Columbia River Commerce 2

I’ve been fortunate to see the Columbia and do posts like this and this.  But equally fortunate is the fact Seth Tane lives there and periodically passes along photos like the ones below, Fennica, along with sister Nordica,  in Portland about a month ago. Fennica appeared here once six years ago in photos from Sea Bart, showing the Finnish icebreaker at work in the North Sea oil patch.

Fennica, as Seth noticed, was carrying a “capping stack,” the yellow object hanging from the red frame on Fennica‘s stern.  Fr the difference between a capping stack and a blow-out preventer, click here.

Also, notice the shape of the hull in the photo below, especially the widening flair about midships. In the weeks since Seth took these photos, the icebreakers headed out to Dutch Harbor, AK, and toward the Chukchi Sea, where in the past few days a hull fracture has been found.  To be followed.

Below is oceanographic research vessel Kilo Moana (T-AGOR-26), also in Portland.

Also this spring .  .  . Global Sentinel was on the Columbia, although she’s currently off the Oregon coast.

Many thanks to Seth Tane for these photos.

Road Fotos 32

Catching up on old business . . . the vintage sixth boro NYC fotos in yesterday’s post come compliments of Seth Tane, currently living in Portland, Oregon but a working resident on New York waters 30 years ago.  Tugster will feature more of those fotos in upcoming posts to illustrate the dramatic change that three decades have brought both on the water and along its margins.

I hope that anyone having similar images of waters and waterfronts will volunteer them into the public domain, either on tugster or on any other site.

Click here for Seth’s site–also linked below to the left–and here for a Portland media review of a show his work participated in recently.

Below is reserve Portland fireboat Campbell, launched 1927.

The next few fotos show vessels on the only recent rainless day at Swan Island on the Willamette.  In the drydock is USNS John Ericsson T-AO-194, named for the one-time NYC engineer and inventor.

Nearby were DoD vessels Pacific Collector  (in its third life after launch in 1970) and Pacific Tracker (in its third life after launch in 1965).

I’d like to know more about this drydock, but it’s clearly built on three re-purposed identical hulls.  I couldn’t identify the tug in the drydock.

Backing up the channel here is CS Tyco Dependable, a cable ship.

Later, Dependable was ensconced beside Global Sentinel, another cable ship.   Click here for Tyco’s fleet.

And here’s a mystery vessel looking for identification . . . at least 130′ long–I think–and just downstream from the St. John’s Bridge.  I saw no name or number anywhere.  Might it be an LT like Bloxom–cover vessel on documentary Graves of Arthur Kill–launched out of West Virginia in 1943 and 44?

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s physically returned from the wet coast.