Retro Sixth Boro 44 A

Ten years ago, the lower Manhattan skyline looked quite different.  A vessel bringing orange juice from the southern hemisphere was also a smaller one;  the 1985 Orange Blossom last sailed into Alang six and a half years ago, and if you don’t know what that means, click on the Alang link.  As it turns out, I may have caught photos of her last voyage inbound  Port Newark here.     Orange Blossom 2 completes her most recent voyage today, arriving in Santos BR–read this link for some superlatives–after departing the sixth boro on November 13. 

I’d thought 1976 Barents Sea was a goner, a reef candidate, when I caught this photo of her running after a long hiatus, but she was thoroughly rehabbed and lives on as Atlantic Enterprise.

The 1970 Evening Tide below was nearly 40 years into her career with Bouchard;  she’s now a Stasinos boat but her superstructure still painted in this brilliant red.

Laura K Moran–launched 2008– was among the top horsepower assist tugs in the harbor then.  She currently works in Savannah.

The 1981 McKinley Sea is currently laid up, carrying Kirby livery.

Ice Base and I had a misunderstanding;  upon first seeing her and lacking at that time a smart phone with AIS, I read her name as something different that I can no longer un-see. She’s currently in the port of Quintero CL, 50 miles north of Valparaiso, with the less ambiguous name of Cabo San Vicente.

Back in those days I often took advantage of the walkway along the west side of the Bayonne Bridge, something I’ve not done with the new walkway.  Note the absolutely ship-shape Gramma Lee T Moran as seen from above assisting 

NYK Romulus with Margaret Moran standing by.   Margaret is still in our fair boro, Gramma Lee is in Baltimore, and NYK Romulus is currently in Southampton UK.

The 1973 Amy Moran has been sold out of the fleet, and was last in the Jacksonville FL area wearing Stasinos tan and green as John Joseph.

And tomorrow I’ll post a part B of December 2011 retrospective, building on the odd orange vessel shown below.

All photos from December 2011, WVD, who’s astonished by the amount of change in a decade.

 

 

Names 27

Here was 25.

Read those place names:  Shellsea, Rowboaten, Flushwick, Rikers Reef, and Yankee Aquarium.  Then there are landmasses like CUNY Island.  The map called NY Sea is the creation of Jeffrey Linn, an Urban Planner/Designer, focusing primarily on walkable communities and Safe Routes to School issues. He writes, “I do a lot of mapping and GIS in my career. These maps are a bit of a tangent, but I’ve always focused on how sea level rise will impact cities, so it fits in well with my urbanist background.  What got me interested in creating these maps is a fascination with how landscapes can change over time.”  Jeffrey adds that although it can be “depressing for some to look at the maps . . .  the place names help to lighten the mood.”

Click on the map itself for more of Jeffrey’s work.   I wonder what the sixth boro would look like if there map were extended about 40 miles in either direction.  I know Mount Mitchill (scroll) would be the high point of the area.  And as water levels rise, there may be a day like Seth Tane captures here in the subway . . .

For a similar treatment of San Francisco, click here.

And vessels currently or recently in the sixth boro . . . I wish I’d gotten a photo of Ernest Hemingway.

And this one . . . Ice Base, which I noticed the first time bowsprit one day when my imagination was working faster than my eyes, and I saw Ice BABE.    At least I though I did.  Well, previously I had seen and my camera still thinks it saw Surfer Rosa!

Then last week . .  I saw Charles Oxman venture into the Kills for the first time in ages with destination Casablanca.  Seriously, I thought it had been sold foreign!  In fact it was headed to the newly dubbed Rio Blanco, a fitting moniker for the frozen North River, which appears only briefly some years.

As I write this from just west of Murky City and Bergen Bar . . . I am grateful to Jeffrey Linn for use of his intriguing maps, another of which you can see here.

 

KVK Piquenique

All the events that follow actually happened;  watch the photographic evidence.  Before working this week one day, I had a rendezvous with Bowsprite along the KVK for spotting ships.  Like many folk especially along the sixth boro, Bowsprite and I can shapeshift.

Not seeing Bowsprite, I sat on a convenient rock to make fotos of a tanker.  My aging eyes read the name as  Ice Babe.

I turned to the east when I heard some friendly hissing;  how appropriate on this hazy day to see a haze-colored swan.

The swan swam on, and to my delight, I saw the bimonthly Brazilian orange juice tanker, Orange Wave.  Remember I told you about my drinking habit here?

Suddenly I sensed I was no longer alone on that rock;  Bowsprite had appeared . . . out of nowhere, it seemed.  She was alternately drawing Ice Babe (she insisted the name was Ice Base, and her eyes are better than mine), and brushing some KVK seaweed off her shoulder.  And where was that swan?

As Orange Wave neared, Bowsprite’s ever-moving brush started to transfer the juice vessel’s lines onto a page of her sketchbook.

The magic of the swan-white tanker, swooping bow like a curved neck,  gliding over the hazy bay . . . came swimmingly into her sketchbook.

HanJin Portland . . . when it arrived with its polychromatic deckload, the spell seemed broken.  Bowsprite suggested she’d walk me to the ferry.  Why didn’t she say . . .”let’s go to the ferry,” I wondered.

About a quarter mile from the ferry, she asked me to carry her sketchbook, then waded into the bay.  She distracted me my pointing to a strange sign inland.  When I turned back to her,

I saw only this swan.  It swam northward, and then took

flight.  With quickened step, I made for the

ferry.  And went to work.

Photos of or by WVD.