Stealth Friesland

From a shipyard near the Black Sea, this very “white” Holland-class offshore patrol ship came into the sixth boro a day or so ago.   A lot needs to be unpacked in that sentence, so here goes:

a Royal Netherlands Navy vessel identified as P842, third in a class of four which began with P840 (shown here in a 2016 tugster post) and named for the province(s) of Holland (a North Holland and a South Holland province exist), was built by a Damen shipyard on the Romanian Danube port city of Galați, Romania.  P842, named for the province of Friesland (see the banner on the gangway above), was delivered to the Royal Netherlands Navy almost exactly 10 years ago. I quote from the wikipedia article here:  she is “painted a new light blue-gray color, which supposedly has a better camouflage-effect than the standard light-grey paint used by other RNLN ships.”  Yes, there are many grades of “white.”

As to the stealth design, it reminds me of a French vessel that was in nearly the same location a warm April a dozen years ago. Other Dutch navy ships going back 14 years and including a submarine in the sixth boro can be seen here.  Other Damen-built vessels can be seen here.

I’m just conjecturing here, but based on the image of P840 in a link above, the ship color a decade ago was the same as that of the small boat here on the davit. 

To bring out that light blue-gray color, let me close with a slightly adjusted version of the top photo.  Maybe time for some new paint.

All photos, WVD.

Skimming through the information about Galați, Romania, and looking at the mouths of the Danube have given me a much more complex appreciation of the history and geography of the countries around even only this part of the Black Sea, a place very much in the news these days.   This might be an interesting river tour, although it does not go all the way to the Black Sea.  Maybe someone can tell if tours exist that continue from Bucharest to –say–Istanbul.

More Sheri Lynn S

I was doing maintenance in the  photo archives yesterday and took a second look at some photos from Damen and from Picton Terminals.  Since I know that Sheri Lynn S (SLS) arrived in Canada in Montreal in late fall, this has to be a photo of it being loaded onto the ship in Shanghai after traveling via the Yangtze from the shipyard in Changde, Hunan in China.  Given that, the tugs in the background could now be scattered all over the world.

This photo shows the boat being secured to the deck,again in Shanghai.

After the ocean voyage between the photo above, SLS arrives in a port at the end of her voyage, and that port has to be

Montreal, given the blue tugboat here, Ocean Georgie Bain.

And now for a few photos from her current habitat on the NE corner of Lake Ontario, SLS breaks ice, sometimes . . .

enabling the cement ship to dock.

In fact, this time of year, ice breaking is her main activity.

Many thanks to Damen and Picton Terminals for these photos.

Freshwater Tugs 11: New Beginnings

Here’s what GL tugs have looked like for a century, and many of them are still working, despite their age, as you can see here by clicking on the state names.  The tug below is Nebraska, launched in 1929.  Grouper–frequently mentioned on this blog–has the same basic design.

A new beginning took place yesterday in Toledo at the National Museum of the Great Lakes, and Paul Strubeck of Vintage Diesel Design as well as all these photos on tugster took these photos of the ceremony:  in front of the Colonel aka Schoonmaker, the 116-year-old tug Ohio was rechristened along with

the new tug Ohio. Below and to the left, the old/new Ohio (originally built as a Milwaukee fire boat) was christened with beer and the new Ohio  . . . with champagne.  Read the ToledoBlade story here.

Click here for a story on the new design, based on the Damen 1907 ICE class design.  This blog did a post on the first of this new design about two years ago here.

 

 

The new Ohio will assist ships in port of Toledo, so juxtaposition of these three vessels will be commonplace in years to come.

Many thanks to Paul for use of these photos.  And if you are ever in the Toledo area, do stop by the National Museum of the Great Lakes.

 

Dutch Tugs 8

These photos come via Jan van der Doe and were taken by Jan Oosterboer in the Lekhaven area of Rotterdam.

Lingestroom, a Damen Shoalbuster 3512 design and launched in 2017, measures 114′ x 39′ and is powered by triple screw driven by three Caterpillar C32-TTA SCAC.

Unrelated, notice the stack for the Atlanship SA orange juice tanker on the far side of the building?  I’m not sure which tanker that is.

MTS Indus is 82′ x 24.’    More info here.  Just beyond Indus and against the dock is MTS Vanquish, a 2909 Stantug design from Damen.

Sea Bronco is a SeaContractor tug with two Caterpillar 3508B engines.

En Avant 20 is a twin Schottel 5000 hp tug built in 2006.  I like the slogan on the building on the right side of the photo.

 

Union Princess is queen of the dock here:  221′ loa x 51′ and powered by two Wärtsilä 16v32 LND engines for a total of just over 16,000 hp.

Dian Kingdom measures 107′ x 36.’

 

I hope you enjoyed this look around the dock in Lekhaven, thanks to Jan and Jan.  For the first seven in the series, click here.

 

Anteojos de Sol 2

Here were the wild colors that started this series two years ago .. .

and Alice . . . always the trend setter and wanderer . . . seems headed out of the gray days in old New Amsterdam for the tropical colors of new New Amsterdam.  Notice the destination?  That’s the one in Guyana.

But I digress.  Tropical colors are a treat after some days in the cold achromatic north.  These photos come compliments of the winter refugees aboard Maraki . . . currently in the environs of Curaçao. For more colorful pics of this town, click here.

Here at the ready are Lima II and a pilot boat, and

newer sister Damen-built tug Mero.

Also in port was this International Telecom vessel . . .

IT Intrepid formerly known as Sir Eric Sharp.

Given the dominant language of this port, you’d think this local boat would be called “werken meisje ook,”  but surprises never cease.

or this be called “port service 1.”

The subject of Dutch-built tugboats in Curaçao resurrects the unsolved mystery of Wamandai, a tug that left Curaçao under some clouds and was possibly sunk by the US Coast Guard.  My letters of inquiry to various Coast Guard offices relevant to this case have turned up not a single answer, not even a word that Wamandai‘s fate is classified.  Should I say it turned up an arrogant silence?    Can anyone weigh in or help out?  Some Dutch navy vets and I would like to know.

Thanks to Maraki for these photos.

For a world of cable layers, click here.