Retro Sixth Boro NYC Tugboat Races 5

Call this “thanks to Steve Munoz 20:  the 9th Annual North River Tugboat Race September 2, 2001.”   As Steve writes,  “The tug race on 9/2/2001 was  nine days before 9/11/2001. I was on board the tug Janet M McAllister for the race. My son was on board a Seabulk oil tanker docked in Bayonne and he could see the Twin Towers from his cabin porthole. As the tug headed up the Upper Bay I was going to take a picture of the Twin Towers and decided not to since I had so many already. Little did I, or anyone else, know that they would not exist nine days later. I wish I had taken a picture.

[Participating] include tugs McAllister Bros, Janet M McAllister, Empire State, J George Betz, Mary L McAllister, Irish Sea, Dory Barker, Powhatan, Dace Reinauer, Beaufort Sea, Resolute, Growler, Z-TWO, Janice Ann Reinauer, Katherine, Amy C McAllister, James Turecamo, Kathleen Turecamo, Emil P Johannsen;  also, includes fireboats John D McKean, John J Harvey.

I’ll not identify all the boats here.  As you know, some of these boats, like Dace Reinauer, look quite different now. Also, many boats here, like Janet D. McAllister and Powhatan,  are no longer in the sixth boro,

Z-Two is now Erin McAllister, and in Providence RI.

Emil P. Johannsen is laid up, I believe,

in Verplanck NY.

 

Beaufort Sea has been scrapped.

There were tugboats to port and

tugboats PLUS a fireboat to starboard.  Two things here:  I love the water thrusters deployed from Z-Two.  And Powhatan is now a commissioned Turkish naval vessel known as TCG Inebolu;  as such it was involved a month ago in the tow of a Bangladeshi corvette, BNS Bijoy, which had been damaged in the explosion in Beirut harbor.

 

 

 

Again, many thanks to Steve Munoz for taking us back to September 2, 2001 with these photos.

A different series of tugboat races happened decades earlier, as attested here.  An indicator of how different the world then was is the fact that back then, a rowing contest was included, and crews of ships in port took part.  Those days of break-bulk cargo had ships in port for much longer periods of time,  and “port” included places along the Hudson.

 

NYC Tugboat Race 2015

Bravo to the organizers and participants of the 2015 NYC race.  It starts with a muster…

L to r:  Catherine Miller, Robert E. McAllister, Eric R. Thornton, Mister T, Buchanan 1, and Buchanan 12

which looks  different as you shift perspective.

Add Red Hook and Sarah Ann, with a jet ski for scale.

 

Add Thomas Witte.

 

Take a close up on Mister T with John J. Harvey in the distance.

It’s great to see race newcomers like Sea Scout Ship 243 out of Rahway NJ, and

Patricia.

By this point, some boats like Robert E. McAllister start to get impatient.

Muster then turns into a procession,  filing straight toward the starting line and

 

showing the colors

as some newcomers catch up.

James William used to be a Moran boat.

Next stage . . . it’s the tension on the starting line, feet digging into the starting blocks and muscles tensing, sort of.

There are 11 boats here, including Margot pushing a set of rock barges and not racing.

They’re off!

and water starts to cascade away from the bows…

froth by the ton.

 

But when the quick minutes of the race have elapsed, the first boat down the course is the impatient Robert E. McAllister.

And almost as in a triathlon, the dash down the course changes and the pushing starts.

 

All manner of paired struggle ensues.

 

And we need to leave.  All photos here by Will Van Dorp, with thanks to Bjoern and crew for my ride.

City of Water Day 2014

Here was my post two years ago, and here are some photos I took on and around the first CoWD.     Peter Stanford, several decades back, organized an annual Sea Day, which I think is a better name.  Squint your eyes looking at the photo below and you almost imagine a planet of water.   Almost, right?

I’m happy that summer and winter brings sightseers onto the water using these vessels.

Squint again and from this perspective the boro of Manhattan looks a bit like the bow of a vessel, WTC1 being the stem post.  Fireboat Harvey and the rowboat are much near New Jersey, though, than the city of NYC.

It’s the city of Hoboken water day?

It’s actually the sixth boro water day . . . with land activities on boros, islands, and cities in a neighboring state.   Below, it’s Village Community Boathouse rowers past Pier A.

Meanwhile, in the midst of it all, work goes on along the front of the inimitable Manhattan skyline, Sassafras here with DoubleSkin 39.

And here as the day starts, the iconic Pegasus  . . . and crew  . . . reporting for duty, getting those who signed up for free tours on

the primordial boro.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who leaves with his red passport tomorrow for the north country.  Posting will happen when possible.