Retro Sixth Boro 37 A

May Day!  It’s a busy day without access to my archives.  May 2011 . . .  Urger in Lyons NY, waiting for the dry dock to flood.

Back in the sixth boro, it’s Elk River and Siberian Sea…eastbound at Con Hook, and  

near the same location, it’s Lincoln Sea and Eastern Dawn, both westbound.

Greenland Sea . . . also westbound.

Barbara McAllister has long gone from the boro, as have some of the vessels above and below. 

Others, like Eagle Service, have been renamed. 

This Ken’s Marine Service boat I saw once, and I’d still love to know the story and current disposition.  Anyone?

Shelby Rose is still in the boro, but when I last saw her at a dock, her vivid livery was greatly faded.

Gazela is still in Philly.  She arrived here in May 2011 to dock at Atlantic Salt, I believe, in a driving rain.

And in late May, the orange Blue Marlin arrived in town for the longer-than-expected loading process of some boats sold to Nigerian interests. If I recall correctly, that Trumpy (?) yacht is still in the boro.

Happy May Day . . .  smell the flowers, work in the garden, or even dance around the pole today if you are so inclined.  Or, you might choose to adopt the May Day tradition of  University of St. Andrews students in Scotland . . .

All photos from the archives . . .  WVD. 

Retro Sixth Boro (and beyond) 27 b

I vividly recall June 2010.  Let’s take June 3.  The two Hornbeck tugs there are Erie Service and Eagle Service, now Genesis Valiant and Genesis Eagle.  Minerva Anna is at one of the easternmost IMTT docks; today she’s eastbound in the Indian Ocean. But in the middle of it all,  GLDD’s Liebherr 966 was getting the channel down to 52′, if I recall correctly. Was that 966 dredge the same as New York?   In the distance the Empire State Building stood alone;  from this perspective today, you’d see WTC1.

Later the same day, and I don’t recall what the occasion was, Conrad Milster brought his big ship’s whistle down to South Street Seaport Museum, and ConEd hooked it up to ConEd steam pressure.  Hear the result here.  To date, this video has received 88,000 plays!!  Here and here are some videos of the legendary Conrad.  A few years later, I went to a marine steam festival in the Netherlands;  I took a river ferry from Rotterdam to get there.  When I stepped off the ferry and walked up the gangway to the dock, there stood Conrad.  Of course he would be there.

June 17 brought the return of Reid Stowe‘s schooner Anne after 1152 days (more than three years) at sea without seeing land!  Here‘s the NYTimes story.

Notice the toll the sea took on the paint.

For more photos of Anne, inside and out, click here.

As serendipity would have it, the day Anne returned, Artemis departed, going on to successfully row across the Atlantic in just under 44 days!  Recently, Reid has displayed art inspired by his voyage, as seen here.

June 26 John Curdy invited me to see a good bit of the Delaware River fronting several miles north and south of Philadelphia.  Overseas Anacortes was not yet launched at that time. As of today’s post, she’s in the Gulf of Mexico off Corpus Christi.

Here is Penn’s Landing and Gazela, which I sailed on later in 2010, but that’s a story already told here.

All photos in June 2010, WVD.

 

Really Random Tugs 13

This NYPD officer of the peace got tugged right into a recent parade.  When that happens, you know all things could get downright disorderly.

This last June post is a melange of Pegasus and Lehigh Valley 79 in a setting rays irritating my camera,

Patuxent in the Philly dawn,

Sea Hawk approaching the St. John’s Bridge,

Patuxent redux,

Natoma docked in the Columbia,

Caspian Sea in the Delaware,

Surrie Moran in the same waters,

Aries in Portland,

Madeline,

Black Hawk,

more Black Hawk, 

Cape Henry,

again Madeline,

and finally Lewiston.

Rounding things out, it’s Siberian Sea in palm trees country aka the sixth boro, taken about a year ago.  I will resume the blog as soon as I can in a land with more palm trees

Thanks for reading the blog and sending comments either here or via email.  Sorry if I haven’t acknowledged everyone who’s sent along a tidbit or nice word.

If you’ve never taken a Working Harbor tour in NYC’s sixth boro, here’s info.  If you  know the sixth boro pretty well–especially the contemporary commercial aspects of it, you might even propose to them to narrate a tour.  That’s just me suggesting that, but there are folks who want to better understand the role of shipping and its interaction between the sixth boro and the five terrestrial ones.

Thanks to Seth Tane for the fotos of Aries, Black Hawk, Lewiston, Nahoma, and Sea Hawk.  All others by Will Van Dorp who hopes to next post from the obscure January River.

Delaware Traffic 3

River traffic travels in all weather and times of day.   So at first I was dismayed to be without my camera, but fortunately Elizabeth had hers when Timothy McAllister came past and got

really close.  Thanks to the crew, whose demonstration probably inspired some young’uns to want to grow up and be mariners.

Earlier Madeline had moseyed past, checking out Gazela and all else along the PA side while

Captain Harry did the same on the NJ side.

While the rain fell, Caspian Sea headed out as

Teresa McAllister headed upriver.

as did Reid McAllister.

Art and reality mimic each other.  At the Independence Seaport Museum, you have just over a month left to see the exhibit of friend and marine artist Dave Boone’s work and wit.

You’ll be thrilled by the paintings and the biographical materials.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, except the first two by Elizabeth Wood, who had a charged phone.

Review: The Heart of a Ship

This book makes very clear what the heart of a ship is.  And it’s not the electrical or mechanical systems.  It’s not even the galley, although I can attest to the revival I felt after consuming the goods from this vessel’s galley at sea.  By the language on the engine order telegraph, can you tell the vessel?

It’s Gazela, possibly the oldest square-rigger in the US still sailing, rebuilt in 1901 from timbers of an 1883 vessel, a Portuguese barkentine  retired from dory-fishing on the Grand Banks the year Apollo 11 shuttled peripatetic passengers to the moon.    As Eric Lorgus says in one of over 50 personal stories in the book, “she the ultimate anachronism, having been built before man’s first flight, and still sailing [commerically] the summer of the first moon landing.”   But history by itself is NOT the heart of a ship either.

The heart of a ship is the stories told by her crew, by those who love her.  A vessel underway is like an elixir;  as she makes voyage after voyage through the decades, sea and weather and crew different each time, her pulse is the magic recounted differently by each person on board.  Heart of a Ship breathes.

Here’s an excerpt from John Brady’s story:  “We have sailed with master mariners and people who seemed just north of homeless.  We have stood watches with carpenters, physicists, bank officers, and doctors.  We have seen those just starting out in life and those salvaging what they could from mid-life crises.   . . . We have sailed with strippers and masons, machinists and software writers, nurses and riggers, professional mariners and grandmothers….”    For more samples, click here.

But don’t take my word for the life that pulsates in this collection.  Buy your own copy, and support Gazela’s continuing preservation.  Every historic vessel project should be so lucky as to have a collection like this.

For some of the posts I’ve done about Gazela, click here, here, here, and here.

What the Storm Brought

From my reading Stephen King phase, I remember a formula that involved a storm or fog moving on and leaving something inexplicable, usually malevolent.  If I

hadn’t expected Gazela at this appointed hour, my imagination would have raced.  Instead, it did my heart good to see Gazela–who was still dory fishing on the Grand Banks when Armstrong  strolled around some lunar real estate since abandoned.  Crossing paths with Gazela as it entered the KVK was John P. Brown.  If you’re interested in dining (DINING) aboard Gazela Friday evening, click here for info and reservations.

Gazela‘s in town as part of Atlantic Salt fest.    For fotos of Gazela in clear bright August sunshine, click here.

This too, had I not been forewarned, would have conjured up Stephen King thoughts;  given its beam, I’d call this “one big-ass ship” aka Makulu . . . if you speak Zulu.  Dimensions:  735′ loa x 210′ beam!

It looks like it could carry all of BAT to some foreign shore.

In spite of its color, it’sBlue Marlin.  Click here and scroll through to see Blue Marlin–back when it was still blue–carrying the DDG-67 USS Cole from Yemen back to Mississippi in 2000.  Click here on Fogonazos to see some huge loads.

I saw some Reinauer boats skittering around the boro today . . . for fear of being loaded onto this orange Blue Marlin.  I expect to see more of Blue Marlin loading the next few days.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated but almost . . . See these fotos Capt Joey of Good Morning Gloucester took of Wanderbird high and dry up in Cape Ann.

Salt 4

What’s this?  Clam-shell bucket and helicopter markings?

Amazing, as in IMO9456331.  Amazing is the name of the vessel.  And amazingly, three vessels here appear mostly on the rocks:  middle ground in Noble Express and in the distance the stack belongs to Inyala.

I’m not sure where the cargo has originated, but

Amazing arrived in the sixth boro about a week after  traversing the Panama Canal.   So although we get salt from lots of places, this salt

I believe comes from somewhere in Asia, and

other minerals are commingled, here’s the color on the pile.

Ultimately it gets to storage barns like this one on the sanitation Pier on “thirteenth avenue.”

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated:  Gazela will be at this very salt dock for a few days starting May 18 in transit to Portsmouth, NH.

Totally unrelated but amazingly upsetting to me:  Can a government official with an annual salary of less than $7000/year order a yacht costing over $350 million?  Sure, if the official happens to be Minister of Agriculture and Foresty of Equatorial Guinea, and named Teodorin Obiang, son of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (scroll through to see an official 2009 portrait).    Disclosure:  I’ve never visited Equatorial Guinea, but between 1975 and 1977, as a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, I visited along the border between the two countries.

Tugster Post 1280

The last milestone was the 1000, but this one, post 1280, goes up exactly four years (well, I’m three days late, actually)  after my first ever post.  Since then, I’ve spent countless hours of free time educating and entertaining myself,   touring other folk through the sixth boro,

interacting with passersby in ports wherever they beckon–ports like the sixth boro,

Philly,

Baltimore (and many other places …)  and more I hope to come.  Thanks to all for your tours and advice and feedback.

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying this blog more than ever, learning to see, fishing

(sometimes in extreme conditions) for

flights of fancy and

all manner of lore and historical info about the sixth boro and all the waters connected to it.

Like yesterday, I was reading about Alice L. Moran, her marvelous feats, and wondering if she’s still called Amsterdam and working in Bahraini waters.    And I was reading about PY-16 USS Zircon (later a pilotboat named New York and previously a Pusey & Jones steam yacht Nakhoda), predecessor of pilotboat New York.

I’ve enjoyed these first 1280 and will be continuing.  Meanwhile, here’s another interesting thing I stumbled upon yesterday on page 12 of the Spring 1966 Tow Line magazine.   I hope no one is irked by my printing a screen shot here.  Enjoy.  Letter 1 with request on left and response on right.

Thanks for reading this blog and commenting for four years.  The ride goes on.

Photo credits here to Les, Allen, Carolina, and bowsprite.  Greets to the guys on SKS Tyne.

Meanwhile, a few words about the MWA Waterfront Conference tomorrow:  ”

New York, NY: On Tuesday, November 30, senior officials and representatives from over 14 government agencies will join over 500 waterfront advocates, educators, and planning experts for the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance’s 2010 Waterfront Conference at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York, the George Gustav Heye Center.

Dozens of agency officials, politicians, and other experts will be on hand to offer their perspectives on the future of the NY-NJ Harbor, including: NYC Deputy Mayor Robert Steel, Bob Martin of the NJ Department of Environmental Protection, Col. John R. Boulé II of the US Army Corps of Engineers, Capt. Linda Fagan of the US Coast Guard, Peter Davidson of the Empire State Development Corporation, David Bragdon of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Long-Term Planning & Sustainability, Adrian Benepe of the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation, Amanda Burden of the NYC Planning Commission, Cas Holloway of the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, and Seth Pinsky of the NYC Economic Development Corporation.”

Gazela Returns to Philly

To see an excellent Flickr foto of Gazela by Gregg M, click here.  And for an account plus video of Gazela‘s trip to New Bedford earlier this summer, click here. For my earlier pics of Gazela in Atlantic Basin Red Hook, click here.

As Gazela sailed back to Philly between daybreak last Wednesday and late afternoon Thursday, I was fortunate to be a very “green” member of the crew, my first time sailing on a barquentine.  Other vessels passed and overtook us, and I’m including those fotos here in hopes that anyone aboard these other vessels who photographed us might be willing to share those shots of Gazela.  Please do.

Gazela departs through the Narrows under a drizzle;  precipitation had been off and on for three days, delaying departure by 48 hours.  (For pics, doubleclick enlarges.)

From midships, looking aft . . . notice the crew wearing foulies.

Tanker British Serenity overtakes us outside the Narrows.  By sunset, 10 hours later, we’d motorsailed off Atlantic City, surfing swells and getting soaked with on & off drizzle.

Skies clear overnight, giving us a just-past-full moon.   I stand a midnight–6 am watch from Cape May and up Delaware Bay.  This is sunrise.

After breakfast, I nap for an hour until a lurch awakens me.  “Must be someone’s wake,” I imagine, grab my camera, and go on deck.  I believe it was Amberjack, also headed up the Bay.

Astern, two vessels are catching up to us:  broad on the port beam were EPA-Bold and Vane Brothers Brandywine.

For info on what Bold is doing in Delaware Bay and its schedule for the rest of 2010, click here.

If you have Thursday morning fotos of Gazela, please get in touch.  I have additional Bold shots.

Doubleskin 141 looks formidable as it passes and

soon leaves us astern just

southeast of the PSEG power plants.  By the way, light was unfavorable to get fotos of the five wind turbines in Atlantic City.

Amsterdam-registered Suomigracht passes us.  For more Suomigracht shots, click here and here.

Austin Reinauer was anchored just south of the C & D Canal.

Near the Delaware Pennsylvania line, we cross paths with Aframax tanker Amalthea, which may or may not

have delivered Venezuelan crude.

Gazela was built in Setubal, Portugal;  as such, which language might you expect here?  A primary wood used is angelique.

A trip that begins in rain might end like this:  honey colored sunshine after a trip well done, this member of the crew a little less green.

If you were on any of the vessels above and have pics of Gazela, please get in touch.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Many thanks to the Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild and wonderful crew for the opportunity to sail.  If you are interested in volunteering, click here.  Gazela expects to be back up through the sixth boro once more this fall.

Random Traffic August 2010

Because of last night’s rain, you have one last chance to see “Seven Deadly Seas” TONIGHT at 8 pm.  Go early and catch this hard-to-replicate combination:  left to right Cape Race, Gazela, and Mary A. Whalen … as seen from the entrance to the Brooklyn Passenger Terminal in Red Hook.

Big doings also are happening for Pegasus, here with a happy tour group.  Pegasus and Lehigh Valley 79 will be docked in Brooklyn Bridge Park starting later this week.

Uh . . . shoes of future mariners?

Contemporary mariners work aboard such vessels as

JoAnne Reinauer III

and (right to left) Twin Tube— a supply boat–and CSL Atlas, cousin of my longlost Alice O.  By the way, Atlas brought in the beginnings of the upcoming winter’s supply of road salt .  . or was that table salt??

Colleen McAllister and other vessels labor away at the sisyphusian task of dredging.

R/V vessels like Blue Sea do their own research/education work.  Here RV Blue Sea is on the high and dry as a preparation for a new season.

Jay Michael frequents the sixth boro, and

in parting, this sloop (Margaret A ?)  passes a fuel barge.

Unfortunately, I missed yesterday’s lobsterboat races up in Portland, Maine, and I have to wait til 2011 to see them.  But you can still get to the 18th Annual Great North River (aka sixth boro) Tugboat Race on September 5.  See you there.

Tomorrow … yes … another few days’ gallivant.  Details later.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated:  Check out this Newtown Creek shipping post by Restless.