Retro Sixth Boro 29

August can be hazy, and it appears that some August days in 2010 were, as below when Colleen McAllister towed dredge spoils scow GL 501 out and Brendan Turecamo (?) moved Bouchard barge B.No. 260 westbound in the Kills.  Colleen has now traveled from sun to ice out to the Great Lakes, where the 1967 4300 hp tug is currently laid up.   Brendan is alive and well and working in the sixth boro.

Kimberly Poling, then in a slightly different livery than now,  pushed Noelle Cutler in the same direction.  Both still work the waters in and out of the sixth boro.

These days I just don’t spend much time near the sixth boro at dusk, but here Aegean Sea pushes a barge northbound in the Upper Bay.  Aegean now works the Massachusetts coast, and I recall she’s made at least one trip back to the Hudson since 2013.

On a jaunt on the lower Delaware, I caught Madeline easing the bow of Delta Ocean into a dock.  The 2008 4200 hp Gladding Hearn tug is still working in the Wilmington DE area. Delta Ocean, a 2010 crude carrier at 157444 dwt, almost qualifies as a VLCC. She’s currently in Singapore.

Madeline is assisted here by Lindsey, the 60′ 1989 Gladding Hearn z-drive boat rated at 2760 hp.

Duty towed a barge downstream near Wilmington.

Recently she has sold to South Puerto Rico Towing and Boat Services, where the 3000 hp tug is now called Nydia P.  I’d love to see her in SPRT mustard and red colors.

I traveled from the sixth boro to Philadelphia as crew on 1901 three-masted barkentine Gazela.  In upper Delaware Bay, we were overtaken by US EPA Bold and Brandywine pushing barge Double Skin 141.  Gazela, like other mostly volunteer-maintained vessels, is quiet now due to covid, but check out their FB page at Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild.   US EPA Bold, now flying the flag of Vanuatu and called Bold Explorer, is southwest of Victoria BC on the Salish Sea. She was built in 1989 as USNS Bold.  Brandywine, a 2006 6000 hp product of Marinette WI, has today just departed Savanna GA.

Getting this photo of the barkentine, and myself if you enlarge it, was a feat of coincidence and almost-instant networking, the story I’ll not tell here.

On a trip inland, I caught Tender #1 pushing an ancient barge through lock E-28B.  I believe Tender #1 is still in service.

From a beach in Coney Island one morning, I caught Edith Thornton towing a barge into Jamaica Bay on very short gatelines.  Edith is a 104′ x 26 1951-built Reading RR tug that passed through many hands.  currently it’s Chassidy, working out of Trinidad and Tobago.

Here’s another version I shot that morning. For even more, click here.

The mighty Brangus assisted dredge Florida.  Back in those days, the channels of the sixth boro were being deepened to allow today’s ULCVs–like CMA CGM T.Jefferson— to serve the sixth boro.  If I’m not mistaken, Brangus has been a GLDD tug since it was built in 1965. Currently she’s in the Elizabeth River in VA.

Here she tends the shear leg portion of a GLDD dredging job.  See the cutterhead to the left of the helmeted crew?

On another hazy day, a light Heron heads for the Kills.  The 1968-built 106′ x 30′ tug rated at 3200 hp was sold to Nigerian interests in 2012.   I’d love to see her in her current livery and context.

Java Sea resurfaced in Seattle as part of the Boyer fleet and now called Kinani H, seen here on tugster just a month ago.    The 110′ x 32′ tug was launched in 1981 as Patriot.

And finally . . . probably the only time I saw her, crewboat Alert.  She appears to be a Reinauer vessel.

All photos, WVD, from August 2010.  If you want to see an unusual tugster post from that month, click here.

For some unusual August 2010 posts, click here.

 

 

Coexistence 4

Where I’m steering  here most corresponds to the second post in this series, Coexistence 2.  On an ideal day, all traffic gets along, sorts itself out.  Big steel and small steel keep clear of one another, again

and again, no matter what the direction or

cargo or time of hitch or

commercial alliance or lack thereof, or

speed for whatever the purpose . . . understandings get articulated, negotiated, and agreed upon.

But then without warning and from out of nowhere, the wild jumps

in.  The beast, driven by terror of the predator and the mindless urge to mate, dives in

as members of its species have for millenia.  Some have always made it, wild and unfettered.  But now the environment has

changed;  rules and conditions altered.   And intervention happens or

doesn’t.

Many thanks to Bill Bensen for the three fotos of the deer.  For the record, Bill took these fotos about three weeks ago although it may be the same buck that jumped in this week.  For more of Bill’s fotos of animals of the harbor, click here.

Other fotos by Will Van Dorp.  Info on the vessels in the fotos:  Foto 1: Bro Albert is a Maersk product tanker with an unidentified McAllister tug in the distance.  Foto 2:  Marie J. Turecamo and Kimberly Turecamo pirouette parcel tanker Stolt Vanguard out to sea.  Foto 3:  from near to far, Taft Beach, Captain D, and ATB Pati R. Moran moves the barge Charleston with assist from an unidentified Moran tug.  Foto 4:  near to far is Davis Sea and Java Sea.

Related:  I included the tug Dolphin above as an attempt to broaden the term, given  Bowsprite’s recent treat (treatise?) on inanimate harbor “animal” life.

Lil Rip

Reference “Random Tugs 44.”  The first time I saw Lil Rip, I didn’t even take a foto: I was in the Feeney yard on the Rondout, steady rain was creating lots of mud,  and the only parts of Lil Rip visible to me was the house and name.  But that was enough to intrigue me.  Months later, I spotted it a second time:  also in the Rondout dwarfed by almost 80′ of air draft on Java Sea.

On this September afternoon, I took only a few shots before I wrapped my camera in plastic.

A month later, third time to spot Lil Rip, October light and a fresh coat of paint . . . conditions could not have been better.   Wow!  I shot as many fotos as my shore office would allow, homing in on some details like the twin exhausts port side and

and single to starboard.

I put up some preliminary fotos and a question a week ago, and have since learned more, which I’m thrilled to share.  Example:  Three exhausts ventilate three engines, three GM12V-71 engines that generate 1500 hp and spin three screws.  I’d love to see her on the hard now.

Part of Lil Rip began as a 52′ section of Liberty ship being scrapped at the scrap yard of John and Violet Reich.  For a name, they called her Jovi II, combining the first two letters of John and Violet’s names.  Jovi II replaced a smaller boat, Jovi.  Does Jovi still exist?  Jovi II‘s twin engines generated just under 500 hp and moved scrap scows up and down the Hudson.

Thomas J. Feeney Enterprises purchaed Jovi II in the early 1980s, repowered and outfitted with bunk room, galley and new pilothouse.  The new name Little Ripper eventually changed to a more manageable Lil Rip.  For some time Lil Rip moved stone scows in the river, but today is used mostly to shift vessels around the yard, with an occasional river tow to Albany or New York, which is where

I spotted her last week, leading to my learning all this new info.  And adopting another favorite from upriver:  Kingston and the Rondout are home to so many interesting vessels.  I’ll take a risk (of leaving someone out) and list them:  Cornell, now all-gray Hackensack, Spooky Boat, Hestia, 1956 Gowanus Bay (former ST 2201 and a major character in Jessica Dulong’s My River Chronicles, 1881 tug Elise Ann Conners, and PT728.    Who did I omit?  The Rondout is a must-visit creek if you’re nearby.

Is Lil Rip the only triple screw on the Hudson?  Is anyone willing to share a foto  of Jovi II?

Thanks to Tim Feeney and Harold Tartell for some of this information.  All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated:  a hearty tugster salute to engineer Tommy Bryceland, working the North Sea aboard Svitzer Milford.  Send me some news and fotos from your part of the waters, Tommy.

Random Tugs 29

Today at play in the KVK today between the snow flurries I met Danielle M Bouchard, 150′ loa and 10,000 hp . . . the largest of the Bouchard fleet and –I believe–the highest-horsepower tug churning up the sixth boro waters as of now.  Ernie G’s flickr foto shows the size of the “pin” relative to a human.  Also there were

Alexandra . . . 118′ loa and 4000 hp, the largest along with Thomas of the Weeks Marine fleet,

Java Sea at 110′ loa and 4800 hp,

Linda Moran,  who barely escaped the conflagration, at 116′ (although she doesn’t look it) and 5100 hp,

Atlantic Coast, 104′ and 3000 hp of Dann Marine Towing.

And there was more, but an empty thermos and howling wind spoke to me.

Unrelated  . . . crime pays.  Here’s a Reuters article on the practice of paying ransom to Somali pirates.  Now when people are taken hostage, governments generally say they won’t deal with terrorists, but with respect to shipping, a different script seems to exist.  This slide show from Yahoo puts interesting faces on the story.

The Second Barbary War almost 200 years ago ended with an agreement to stop paying such ransoms.

Photos, WVD.

Random Tugs 27

Hoboken, 43′ loa, and never been anything but Hoboken living on Frank Sinatra Drive, launched 1963;

Meredith C. Reinauer, a pin boat since launch in 2002, 123′ loa;

Megan McAllister, ex-Arthur F. Zeman Jr., 77′ loa, launched 1985;

Penn No. 4, ex-Morania No. 4, 1973 and 120′ loa;

Penobscot, ex-Wm J. McPhillips, 99′ loa, launched 1959, and registered in Boothbay;

After bunkering Nowegian Dawn, here’s Solomon Sea, ex-Brandon C. Roehrig and Diane E. Roehrig, 89′ loa and 1964;

Paul T. Moran, 138′ loa and since 1975 dba Ocean Venture, S/R Golden State, Exxon Golden State, and Eliska;

and Java Sea, ex-Patriot, 1981 and 110′

and the oldest is . . .  Penobscot.  What?  I already said that?  Just back from self-assigned project weekend.  Details will follow.  Welcome back too–you know who yous are.

Photos, WVD.

People on the Boro 5

See the guy in orange, lost in the piping of Pacific Pearl, invisible really in the port, certainly not getting home very often unless he considers “the watery part of the world” his home . . .

The deckhand on Amy C., standing beside the hieroglyphics on the ship’s hull, possibly gets home half a month each month.

The tankerman might be on the same schedule.

After winter and between rains, crew becomes less invisible and enjoy warm sunny days that might seem timeless

and detached from land although cell phones can be blessing and curse here as anywhere.

I’m guessing this crewman on tower of Java Sea has a fotografy habit like me.

Learn a new word “forehanded” here from Kennebeccaptain. The word is new to me although the concept I get.

Photos, WVD.