Exotics 38

It’s not often that a Belgian-flagged work boat comes into the sixth boro, especially one that’s named for an archipelago in the corner of the Indian Ocean over near where it was built and first launched almost 20 years ago.  That makes this one really exotic.

Behold Nicobar, one of the Belgian-flagged vessels working on the offshore wind farms over to the east of here.

Here are some specs.  As of this morning, she’s still in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, right near the NYC Ferry base there. 

As she headed in the other morning, her crew beheld the views of the sixth boro shores,

and some local vessels appeared in some cameo roles, as low clouds obscurer the tops of these cliffs.

Shay Holloway took and shared the photo below.  I’m always gratified that others are also noticing unusual visitors.

Welcome, Nicobar.  Thanks, Shay.  All other photos, any errors, WVD.

Another Keppel SingMarine vessel, Smit Kamara,  appeared on this blog 15 years ago.

Government Boats 65

Yesterday I tried out a location near the Brooklyn Bridge on  the Brooklyn side, a place I should have been for yesterday’s post.  USCGC Legare (WMEC-912) appears on this blog for the first time here, with an intriguing puzzling destination, although I allow for code and/or humor. 

It was a beautiful and still technically winter’s day

with unique scenery of the cliffs on either side of the tidal strait.  As to winter, truth be told it was the day before the day before last day of winter.

I wondered whether that was a private RIB getting quite near the WMEC, until

I zoomed in.

 

Speaking on WMECs, click here for a number of other medium endurance cutters that have appeared on this blog.  WMEC-912 is named for the attorney general of POTUS #10, nearly 200 years ago.

Here’s the intriguing puzzling destination given on AIS.  Several places have that official name around the globe, and then there’s the one in Asgard in Norse myth. 

Seeing Valhalla listed as destination  reminds me of entries I’ve seen on one of the debris collection boats I know that sometimes lists “here and there” as their destination.

All photos, any errors, WVD.

 

Christine M and Sea Shuttle

It’s not often that I see Christine M. McAllister.  And this is [I believe] the first time Sea Shuttle has been towed by any tugs besides those of Gateway, now gone.  A lot of you will know what Sea Shuttle moves, but I’ll hold off until the end of this 

Christine has been around for a while, as is the case of some of the other tugboats that came originally out of the Nolty J. Theriot Offshore fleet.

I should have been on the other side of the East River to get best shots here, 

but I got what I could, even with that sun blasting through the Gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Christine is large, although not the largest., at 126′ x 38′ and 6000 hp.

Note between the tug and cbarge here is a small hydrographic survey boat, Westerly, which has been busy in the boro of late.  More on Westerly soon.

So getting back to Sea Shuttle . . . . she’s a specialty barge operated by Electric Boat, which should be a major clue.  Here’s an image that’ll make it clearer.  And here in a blogpost from February 2012 is an even clearer clue.

The tow shuttles incomplete sections of submarines under construction between shipyards.

All photos yesterday, any errors, WVD.

East River Aircraft Carrier

The East River has seen unusual cargoes and mysteries and oddities like the ones in links at the start of this sentence.  And it actually did once see aircraft carriers as we normally think of them, like USS Leyte as published in this 2015 CNN Business article.

But yesterday this aircraft

traveled westbound

sans her 144,000 hp worth of turbojets and astride Weeks 2222 and Weeks 63,

powered by the twin diesels of 2000 hp instead

of Miss Madeline.

I’m posting early today because I hope to present a part B later today, after that Concorde gets lifted onto terra firma  over at the Intrepid Museum later this morning.  As I understand it, the jet will be making a transit from the Weeks yard and up the North River early midmorning.  

If you want to see it underway from the Statue to the Intrepid Museum this morning, don’t be late.

All photos, any errors, WVD, who is grateful to David Schwartz for tipping me off about this East River move yesterday.  See the Intrepid Museum livestream on YouTube here.

Related:  Space shuttle Enterprise processed to Intrepid in these posts from 2012 here and here.

Also related:    Here was an aircraft carrier barge making its way into the New York State Canals in Waterford 12 years ago.

Newest Hulls in the Sixth Boro 19 B

Know that boat making its way through the canyons along the East River?

 

 

It took two months and a few days, but here it is, maybe here they are.  Is CMT Kronau among the barges that entered the sixth boro back in early January?  Of course, the much anticipated Erin Elizabeth arrived that day.

It was good to catch up with the new boat among this iconic

and wooded shoreline.

All photos, any errors, WVD.

 

Random Tugs 402

The other day I took a quick sweep of the Upper Bay to see who was around at that moment.  Back in the boro was Resolute, 1975,  a Jakobson build, 93′ x 28′ and 3000 hp. bow pudding!  Jakobson gets mentioned a lot on this blog.

Marjorie B. was over at Bayonne Shipyard in the spa.  She was built in 1974;  her numbers are 112′ x 30′ and 4000 hp.

Buchanan 5 passed by on the East River. 1982.   The numbers . . . 72′ x 26′ and 2600 hp.  On the other bank, that’s Brooklyn Heights.

Pathfinder was also westbound in the East River moving containerized trash toward the Arthur Kill railheads.  Her numbers are 1972. 92′ x 27′ and 2250 hp.  I wonder if the waste stream has seen any impact from the food scrap collection program headed up by GrowNYC and its compost creation initiative that I’m a fan of.

 

As the sun was setting, James Charles made its way toward the east on the same waterway as Pathfinder.  James Charles’ numbers are as follows:  1970.   93′ x 29′ and 2000 hp.

I need to spend more time along this side of the boro, especially as the sun sets.

That’s Brooklyn Bridge Park on the far side.

 

All photos, any errors, WVD.

More Cargoes 31

Many thanks to all of you who reported seeing some odd “cargo” on a barge being towed around the sixth boro.  Of course, I had to check it out.  The sixth boro is known for some unusual cargoes going at least as far back as some dinosaurs headed for the World’s Fair in 1964. I hope this image helps jog your memory.  More recently there was a floating island, reputedly peopled with cannibals, although –ok–I just made that part up.   A liveaboard “water pod” barge also once ranged the boro, as did of course John Noble’s barge and still does Lehigh Valley 79, following in the wake of lots of floating theaters, listed in the last paragraph here.

I got some photos yesterday.  By then I knew the story and will share it at the end of this post.  Thanks for the heads up; I missed have missed this sixth boro tugboat story altogether.

Yesterday in the sixth boro, as was the case in much of northern US yesterday, weather was wild in one way or another.  No, no snow fell yet, but temperatures dropped as a gale was screaming,

and that led to some unusual items and a lot of debris floating out there.

But this statue–here juxtaposed with the Williamsburg Bridge— was unusual, and quite ambiguous in some respects.  

The tugboats are Joanne Marie and James Charles, and the barge Hughes 651.  This is James Charles’ first appearance on the blog as James Charles, although way back in 2008 it appeared here and here in previous liveries.

Here are two  close-ups of the statue.

 

Some details of the story are that a rapper named Kid Cudi has just this week released his last and 9th album called Insano, and statues identical or similar to this have been towed around Long Beach CA and standing on land in Paris FR in connection with this release.  I’m not familiar with his music, his personal life, or rap as a genre.  All else I could say, including interpretation of the statue posture, would be speculation.  I will speculate that that statues, all three of them, may have been made by the workshops I never wrote about but visited last March in New Orleans location called Mardi Gras World.

All images, any errors, WVD.

Now I’ll indulge the speculative side of my brain:  maybe The Rolling Stones will engage a barge to transport a sculpted foam statue of the band around the sixth boro next.  Maybe several barges could be assembled in a prime location along the water’s edge on May 5, 2024 so that the Five Boro Bike Tour could become the SIX Boro bike tour.  Maybe that same assembly of barges could be left in place for another six weeks so that the mermaid parade carni-fest could happen there.  One more, maybe around Labor Day 2024, a section of the Floating PLUS Pool can be condoned off for RC model tugboat race, with the RC models being stand-in replicas of actual sixth boro tugboats. 

I could go on, or maybe you could help speculate, just speculate.

East River Traffic 5

If you’re unfamiliar with NYC, most of the photos in this series are from Roosevelt Island, likely off most visitors’ list of places to see.  That’s too bad, since it offers a lot, including great views of Manhattan and the strait (East “river”) in between.  If you’ve not seen the Nelly Bly memorial at the north end, you’re in for a treat.

 Here are previous posts in this series. Let’s start with the NYS-built Ava Jude, a 600 hp boat not seen on this blog in a while. 

It’s also been a while since Shannon Dann was last on the blog, but that’s because she has had her 2400 hp engines working elsewhere.

Ava Jude‘s 1200 hp fleet mate, William Brewster, has been working on the bulkhead project under the 79th Street bridge for some time. 

This Brooklyn, a Vane boat now but formerly Labrador Sea , also brings 2400 hp to the task, and like Brewster, is Blount built. 

I notice King’s Point‘s training vessel too late to get a side profile shot, but her “name” 142, is a number of great significance at the USMMA.  If you click on no other link in this post, do click on that one. 

Coastline’s Kodi is another New England (Gladding Hearn) built small tugboat, the perfect boat for certain jobs. 

See more Gladding Hearn boats here, although that’s not a complete list, since I notice that Benjamin Elliot and others are missing in that link. 

Michael L. Daigle has appeared on this blog only about once before.  She’s a 4200 hp boat that once wore Kirby colors on the west coast as Mount Bona, named for a major North American peak in Alaska. 

 

All photos and any errors, WVD. 

Old Hulls, Old and New Names 2

I can’t say if more than unusual number of changes are in fact happening these days, or if my radars are set to detect change.  In either case, I privilege novelty on this blog, so here we go, the first of the series.

April 2016 this was Ellen S. Bouchard alongside Bouchard Boys.

Also in 2016,  Ellen S. was in a crowded channel meeting another fleetmate, Evening Light.

From yesterday coming through Hell Gate I saw this. Name the tugboat pushing B. No. 282?

wearing a Centerline livery and now

carrying a new new.

It’s Jeffrey S,

here slowed down because of the work over near Blount-built William Brewster and the Manhattan side 79th Street bridge.

She’ll round the bend at the Battery and head up to Albany.

All photos, Halloween, WVD.

Happy November 2022.

 

Sixth Boro Pilot Beer Run

Yesterday morning some pallets got lifted from a terminal in Hunt’s Point in The Bronx by a Hudson River-based liftboat

to a Brooklyn-based ex-BUSL.  

Meanwhile, a Brooklyn-based crane ship on the hull of a repurposed lube tanker took   

position on the East Side of Pier 17.  

The lift boat Legs III is operated by Maritime Projects LLC, Helen A … by Brooklyn Marine Services, and  Louis C … by Lehigh Maritime.

For what’s going on here, I quote from “Beer Delivery Returns to NYC Waterways After 100 Year Absence“,  a press release from Oak Point Property LLC and Manhattan Beer Distributors,   “Hunts Point community leaders, local businesses, maritime advocates, and public officials today cheered the first maritime delivery of beer on NYC’s waterways in over a century. The pilot project, planned and executed by Oak Point Property LLC, Manhattan Beer Distributors (MBD), The Howard Hughes Corporation, Maritime Projects LLC, and Barretto Bay Strategies, with ongoing support from the NYC Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and the Greater Hunts Point EDC, delivered MBD’s six pallets of beer and Brooklyn-born Q Mixers from Oak Point terminal to Pier 17 at the Seaport.

With pallets loaded on its stern, Helen A., a New York harbor workboat, departed the Oak Point shoreline at 10:38 AM EST and reached Pier 17 at 11:38 AM. The Seaport’s operator The Howard Hughes Corporation received the shipment and distributed it to three businesses on the pier, including The Rooftop at Pier 17, NYC’s premier open-air venue hosting over 60 concerts this season.

The pilot is a crucial test of the viability of inter-borough shipping, tidal-assist propulsion, and congestion mitigation through waterborne problem-solving. One of the region’s busiest trucking hubs, the Hunts Point peninsula is criss-crossed by over 15,000 truck trips each workday.”   

“Inter-borough shipping” is a subset of short sea shipping, and in this case, short sea shipping confined to the sixth boro, recognizing that the sixth boro IS the underutilized link between the other five. Too bad “inter-borough shipping, tidal-assist propulsion, and congestion mitigation through waterborne problem-solving” doesn’t easily lend itself to a clever acronym.  IBSTAPCMWPS is quite unpronounceable. Any pronounceable suggestions?

Helen A‘s arrival was in fact timed to ride the tidal current, saving on fuel as well as mitigating the issues of delivery trucks making the approximately 12-mile run. 

Again, this was a pilot, a proof of concept, so a smaller scale cargo vessel is used, understood that you can’t scale up delivery trucks in nearly as many ways as you can a delivery vessel. 

In minutes, Helen A was fast alongside Louis C. 

The lift began almost immediately, and 

within 10 minutes of docking alongside with the cargo, 

Louis C crew 

lifted the first pallet

and swung it

safely ashore, where hand trucks 

awaited to move the cargo into the coolers. 

What’s next?  “The pilot will gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of waterborne solutions to middle-mile challenges while improving air quality and addressing environmental justice challenges in Hunts Point and other outer borough communities like it. To track outcomes, CCNY’s Grove School of Engineering will collect data from the pilot run and conduct a comparative analysis with truck-based delivery.”  I look forward to reading their report.

The first two photos are credited to Oak Point Property LLC and Manhattan Beer distributors;  all others and any errors, WVD.  

Some previous posts on similar projects include Black Seal , Ceres, and Grain de Sail.