BW2M b

BW2M, being “backwards to Montreal” and here, it’s aggregate land.  Once it was about coal and brick coming down river and into the systems…. long before my time…. but today it’s earth products moving both ways.

You can’t have the supertall buildings of 57th etc. or the new streets and bridges without rock.

Frances stands by as the crushed Catskill is conveyed in.

 

Two loaded Witte barges wait for a prime mover

 

with what appears to be slightly different cargoes.

Meanwhile, Mister Jim pushes a barge load of sand upriver for projects there.

I’m not sure the function of this equipment.

Doesn’t this look like southern New Jersey sand?

Cement moves out and

down bound, while

salt comes upriver to nearly salt country from the ocean.

Later, Frances arrives in the sixth boro with barges from two different locations for materials for projects in the dryland boros

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes he got all of that right.

 

Lights Near Bear Mountain Bridge

Crossing Bear Mountain Bridge the other afternoon–it’s December–I saw this light for the first time.

A bit later on the east side of the River, I pulled off at the “scenic overlook” because I knew this tug and barge were approaching, southbound.  See the same star near the ridge line, directly above the flat snow-covered roof to the right of the lights around the skating rink?

Here the unit–Morton S. Bouchard Jr. and (I think) B. No. 210–pass between Iona Island and the east side of the Hudson.  I’m guessing the buildings on the island date from its time as a US Navy ammunition facility.

 

This angle provides a good view of the barge notch into which the tug fits.

And if I had not yet seen enough lights, a northbound freight came around Jones Point, the edge of Dunderberg Mountain.  Fifty years ago, the Hudson River Reserve Fleet aka ghost ships stretched from there southward.  Here and here are posts I’ve done about the ghost fleet.  Washington Irving also wove the landscape into his tales inspired by that very landscape.

I took the photo below in August 2017 of Perkins Memorial Tower, a CCC project atop Bear Mountain but not visible the other afternoon from my vantage point.

Below is a photo I took of Morton S. Bouchard Jr. last week at the Bayonne Bridge.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

 

12 Riverbank Landmarks

Framed by the new towers at Hudson Yards, this is NYC of an era, but still visible today, and the best vantage point is, of course, the water.  The Empire State Building and the New Yorker Hotel were completed within a year of each other.  One of these days I need to make time to walk through the lobby.

Skipping over a lot south of the TZ Bridge, here’s the North River Shipyard in Nyack. Nope, I haven’t been there either.  Anyone know which Circleline boat that is?  And there is Kenny G, the blue tug I haven’t seen in quite a few years.

Just north of the shipyard there’s a pink house and this green house.  Nope, I don’t know anything more about wither the pink or the green.  In fact, the pink defied my camera’s attempt to capture the color my eyes saw.

I took this photo of Boscobel because previously I tried in summer, and the foliage screened off most of it. Now it’s visible dead ahead if you’re northbound about to enter the S-turn at West Point.

Just south of the Tilcon quarry, Kagyu Thubten Chöling Monastery stupa sits high on the bank.  Again, negative on visiting either of those places.

The next two photos . . . they’re impressive domiciles, but I don’t know anything more about them, although I can report that

both are located on the west side of the river.

Fred and Louise Vanderbilt had McKim, Mead, and White design this edifice.  And yes,

I have been on the grounds here, where I took this photo last winter.

Built around the same time and situated a little farther north, this is the Mills Mansion.  

And the last edifice for this stretch of river, it’s Wilderstein, built a half century before the McKim, Mead, and White mansions just a few miles south.

And I couldn’t pass this up, Esopus Meadows Light here juxtaposed with Wilderstein.   And this suggests that it’s time for another “bright lights” post.

There’s also much more on the banks of the Hudson north of the Rondout to investigate now that  the leaves are mostly down.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who did previous riverbanks posts here and landmarks here.

 

 

How to Swim FROM a Tugboat

You may have seen this foto sequence yesterday of Orlando Duque diving from a helicopter near the Statue of Liberty?  Well . .  more on the foto below later in this post, but the diver here is in fact she who inspired my post today by her instructions on how to swim from a schooner . . . a few years back.

If you’ve looked at bowsprite’s link above, you’ll notice that my instructions begin differently.

1.  Choose your location, and few locations are as enticing to me as the Hudson north of the Bear Mountain Bridge, where I hiked a few months back.

2.  Select a tugboat.  Buchanan 12, here managing eight stone scows just below Breakneck Ridge,  is photogenic but absolutely the wrong choice for this.

Nor should you choose Kimberly Poling, here headed southbound on the Hudson in the same bends.

Patty Nolan, however, fits the specs perfectly.  You may remember Patty here  from a few years back looking just a little different and facing a dilemma.

3.  Here’s where I concur with bowsprite’s first item:  find a captain who will let you off the boat.    We did.  The dock worker here belongs to the blue-hatted union.

And off we go in search of an anchorage.  Now I know that since contemporary life comes with an infinite lists of troubles and limitations,  to relax . . . and celebrate life  . . . you gotta do it!

The mature days of summer demand celebration.

4.  Anchor in a safe location.  Bannerman, haunting in springtime, seems more welcoming in late summer.

5.  Check the equipment.  Will Patty the figure figure be enticed to come up out of her cabin by this gold lamé?

6.  Set up the sturgeoncam

and deploy

the crane.

7.  Swim . . . without the strap or

or with, in a variety of entrance styles.

8.  Board the boat when the day is done . . . if you can figure out how.  I need to work on that one.  Or sturgeoncam here might have to swim down the Hudson . . . .  In late summer, that’s not a bad option.

Would you believe this waterspotted lens proves I followed Patty and crew all the way back to Bear Mountain?

Do you think I’d conclude this post without a video of tugster swinging from the crane?  Click on the foto to see.

Don’t let Labor Day find you without a Hudson River dip in your experience.

By the way, from the local paper, one of my favorite weekly columns,  twelve places you should also visit in the Hudson Valley. 

Random Tugs 60

Need sunglasses for this drama on the Hudson?   “Random” means … spotted  in a plethora of places, like Elizabeth, passing the Hudson waterfront at dusk with a barged Weeks crane 532 in tow.  Note the Crow or Cheyenne in push gear with barge on the far left.

Paul T Moran at Gulf Marine Repair in Tampa.  Not to be insensitive to customary modes of dress, but–as east river pointed out– doesn’t this vaguely like a burka or abaya from the eyes down on the tug?

Justine McAllister pulling a light RTC 120 south of Catskill.

Atlantic Coast pushing Cement Transporter 5300 south of –you guessed it–Cementon, NY.

Meredith C. Reinauer pushing a loaded RTC 150 toward the Highlands.   By the way, if you’re looking for a fun read, try the novel by T. C. Boyle called World’s End . . . my current source of chuckles.

Sea Hawk in Brooklyn Navy Yard last June appearing tied up to sludge tanker North River.

Connecticut (1959?) crosses the Sound north to south.

That’s it for now.  Thanks to Deb DePeyster (who previous contributed to this) for the foto of Elizabeth,  and to eastriver for the foto of Paul T Moran.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

What Rip Saw 2

A year ago, I wrote here about my following in Rip van Winkle‘s footsteps, hiking to the summits in search of the ghosts with the keg of purple magic liquor.  This post stays at river level, where sights appear like a 50’ Issuma hustling along with only slightly-shorter  Rosemary Ruth on the hip.   By the way, notice Issuma’s homeport Whitehorse:  “issuma” is the Inuktitut word for knowledge, idea, wisdom or mind.

Before the river was called “hudson” it was called “mohican knee took,” if I might spell it out that way.  It’s still a place of magic, visual charm here as Cynthia Pioneer heads north past Rondout Light.

Hudson River or not, Allyson Ann is a genuine Beals Island lobster boat, a charming apparition that can sweeten anyone’s day or night.

Atlantic Coast pushes building material south, material quarried from holes obscured in the distance midlevels by suspicious looking clouds.

Saugerties Light lies below the high peaks, a B & B where you can reserve a room if you dare;  whatever would it be like to sleep straight through here for 20 years.

GDM 264 is a specialty you’ll not often see . . . a cement suction barge.

The river banks this time of year possess themselves and you with a few days of natural alchemy, which

draws you in with wondrous ruins.  More on the gift of ruins soon.

For a short intro to Hudson Valley legends and place-name explanations, click here.

But if you can, get out and dance to the fall splendor before its music ceases for a year.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who has abstained from from Rip’s purple magic liquor . . . and had an extra cup of coffee instead.