is here, and looking at this post, it’s clear to me how much I’ve learned since starting this blog.  Here’s another related one from last year.

Clearly . . . that’s not a tanker below.  Thanks to Ashley Hutto for this fine photo of Captain Zeke doing a job that might have been done by small tankers a few decades or less back.

Capt. Log is one such small tankers, and her life doing what she does so well is winding down.

Here two Moran tugs–Brendan and Catherine Turecamo, I think–push a tanker into a berth on the KVK.

Davis Sea . . . once this would have been done by a tanker.

Ditto Dace Reinauer.

Thanks to Ashley for the top photo.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

The Fuelman Cometh

With apologies to Eugene O’Neill for the title, I rode a fuel boat around the sixth boro today.  No matter that it was 4 degrees above zero (-15 degrees centigrade) this morning, vessels run with passengers and the “station” comes to the boats –some of them–in this realm.  And if there’s ice like the facial features of Capt Davy Jones on the receptacle, it has to

be moved so that fuel can flow.

Enjoy these cold photos.

Here’s the fuel boat.

More soon.  Til then, I can’t wait to look at these photo in July when the sweat is dripping off me and I’ll looking to chill.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.