From the Line Locker 32

I just happened to look at the August 2014 section of the archive, and this was the engine room at that time of the living, breathing tugboat Urger.

The top photo shows the Atlas-Imperial fore-to-aft along the portside, and below, it’s the opposite . . .  starboard side aft-to-fore.

Below is that same view as above, except with a tighter frame on the top of the engine.  On my YouTube channel here,   are several videos of this engine running and Urger underway. 

Below from early September 2015 are three NYS Canals boats, l to r, Tender #3, Gov. Cleveland, and Urger. . . .  all old and in jeopardy.

At that same 2015 Tugboat Roundup that precipitated the photo above, notice the juxtaposition of old and new:  passing in front of the 1914 Lehigh Valley 79 is

Solar Sal, which a month later would earn distinction as the first solar vessel to transit the canal from Buffalo to the Hudson with four tons of cargo, as a demonstration of its potential. Solar Sal‘s builder was David Borton, whose website has all the info on his designs for marine solar power.

A story I’d missed until looking something else up yesterday was David Borton’s 2021 adventure, sailing on solar in Alaskan waters.

And that brings this zig-zag post to another story linking the Canal and Alaska. 

Last August Pilgrim made its way through New York State to the Great Lakes and eventually overwintered in Duluth. I took photos above and below on August 1, 2020.

Earlier this summer, Pilgrim was loaded on a gooseneck trailer

so that it could transit the continent

along the Interstates to the Salish Sea.   As of last week they’d made Ketchikan, and their next stop will be Kodiak Island.  Eventually they clear customs and their next stop will be Russia.

All photos except the last three, WVD.  Pilgrim photos attributed to Sergey Sinelnik.

The Waterfront Museum in Lehigh Valley 79 is now home to a high-res livestream harbor cam aimed from Red Hook;  check it out here.

 

 

Canal Countdown T – 23

T minus 23 days,  that is, for all of us who remember the early days of NASA  . .  . 23 days until the NYS Canals open soon after sunrise on May 21.  If you have the opportunity, get yourself to one of the portals and see the excitement.

At several intervals before then, I will post countdown photos of NYS Canals boats;  all photos of old boats they are, ones that require lots of maintenance, but many folks find them beautiful and desire they be kept in some functioning condition, like old horses put out to clover, not the glue factory.   All these photos I took during the 2014 season, when I worked on the canal.  I won’t include a lot of text here;  besides time constraints, I’ve already included such info in previous posts and years.  Also, let me introduce a new archive, an ongoing project by a young, active Great Lakes mariner. See it here, and the root site is here.

June 2014 in Little Falls, day one of my employment, I waited on the wall for the 1901 Urger. That’s a Quarters Barge #14 (QB14) to the right, a  lodging afloat for canal workers assigned to projects far from home. I slept in the quarters on Urger.

Seneca escorted a tender across Oneida Lake and has arrived at the east end, Sylvan Beach.

Urger here passes Governor Cleveland in a previously unpublished photo.

Syracuse here near the Oswego portal illustrates

the NYS Canals connection with the Great Lakes.  This can be and is a portal to the Gulfs of Mexico and Saint Lawrence, and thence to all the watery parts of the planet. 

Derrick Barge (DB) 4 here transfers dredge spoils from a scow to a bank needing bolstering;  in the distance you can see the beauty of rural Mohawk Valley.

Tender #6, here near Albion, can no longer be seen unless you’re breathing air from a regulator 80′ down 2.5 miles off Shinnecock, a very distant corner of NYS.

Heading for the western end of the canal in Tonawanda,  the aptly named DeWitt Clinton chugs along with purpose between Medina and Middleport.

Pittsford here stands by an ancient scow on another bank near the Rochester suburb of  . . . Pittsford.

All photos, WVD, who has many more to share before the canal opens.  I’ll avoid replication as best I can.

If you want to see more of the canal now, check out my April 2020 covid project, a virtual tour, here.

 

 

GHP&W 29

or I can call this Port of Albany 2, or better still Ports of Albany and Rensselaer.  Albany’s fireboat Marine 1 has been on this blog here.  Anyone know where it was built?

The port has not one but . . .

but two large cranes.

And bulk cargo is transferred through the port in both directions, whether it be solid or

dusty.

Over on the Rensselaer side, scrap seems to be a huge mover.

 

North of Port Albany is USS Slater, about which lots of posts can be found here.  But it’s never occurred to me until now that the colors used by Slater camouflage and NYS Marine Highway are a very similar gray and blue!

Kathleen Turecamo (1968) has been in this port–135 miles inland–for as long as I’ve been paying attention, which is only a little over a decade.

This September, NYS Canal Corp’s Tender #3, which probably dates from the 1930s, traveled south to the ports of Albany and Rensselaer.

The port is also a vital petroleum center, both inbound and out.

 

With the container train traffic along the the Hudson and the Erie Canal, I’m only less surprised than otherwise that Albany-Rensselaer currently is not a container port.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Here’s general info about the Port of Albany, although a lot of info there seems a bit out of date.  For a blog that visits visits the ports of Albany and Rensselaer more regularly, check here.   Here’s the port of Albany website.

And last but not least, check Mark Woody Woods’ broad sampling of ships heading to and from Albany-Rensselaer.

 

Frances 2

Here was the first in the series from late in August this year.  Of course this tug with its earlier, longer name has been here many times before.

The point of this post is to profile the mobility of the world afloat . . . people, cargoes, movers . . .  Here was Frances in Waterford early morning Saturday, September 12.  Note Lehigh Valley 79 down the way.

The next two photos come thanks to Glenn Raymo, who lives and takes some great photos up by Poughkeepsie.  Late Monday afternoon–September 14– he caught not only Frances but also the hitchhiking barge Lehigh Valley 79 southbound, along with several scows of crushed stone.  I guess all barges hike hitches, technically.

Here the “tow” passes Mariner’s on the Hudson, in Highland, NY, where Jeff Anzevino keeps his photo platform.

The following morning I caught this photo of Frances over in front of Bayonne.  By now, Lehigh Valley 79 had been returned to its place over in Red Hook Brooklyn.

From the Erie Canal, where some of the Frances crew may have taken part in the line toss,  to New York City’s sixth boro in a couple days .  . this is a water world.  And what makes it even more remarkable,

a versatile tug like Frances could–if there was a compelling reason to do so, traverse the Erie Canal and head into the huge north coast area we call the Great Lakes Basin.

 

Thanks to Glenn Raymo for the two photos above;  all others by Will Van Dorp.