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To start part 2, I’ll go back upriver a bit to Esopus Island. Craig Eric Reinauer with RTC 103 is anchored to the south. Much of the Hudson has associated with some unusual characters, both in fiction and in real life. Esopus Island is no exception: about a century ago it was the magical hideaway of Aleister Crowley. My friend Mitch–Newtown Pentacle–wrote about him here.
Farther south is a place with a magical name but a quite mundane though necessary construction on it. This is the current resident of Duyvil’s Danskammer Point, idled in litigation I think. The Dutch called it “devil’s dance chamber” because they saw natives doing a ceremonial dance there by firelight . . . A lighthouse and several brickworks also once stood here.
Looking back upstream . . the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge and Danskammer Point in the background. Foreground is picnic boat Gem. A Hinckley?
River Rose previously appeared here about three years ago.
Justine McAllister . . . I caught her the day before east- and then northbound at the KV buoy pushing RTC 120. Also, three years ago I caught Justine towing the same barge on the Hudson.
Upbound off Cornwall . . it’s Kimberly Poling, also a frequenter of both this river and this blog.
I’m not sure why so many large yachts were on the river the other day . . . off Bannerman’s Castle, location of a ceremonial swim a few months back, it’s Blue Moon.
Here’s Bannerman’s from the south side, juxtaposing the residence (left) with the warehouse.
I’ve yet to deliver on closeups of the residence, but here’s a preview. The “picture window” serves to illustrate the interior for now.
That’s Bannerman’s in the background as Black Watch passes northbound. Slope on the right is dauntingly named Breakneck Ridge.
The Hudson is truly loved.
Here a crowded Clearwater lowers sail in the Hudson Highlands.
Seastreak New York, usually shuttling south from the sixth boro, travels north when the leaves start to turn color. Not pictured to the left is West Point.
Peak behind Bear Mountain Bridge is Anthony’s Nose, which I scaled back in April.
And finally . . . just south of the Bear Mountain Bridge . . . it’s another people mover usually associated with the confines of the sixth boro, Circle Line Queens, here assisting in leaf peeping.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
If anyone out there needs to be convinced of the beauty of the Hudson Valley less than 100 miles north of the big city, take a glance at this foto by Tim Hetrick showing tanker Icdas 11 escorted by a paparazzi savvy eagle.
The foto below shows sloop Clearwater in mid-June arriving at the music festival that shares the same name.
A minute or so earlier . . . Clearwater rounded the bend following Woody Guthrie toward the shallows.
But if anyone has notions of operating a wooden vessel, it’s important to consider the regular maintenance. Here was a post from about three years ago about work on Clearwater. Currently way upriver this
is happening again. All the following fotos now come thanks to Paul Strubeck. In mid-December, Clearwater was downrigged and hauled out near Albany at Scarano Boat Building and
gently placed onto Black Diamond, with tug Cornell nearby.
Securing the big sloop for travel takes care and time, more time than there is light at the winter solstice end of the year.
But when all’s fast, the trip to where the winter maintenance crew can begin.
Click here for an article about Clearwater‘s winter home in the shadow of the Hudson River Maritime Museum.
Many thanks to Paul for sending these along. It looks like I need to find time to get up to the Rondout. The first two fotos in the post are mine.
The event is called Clearwater’s Great Hudson River Revival, so indeed, it’s a water festival, a river fest started by a folksinger, now 93, who cares deeply about
the river that flowed past his birthplace. A river festival means boats.
Of course, Clearwater in the distance is the flagship of this festival, and the big sloop spawned the smaller sloop Woodie Guthrie closer in.
The festival takes place on a peninsula where you see the tents in the middle of the foto.
It’s called Croton Point Park, about 30 miles north of Manhattan’s north tip.
But this location is surrounded by shallow water, so temporary docks are needed, which means small shallow draft tugboats like Augie (1943 and on the first job of her new life) and
Patty Nolan (1931 and available for charter). . . And the red barge is Pennsy 399 (1942!!) .
Also taking passengers during the festival is Mystic Whaler, here with Hook Mountain in the distance.
Here’s the northside of Croton Point last evening looking toward Haverstraw.
Exactly five years ago I took this foto from a small boat just off Pioneer‘s bowsprit. Here are more fotos from that day.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who might go back for some music tomorrow.
No . . . this site is NOT transforming into a book emporium. But I can make some recommendations, good reading whether you’re on the water, at the beach, or in a house . . . The last time I revealed this much about my bookshelf was in 2007 here and here.
Numero uno: A “must read” We the Drowned . . . I guarantee it’ll be the most enthralling and fastest 675-page novel you’ve ever read. Read a review here. I’ll even send my copy once a few more friends have read it; my copy was sent to me by Les Sonnenmark, a frequent commenter here. It’s a saga of 100 years of lives of folks whose starting point is a Danish Baltic Sea island town called Marstal featuring naval prisoners of war, St. Peter’s triage style, mariners by sail and steam and diesel, Samoa, Greenland, Captain Cook’s shrunken head, haunting red lights (and more) for a character who survives World War II aboard convoy after convoy in and out of Murmansk, and some poignant stories of loves lost and long deferred. This is a story of resurrections. Hear an interview with the author, Casten Jensen, here. Read an interview focusing on storytelling craft here.
Unrelated: can you identify the sailing and diesel vessels here? Identification to all will be at the end of the post.
Second suggestion: Fire on the Horizon (267 pages) by gCaptain‘s very own John Konrad, with Tom Shroder. This book walks you minute by minute through the last days of Deepwater Horizon, with compassion for the crew and their families. You will learn much about a drillship, of which many exist today. Konrad and Shroder tease out responsibilities of BP, TransOcean, and Halliburton. I hadn’t known until reading this book of John Konrad’s unique qualifications to write this book: he learned of the blowout while in the Southern Ocean, delivering a similar Korean rig called Deepwater Ascension from Korea to the Gulf of Mexico; moreover, he knew some crew aboard Deepwater Horizon. Konrad shows his knack for telling a tragic story quite well, throwing in compelling backstory along the way. In the first 50 pages alone, you’ll learn something about offshore drilling in 1896, SUNY Maritime, and the Hyundai shipyard in Ulsan, Korea. In our age of petroleum and time of peak oil, this book will leave you with greater understanding.
Third suggestion: Also related to the blow-out of last summer, A Sea in Flames, (352 pages) by Carl Safina. In the preface, Carl Safina calls this “a record of a technological event . . . a chronicle of a season of anguish . . .” It’s an informal book in which Safina records his observations and vents. He, like Konrad and Shroder, makes the arcane world of deepwater drilling understandable and interesting to the layperson; in the first 50 pages, you learn about the decisions made throughout the six months of drilling at Macondo, which he compares to a “high risk pregnancy.” Safina’s voice evidences his ecology background (Ph. D. from Rutgers and President of the Blue Ocean Institute), and he’s clearly fuming, incensed; he reports statements from officials from BP and government agencies and then (as if we were watching or listening to some broadcast news with him) we hear his reactions . . . be they sarcasm or refutation. He acknowledges his anger, though: e.g., “I am not impressed with the Coast Guard so far. Admiral Thad Allen becomes to me a one-dimensional talking head: the Thadmiral. Does he deserve to be a caricature? Of course not; does anyone? But in my anger, that’s what happens” (96). And he’s particularly angry about private security guards interdicting the public from . . . public parks . . . when they are officially open (207-10). Ultimately, near the end of the book, Safina reports on having coffee with Allen and another of the caricature’s in the book, Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator; here . . Safina listens and in his reportage, transforms what had been one-dimensional into nuanced people. And I admire that. Read the book.
I’d love to hear your reading suggestions . . . in part because I’m fishing for my next book. I always can fall back on rereading the standards by Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Farley Mowat, or Jan deHartog . . . but would rather have my horizons expanded.
Otherwise, in summer the temperature makes it a whole lot more comfortable than winter to just while away some hours doing the Otis Redding thing . . .
Fotos show: 1) Clearwater and Atlantic Salvor, 2) Norwegian Gem, 3) Remember When, 4) Susquehanna . . I believe, and 5) Turecamo Girls.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp in the past two weeks.
Oh . . . right . . . here’s another review.
All fotos and information here comes from John Sperr, last referred to here in relation to ice yacht Galatea, as its pilot.
Today’s post comes from the same area of the Hudson where iceboating was happening a mere two months ago. Ice has now given way to the fine color heralding leaves. Clearwater has wintered on a mobile shipyard, a barge. The “whiskey plank” aka the last part of the hull to be closed up post-repair was recently steamed, jacked into place, and fastened.
Libation followed and then
parade, as the shipyard itself danced upriver clutched tight by Cornell to be offloaded in anticipation of rigging, which
would happen at
Scarano Boat. The barge was slid into the travel-lift dock, slings
moved like fingers under the hull, and
Clearwater, cradled in these sturdy arms, was
carried onto the high-and-dry. Notice Onrust in the background? And Adirondack directly beyond Clearwater‘s stern?
This left the barge Black Diamond to assume other duties, become other things.
All fotos by John Sperr. Thanks, John.
By the way, start imagining the weekend of June 19 and 20. Mermaids on Saturday (with Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed !@#@! as Queen Mermaid and King Neptune) and music on Sunday (with Pete Seeger and Lucy Kaplansky and many more!@#@##@!!) ? How can one make a choice like that?
Also, a tall ship and volunteer opportunity in Brooklyn: PortSide NewYork FreeSail Clipper City 4-12-2010
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