St. Clair River Wooden Traffic

Why wood?   It’s been awhile since I asked that . . .  I suppose I should ask why so many wooden runabouts and cruisers suddenly swarmed in the St. Clair, but it was enjoyable.  But here is the event, and if you want to get into a wooden boat, as maybe I do, here’s a ticket.

Jeffery Dave is a Higgins . . . maybe early 1960s?

Miss Minneapolis IV.

Bette Noir heads into the Black River…

Names as I can read them . . . Tiger Lily, 

Cracker Jack and Cracker Jack (?),

just a beautiful classic,

and Nigel’s Launch.  Can anyone identify the manufacturer?

Don’t tell Nigel . . .

Let’s end it here with a SeaSkiff named The Old Lady.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who would be happy to attend this boat show.

Lots more of everything to come . . .

 

 

Small Craft 18

Here are previous posts in this series.

Below . . . could that almost be a dawn or twilight background?  And is that a canot a glace aka ice canoe –with oars instead of paddles–maybe?  Ice canoeing, some would say, is the real Canadian winter sport . . .

Well, no matter how much you squint, that is convincingly a small craft.  The 751′ Espada does a successful job of obscuring the small craft.    Without looking it up, I’d never have guessed that this Desgagnes tanker appeared in tugster here back in February 2013 as Stena Poseidon!!   This connection clarifies to me my often-felt question:  why do some ships call in the sixth boro once or a few times and then disappear forever?   They just get repainted, rebranded, and show up here or elsewhere….

This one was hard to understand until I learned it was started life as a warping tug built 1946.  Click here for some posts I’ve done about warping tugs, aka alligators.

To me, this runabout is the water equivalent of a 1950s sports car like these, in case anyone wants to buy me one . . .

This drift boat, I’m guessing, and I had to shoot it from a bridge through chain link.

New York State Bridge Authority?  I can’t find evidence they own such a boat . . .

This one’s truly intriguing, given the approaching season, but I suspect this is as simple as a pair of hunters with supplies to conceal their duck blind. I did not however see any armed punts or sneak boxes.

And since we started with a human-powered small craft, let’s end here…

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is happy to post any photos of unusual small –or any sized–boats you may come across.

 

 

Summer Yachts 2

Here was 1 and another I could have called “summer yachts” as well.  And then there are this one and another . . .  again . . .

Pilar is a stunner in so many ways . . .  registered in Key West and originally Elhanor, I believe it was built in Brooklyn one hull BEFORE Hemingway’s Pilar.

I caught it in Narragansett Bay . . . .

Off the Bronx, this unnamed unidentified vessel, likely NOT built in the Bronx,  roared past.

Some interesting boats on the wall at Waterford here include Solar Sal, Manatee, and Little Manatee.

Manatee is a Kadey Krogen with an unusual paint scheme.

I took this photo of Solar Sal last September and had intended to get back to it.  Later last fall it distinguished itself by hauling cargo.

Tjaldur is an unusual

double-ender.

Old Glory is an Owens . . . seen in Buffalo on the 4th of July.

In Mackinac, I saw this 1953 Chris Craft named

Marion Leigh.

Here’s another shot of the rare Whiticar Boat Works yacht Elegante pushing back water.

And sometimes it takes going a long distance to find a Bronx-built yacht like this 1937 Consolidated named

Sea Spray.  I’d love to see her under way.  For more Bronx built boats, click here.

Ditto . . . in the same Chicago marina . . . this Chris Craft.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

No Name Fleet 3 Follow-up

Back in November 2009, I did this post and I’ll repost two of my fotos from then, showing a 1940 Chris Craft and a 1939 ACF, slightly tweaked here

and here.

Earlier this week, Darrin Rice got these followup pics.

I find these poignant, yet there is some buoyancy in that

it appears this old vessel is being taken apart with care so that

planks and sections of them can be recycled, evoking what’s happening nearby.   You couldn’t do this with old fiberglass.

Many thanks to Darrin Rice for these fotos.

Here’s a site dedicated to antique and classic wooden boats in varying states of repair.

Here are some tugster posts on projects and collections.

Independence Day Weekend

To see a recap of the North River fireworks, click here, and for Queens/Bronx/East River fireworks foto’d by Mitch, click here.  In that foto, you can see three barges, each accompanied by a tug.  Anyone know which ones?   I mostly heard fireworks in what sounded like a north woods war, which must have chased all the fish into the deepest holes in the lakes.

On the way up, I sailed with Jeff Anzevino on Tide Rider and caught this view of NYS Marine Highway‘s  Margot‘s wake just after we had

circumnavigated this nameless

and peerless 1948 Chris Craft, which seemed to serve as waterside chase

crew for this hot air balloon, one of a half dozen launching from Poughkeepsie.

Later we headed to Portsmouth, where we talked to Bob Hassold (facing camera).  Interested in his 1966 tug (ex-Matinicus)?  It’s for sale.  See this article.  Bob runs a tugboat paraphernalia shop on the Portsmouth waterfront, where I found Thomas R. Flagg’s book New York Harbor Railroads in Color (a treasure for anyone interested in a “pre-truck intensive” when short-sea-shipping and cross-harbor shipping was the rule!) for less than Amazon’s price.    If you don’t know this book and are interested in the sixth boro, this IS a “must-read” book.  Tug Alley . . . it’s the most intense tug-oriented shop in the East . . . if not in the world–and I was not asked or paid to say that.

I love Portsmouth, up north in general . . . .  with its lights,

boats,

sights,

blue produce and brews,

planters painted in red-white-blue,

(actually these are Hudson River bottom feeders), and

the water.  Enjoy this gratuitous, top-feeder tugster-relaxing foto.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who continues gallivanting (from Puget Sound) soon.

And happy 234th . . .  read the sentiments here.

No Name Fleet 3

Rust never sleeps; nor do fungi.  My first and second posts on this yard are here as one and two;  I’d love to imagine these boats could be restored like this ACF J’Ador III, but mosses and mushrooms are powerful and mahogany though beautiful is vulnerable, and

with neglect,  hardwood turn soft and planks split apart at the seams once so tight.  Wood that began life in Central America or Southern Asia might turn to dust in North America.

Beams and structures lose their strength, their integrity . . .  and

this fleet (1940 Chris Craft 33′ and 1939 ACF)  might never again ride

or be ridden upon, unless love and dollars get lavished upon them.  Some like

this Owens get reprieved and

others (like this 1963 Century Raven) hang in the balance

although once the wood turns fertile for new life, the

old one is lost.  These vessels may be preserved only on old photographs, which themselves are at risk of

leading nowhere if no identifying info is written on the back.  I wonder sometimes as we steer madly into the digital future what will

become of digital images like mine once computers update so much the old files no longer compatible  are as undecipherable as hieroglphics.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp at Miller’s Marina in Lyons, New York.  Telephone number available on google.

Note: the 1940 ChrisCraft in the second foto above has twin K 6-cylinder Hercules.  There’s also a 1964 ChrisCraft Challenger for sale, last in the water three years ago.  $3000.  I’m just the messenger.

For more boats of this type, check boneyard boats.