Sixth Boro Self-Unloader

Preliminary question:  Where in the world is Alice Oldendorff?  Answer follows.

This profile below–not Alice— might make you imagine yourself in the St Lawrence Seaway or the Great Lakes.  But I took this photo on the Lower New York Bay yesterday.  I had not caught a self-unloader of this style in the Lower Bay since 2007!

A CSL self-unloader does call in the sixth boro occasionally.  Here’s a CSL post I did in 2010, photos in the sixth boro.

She headed into the Narrows loaded down with

aggregates from Aulds Cove in Nova Scotia.  And I’m guessing that’s here, place I hope to visit some day.

Besides stone, self-unloaders locally also offload salt, as here H. A. Sklenar and here Balder.

 

The photo below I took in July 2009, again a self-unloader bringing in aggregates,

a task usually done by fleet mate  Alice Oldendorff, who surely has had enough exposure on this blog.  Don’t get me wrong . . . Alice is also a self-unloader, but she had other cranes as well, as you can see from the photo below, taken in 2009.

Where is Alice?  Well, she’s 300 miles from Pyongyang.  THAT Pyongyang.

Here’s a little more context, showing Pyongyang to the right and Beijing top left, and heavy ship traffic.

Alice made her last stop here a couple months back, then she headed through the Panama Canal to Qingdao for some rehab.  Qingdao is also spelled Tsingtao, like the beer.

She’ll be back come summer.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

From the Line Locker 23

I’ve mentioned before that this is my miscellaneous category, although “everything” you pull out of your line locker or junk drawer is important for something, “miscellany” sounds dismissive.

Here’s how this post  works:  I’ll put in no comment until the second time through.  Starting with the one below, see the man face mostly down in the small craft sculling with right hand.  See the “cannon” forward, recoil preventer in place?

 

Someone’s altar?

I’d meant to include this a few weeks ago, but forgot.

And here . . . notice a splash of color where often you’d just read a phrase like “safety first” or “no smoking”?  Ice waters below and

lock walls here.

“Yes!!   I beat the ship,” thought he.   But why’s he blowing the horn so much, a**hole!!@#, thought he.

And finally . . . ever stop into a Wawa for coffee?  I’ll get back to that.

Reprise time.  See the gun there?  I paced it out at about nine feet long.  It’s a punt gun, formerly used by “market hunters” in a host of flyways, including locally along Long Island.  I finally visited the New York State Museum in Albany recently, and this is one of the displays.  Much more about punt guns and sneak boxes here.

Nearby in the Museum, here’s a sixth boro diorama.  Meseck boats came up in the previous line locker post also. And here’s the Carroll Towing post I’d wanted to include that 1946 clipping in.

And the painting on the forward side of the superstructure, here’s more on that CSL project to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the creation of an independent Canadian confederation.  And if you ever wonder what the francophone Canadians call the “Canada goose,” it’s a bernache du Canada.

And that SUP racing to cross the river in front  of a ship!  It’s that season, and soon conditions like those that created a near-fatal incident last summer will present themselves again.  Don’t be a statistic!  Here’s James Berman’s article from Workboat magazine with the “wheelhouse perspective.”

And Wawa, I’d read this and let it slip through my fingers.  They are having an ATB unit built.  Nah . . . not to transport coffee, which is sold at their midAtlantic convenience store gas stations. I’m wondering what they’ll call it . . . Wawa One?  Wawa Wanna cuppa?  Watuppa?

 

All photos here by Will Van Dorp, who wishes you a happy and peaceful day..

Salt 7b

Here was part a of this series.  Twelve hours after arrival, Balder could already be 25,000 tons lighter, although I’m not sure at this writing at what hour of darkness the discharge began.

But in daylight as by night, the Cats labor to keep the salt piled for maximum space efficiency.  Since I’ve not done it, I can only imagine what a time lapse of the unloading process–in say 60 seconds–would look like as the great orange hull rises in the water as a mountain–with Cats scrambling laboriously– grows on shore.

Periodically the flow of salt stops along this nearly 300′ long arm, and

the traveling deckhouse,  covering the unloading machinery and keeping the process virtually dustless, trundles over a still loaded portion of the hold.   The fotos below come from the MacGregor site.

Notice the Empire State Building–almost 10 miles distant– in the foto below, just down and to the left from the starboard side lifeboat.

Here’s another shot showing Balder‘s traveling deckhouse.

x

Salt goes off the portside while fuel enters to starboard from

Doubleskin 33 squired by –here–Quantico Creek.

All fotos–and narrative–by Will Van Dorp, who is solely responsible for any factual errors and who is grateful to Brian DeForest for permission to observe and take fotos of this process.  I’d also LOVE to accompany Balder for the six-week 6000-mile voyage to the Chilean desert for more seasonings to tame your wintry commute.

Returning to the foto above, notice the creamy colored hull intruding from the right . . . well, more on that tomorrow.

Postscript:  Balder might have loaded this salt in Patache, in northern Chile.  Click here for a CSL article on Balder’s South American bulk trades.