Random Sixth Boro 2

I’m always looking for “first-timers” like Sam.

Is this the one . . . Sterling Equipment, built 1972?  And it appears to have a Randive unit on the foredeck.

Viking, North River bound completes Ellis Island.

Reliance heads for the KVK.

Tampa, nearly 30 years old, has seen some intrigue in its day.

Aha!  the small brown vessel beyond Eagle Baltimore . . . it’s December 1 and Eastern Welder has returned fishing to the sixth boro.

And a bit later, an IVS bulker named Kite passes the same tanker.

Doris Moran plows through the KVK.

Indy pushes through the Buttermilk and into the East River.

A USCG RIB passed off the bow of Stena Primorsk.

Enjoy another shot of Annabelle Dorothy.

Now this fits in the Whatzit?!@!?  category.  A sloop named Jazz and a sportfisherman named T2 mooring off some sort of workboat I’ve never seen . . . .  Anyone help?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Two Hours on the Narrows

Twas the eve of Christmas Eve, and straight through my many layers of clothes, the wind was howling, starting a process like anesthesia.  Escort came in unescorted or unescorting. . . no money or sport in that!  And no warmth at all did she offer me!

No hesitation or expectation in either party when she passed Zim Haifa or Nordstrength, only a sliver of bow visible.  Big as a vessel like Zim Haifa is, she has only about a third the capacity of the largest boxships now dashing across the oceans.  Witness MSC Danit.

MSC Levina raced in, and a portion of the crew seemed delighted enough to see New York by brilliant sunlight that they ignored the 20 degrees (-6 C) temperature with bone-numbing wind.

I love below freezing light.

Another container ship Maersk Wisconsin came in, and I hope these precariously perched parcels did NOT contain the new paintboxes purchased by a certain presently unplugged painter seeking solace in warmer climes.

Said container ship’s escutcheon contrasts nicely with the orange of E-Balt.

By this time, hypothermia had started to wreak havoc enough with my judgement that I considered this must be a hallucination.

Nope . . . not seeing figments yet.  It’s Jerry, pushing Mr. Upright.  Welcome home.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Meditations F

F . . . fantastic or fabulous . . . as in it might exist but if I hadn’t seen it or read it in a reliable source, I’d think it of the realm of fantasies  and fantasms, i.e., incredible stuff.

Take Fractor, maybe aka GLDD’s Drill Boat No. 8, which has hidden on my header “logo” from Day 1 of this blog. Tug beside it is Melvin E. Lemmerhirt.  I admit  this is a poor quality foto, but what’s interesting is that “drill” here means creating a hole into which dynamite charges are set and then detonated for gross overburden removal, said charges having previously resided on the boat.   Safety redundancy has undoubtedly been built into drill boats, but 80 years ago  drill boat J. B. King exploded in the St. Lawrence with deadly effect.   More great GLDD vessel fotos here, including how cutter suction dredge vessels manage to move across oceans to new jobs.  If you know how to arrange a visit to the GLDD yard, please email me.

While on topic of fantastic dredge vessels, I caught this approaching the Narrows yesterday.  And what is it?  Mining equipment, I learned;  sand mining happens in various channels leading into the sixth boro.  Sand mining, as I understand it, entails keeping channels clear as well as collecting a resource to sell to the construction trade, i.e., sand.  I have more fotos of this unit including the tug, appropriately named  Sandmaster, but I haven’t found much info about it.  In the foto, notice the outline of the West Bank Lighthouse off Sandmaster‘s port, and a ghostly shape of tanker Altius, off starboard, or maybe it is.  Sand mining . . . the term reminds me of that scene in the first Star Wars movie, surface on the planet Tatooine, which was and then was no more.

More dredging fantasms  . . . I believe these disassembled parts once made up the cutter head featured here and then rendered in Bowsprite’s water color here.

Just as the cutter head looks as toothy as the toothiest of lophiiforms, so the roofless walls of Bannerman’s Castle with masonry-studded crenelation appear as fantastically hyper-architecture expected only  in video games.

Thanks to Jed for the foto below.  Suppose you spotted a house traveling upriver, like here off Croton Point.  I’d study it through the binoculars, then probably rub my eyes, check that I count exactly 10 fingers on my hands, then look back in the direction of the house to see if it was still there.  By the way, anyone know the tug?  Jed got no VHF response or identification.

Now suppose your first-ever view of a tanker were from this angle.  Then someone asked you to draw Eagle Baltimore.  Wouldn’t you draw it as a roundish tub with very little freeboard?  I’d never imagine it to be over 800 feet long.

And finally, this foto comes thanks to Bowsprite also . . . if you saw a sky like this in a movie, wouldn’t you just assume the color and texture fake, special effects?  But fantastic as  it may appear, what you see here is what we sixth boro denizens saw just a few weeks ago.

The worst fantasms, though, are ones where you think someone exists, some feelings are felt, some history has happened . . . and no one, none, nothing is, and maybe never did.  I can’t even show a foto of those, the ones that rattle me most.

All fotos unless otherwise attributed by Will Van Dorp.  Cameras provide evidence  that eyes did or didn’t see; remember to double-click on a foto to double its size.