Combi Dock III & Peking Saga 3

No need for much language here.  I started these photos around 0830.  Despite some rain, conditions were ideal for this loading . . . or engulfing.

Here Dorothy J gently moves the antique barque foot by foot closer to Hamburg.

Combo-Dock III, the engulfer, lies in wait.

Robert IV assists when needed.

Without the zoom, I imagined the gentleman with the yellow helmet to stand by on the helm.

We have 20 meters and closing . . .

 

 

 

With big power on minuscule tolerances, Dorothy J eases her in.

 

 

 

The barque floats gently forward in the hold.

Lines to capstans on the heavy lift ship are doing the work, as the tugs stand by until released from service.

 

 

 

 

 

Peking is now engulfed.  Time is about 1130.  Operations to make fast and secure now begin before they head out into the Atlantic for Germany.

Many thanks to Jonathan Kabak and Jonathan Boulware for the floating platform.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp, who is thrilled to have seen this today.

Wavertree Returns 2

Who else greeted Wavertree on the rest of the way home?  John J. Harvey is always in on celebrations.

Lettie G. Howard was there,

as was the helicopter.  Feehan presented herself on the far side of Rae.

Pioneer accounted for

herself with crew in the crosstrees.

Pioneer and Lettie teamed up at times.

Wire showed up.

New York Harbor School had two boats there, including Privateer and their

newest vessel Virginia Maitland Sachs, about which I’ll post soon.

Melvillian throngs came down to the “extremest limit of land” on Pier 15 and 16, for one reason or another, but who were about to be treated to some excellent ship handling.

Rae took the lead, showing the need for tugboats of all sizes.

 

The larger tugs pushed and pulled as needed to ease into the slip

 

until all lines were fast and

and the shoreside work needed doing.

Bravo to all involved.  If you want to take part in a toast to Wavertree, you can buy tickets here for the September 29 evening.

If you haven’t read the NYTimes article by James Barron yet, click here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes I left no one out and who as before is grateful to the South Street Seaport Museum and the photographers’ boat provided by US Merchant Marine Academy and crewed by a set of dedicated cadets.

Often folks ask how one can learn about the harbor or is there a book about the sixth boro.  Volunteering at South Street Seaport Museum is a great way available to all to get access to the water, to learn from like-minded folks, and to start on a journey of reading the harbor and its traffic for yourself.  Each volunteer’s journey will be unique, and willing hands make institutions like this museum survive and thrive.

Wavertree at Caddell Dry Dock 5

As a review, here and here were the posts I did on Wavertree going TO Caddell 11 months ago, and here is the series 1 through 4 focusing on Wavertree AT Caddell’s.

Below was she on March 10.  While I was away, she was refloated.

Below is March 19.  To my surprise, the masts had been unstepped.

And below was yesterday, April 17, the day when Executive Director of South Street Seaport Museum, Jonathan Boulware,  conducted a tour of the work in progress.  Any errors in this reportage are due to my having forgotten my pen and pad.

Since the masts–at up to 20 tons each, if I heard that right–were unstepped, their cleanup and refurbishment has begun.

A house has been built over the whaleback stern to protect the interior spaces.  There is some beautiful birdseye maple panelling in there.

 

 

The underside of the whaleback shows the details of work already completed.

 

This is the interior of the upper stern, looking to starboard.

Access to the cargo areas during the tour was forward.

I’m eager to see what work gets done to the bowsprit. Check out this post (and scroll) from many years ago when Frank Hanavan and I put fresh paint on that bowsprit.

This is a new deck . . . the tweendeck.  If you’ve ever eaten on Moshulu in Philadelphia, the restaurant is in this space.

Wavertree had a tweendeck back in 1895, when she called briefly in the sixth boro, which you can read about here (scroll).  In the photo below, you are looking through a hatch in the tweendeck down into the main cargo hold.

And here is the main payload space, the cathedral of cargo, looking toward the stern.  On a modern vessel, this would be divided into watertight compartments.

I can’t say this is the manufacturer, but this is the concept–as I understand it–for this ballast.

Mainmast will be restepped here.

Here Jonathan explains the spar work.

 

 

When the project is completed, all these spars will be aloft and potentially functional.

 

This cross section of a spar shows the lamination of the wood.  Some of these products are provided–I believe–by Unalam.

 

Here are some of the finer spars, along

with the directions for re-assembly.

Work going on in the rigging shed included stripping  off the old coatings and recovering the high quality old wire of the standing rigging.

Worming, parcelling, and serving protects the wire and produces such sweet smells of pine tar.

Many thanks to South Street Seaport Museum for offering this work progress tour.   Any errors here are unintentional and mine.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who thinks anyone who hasn’t read A Dream of Tall Ships by the late great Peter Stanford would really enjoy the saga of Wavertree‘s arrival in the sixth boro as told in that book.