Retro Sixth Boro 54

This month I’ve done one retro October 2012 post on the Chesapeake schooner race . . . and am doing this one at the end of the month rather than the beginning, for reasons that will soon be apparent.

On the 31st a decade ago, I made my way down to Front Street Staten Island to see what the big storm had wrought.  It was too shocked to take more photos.

John B. Caddell, waiting to make her way to new owners in Africa, had been surged ashore, to her stormy aftermath, and then to her demise.

The Upper Bay had an eerie emptiness that

looked like this on AIS.

Barbara, a friend on Rockaway took this aftermath photo of what had looked like

this only hours before.  Note the boardwalk supports above with what they had supported below.

I’d been on the highway getting home hours before Sandy hit. I documented months of aftermath of stormy Sandy  in various areas around the sixth boro, but the post that follows up on John B. Caddell a week later can be seen here.

And since this retrospective post has focused on a weather event, October 20, 2012 saw fog as dense as anything we saw last week here.  Somewhere in that water vapor is a small-town-sized population aboard Celebrity Summit;  click on the latter link for more photos of Summit‘s passage.

All photos, WVD, taken in October 2012.

Random Ships 71

How’s your Greek?

Cape Taft, here with Miriam Moran, has been in the boro before.

Stolt Ocelot appears on the blog for the first time, as

 Fivelborg and Maria G. await dock activity.

Here’s USNS Sisler dug in before she departed for sea trials.

Celebrity Summit is currently in port  . . . for enough time to debark one set and embark the next set of passengers.

Acrux C followed by Mary Turecamo and  . . . Helen Laraway.

Cape Ann (T-AK-509),is still in the East River, as is Cape Avinoff (AK-5013),  pictured here, here, and here.

Bright Ocean 3 (III) is headed for Turkey, after having made a stop on the Delaware River.

Weco Josefine is currently Egypt bound.

All photos since the start of summer by Will Van Dorp, but one of the photos was not taken in the sixth boro.  Any ideas which?

Unrelated but current:  yesterday the USACE tender Hudson was reefed off Fire Island.  You can see three photos I took here, and the press release from the USACE here.  The press release answers a question I long had:  where was it built.  The answer is Paasch Marine Services on the Delaware River.  This is itself confusing, because Hudson is not listed as being built in Paasch Marine, which was in Erie PA and did build boats.  There is a Pasch Marine on the Delaware River (actually in Easton PA–opposite side of the state from Erie PA) but I don’t know that they ever built boats there.    Hmmm.

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Sixth Boro Summer

I’ve written about summertime and about summertime blues–about beating them.  But since you can’t ever step into the same river twice, or gallivant in the same primordial first boro, here’s the 2016 version of trying to capture the sixth boro with a camera on a hot summer weekend afternoon, looking for shade–any shade will do– as much as looking for novel compositions.

These days odd juxtapositions can be found on west Manhattan piers and

beyond, like Eagle and the fast bird and Loveland Island with a pilot on board and some folks gathered on the starboard bridge wing .  For a post I did last year with close-ups of details of USCGC Eagle AND for a book I highly recommend reading about her appropriate by the US post-WW2, click here.  Speaking of piers, here’s an interesting article on the engineering and construction of Pier 57.

Or come for a tour on Janet D Cruises . . .

with four sails set.

Long Beach comes to Bayonne along with a Celebrity ship and a PWC . . . pesky workless canoe?

Flagship Ivy clings for a spell to the bottom over by the VZ Bridge.

Margaret Moran heads for the next job–or the yard, with Queens’ current and future tallest buildings in the background,

while YP 704 sails past Governors Island, which has sprouted some new hillocks frequented by lots of people.

Joan Turecamo exits the Buttermilk west with a light (?) dry bulk barge Montville, which probably recently carried coal.

All photos Sunday by Will Van Dorp.  for some contrast, see this winter set and this.   More of the summer selects, tomorrow.

 

Bridges 3

This gateway to the sixth boro dazzles at dawn, with out traffic or with.

Know this ship?  You saw this funnel before in a foggy October post as well as in a sunny September post in the past twelve months.

Here are the specs for the 12-year-old vessel going under the almost 50-year-old bridge.

In the distance, that’s the Newark Bay Bridge, located  north of Ports Elizabeth and Newark.

Inbound . . .

outbound, and

closely monitored.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who finally watched Saturday Night Fever for the first time, because of the bridges scenes.  It turned out to be a much better movie than this non-discoing blogger ever imagined.  See it if you haven’t, for a throwback to Bay Ridge (mostly)  back in 1977 . . . which started with a president named Ford , new computers were Commodore PETs and Apple IIs, and the Concorde started to fly to NYC.

Fog 13

The glimpse I caught while crossing westbound on the Verrazano Bridge told me to head for Fort Wadsworth:  fog with defined geographical boundaries lay at least 175′ deep over the waters’ surface at the Narrows.  Once standing on the overlook at the fort, the stacks of  two vessels (l to r) Stuttgart Express and Celebrity Summit seemed not unlike the sails of two submarines, sub-fogs in this case.

Celebrity Summit was crawling forward bellowing like a lost bovine and

as it sank deeper, left a distinct wake.

When I say geographical boundaries, I mean dynamic ones, and they expanded upward as I watched.

Keeping watch over this shifting masses with me were the previously mentioned ‘scapegoats, the ones minding the grassroots, poison ivy roots,  . . . any sorts of roots on the slopes near the Fort.

After convincing the watchers that I was no more interested in their political predictions as in anyone else’s,  the spokesgoat suggested I follow Celebrity Summit‘s path to the stable, as he phrased it.

And this seemed as good a location as available.  Ongoing bellowings from the vessel confirmed my choice.

Celebrity Summit moves stern first into BCLCT.

The rising sun began to cut through the fog and project a golden sheen onto the low clouds lying on the waters of the Upper Bay.

Pegasus (last seen here last week) makes for the North River . . . taking the Celebrity Summit‘s bow.   Here’s a foto of Celebrity Summit sans fog and post-Irene.

Guiding Summit through much of her voyage through the fog is Laura K. Moran (I believe).

All fotos yesterday by Will Van Dorp.

Meanwhile in the Sixth Boro 4

Before dawn the day of the race, daily port activities carried on:  Atlantic Niyala awaited load shift in Red Hook.

Celebrity Summit arrived from sea for some port time here assisted by  Kimberly Turecamo (?).

Scott Turecamo awaited some rehab

at Caddell’s.

As passengers debarked to starboard, equipment received attention to port.  I’m not sure what all is happening over on the port side here.

Up at the Manhattan passenger terminal Veendam received Tuckahoe  attention to port as well as passengers transferred from ship to island.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who heads for the Roundup tomorrow.