More Tilly

I had fotos of Tilly on this blog about six weeks ago here, and on a cold sixth boro day that threatens to get colder, I want to salute smart folks like Mike Knape who a) spent it in a warm place and b) sent me a set of fotos of this boat which had the good sense to travel south itself.

Tilly is from 1943 and built in Morris Heights in the Bronx at Consolidated Shipbuilding.  An online museum should be created with images of as many of Consolidated Shipbuilding products as photos can be located of.    For example, this one.    Morris Heights also produced some of these iceboats . . . to give a seasonally appropriate vessel for the sixth boro.

Here, here, and here I did some posts from the Conch Republic myself a few years ago, although I had the poor judgement to go there when upnorth was warm.  Next time I should make my way here when a walk on New York streets is incomplete without glances over my shoulder in case a pack of polar bears might be following.   Poor Fred up in Fort Edward is hunkered down in his boathouse with famished  Ursus maritimuses circling.

Mike . . . many thanks for passing along these fotos from a warm place.

Other Peoples Fotos 25

Here was 24.

It’s T’day, and one of many things I’m thankful for is readers who write back and send fotos like these.

First foto, it’s Tilly!  Stephen Freer sent this from Key West, where he seeks investors to get this 1943 vessel built in the sixth boro operating as a tug co-operative using waste vegetable oil for off-grid island fishing and farming co-ops.  He plans to equip a work-barge  with cast-off engines, bikes, and equipment for solar/wind/organic.  Tilly‘s crew are co-op shareholders.  Stephen says there’s some urgency to get her out of her current location.  You could use this blog to get in touch with Stephen.

The next three come from Frank Garvey, who wants folks to see “his” pretty docks in  Port Jefferson.

It’s Resolute and Evening Star.

Next, thanks to Jim Browne, this foto from two months ago,  9/20/2013 at Point Lookout, NY, headed east in Reynolds Channel just west of Sea Dog Creek.  Jim says the people he works with are still pulling  tons of Sandy-debris per week, and will be doing so for some time to come.  I’d love to know more about this “pastel-yellow”  tug.  Pastel yellow?  Might I need my color-correcting lenses replaced?

And finally, from a Captain Nemo working the holiday, this foto yesterday of Fiesta Mail from Port Everglades.  I’d never heard of this Bahamas-Florida vessel, Tianjin China-built 2002.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, how ever you spend the day.  I’m grateful for the naked bird in my kitchen somewhere in size between a plucked hummingbird and a yanked ostrich.

Many thanks to Stephen, Frank, Jim, and Nemo for these fotos.

And finally, Wendell sends along a business site.

Conch Republic 2

Wifi (why? fie!) issues have delayed this series, but let me begin this “better-late-than-never” post with some rhetorical questions.

If tugster sees a tug and doesn’t have his camera, did he REALLY see it?  I hereby claim to have looked up from snorkeling at Fort Zachary Taylor to spot Ocean Atlas and Ocean Wind . . . groaned about not having my camera . . . and then returned underwater to watch parrotfish, ballyhoo, grouper . . .

I visited the Mel Fisher Museum, but can you believe I missed the Miss Atocha Bikini contest . . .  @!@?  What would Captain de Lugo think about this?  And might Miss Patty Nolan participate one of these years?  Click here for some Patty Nolan history.

And I did hear about schooner Hindu . . . but will have to get fotos . . .  later.  For now, I present  Western Union and Jolly Rover.

Here Western Union headed out for a sunset sail . . . following the tender and two dolphins that JUST dove.

What these stats don’t say is that she was built FOR the cable company in 1939 and ran between Key West and Cuba.

I believe this is Yankee on the far side of Sunset Key, with crew in the rigging, like spiders.

This B & B named for Captain Cosgrove shows how contradictory some historical personages can be:  Coast Guard captain, sponger, and wrecker!!  I read this as “government servant, business person, and  . . . pirate.”

Fort Jefferson, a 35-meter National Parks Service vessel,  is part of a contract to deliver support to the Iraqi Navy . . . .   Am I reading something wrong here?

I haven’t found much more out than that Retriever is attached to Naval Air Station/Key West.

Another foto for the currently elusive  bowsprite:  a landing craft with a camper trailer on board . . . for how long?  And I’m not so sure I’d feel confidence in a boat named “Maybe.”

And a final shot for now . . . is this a production boat or a one-off?  Round . . . a water pod with at least one floor panel transparent . . . I failed to check if there was a propulsion unit anywhere.  Foto was taken at the east end of the Conch Republic . . . in Key Largo.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who has actually just returned, albeit haggard, to the sixth boro.

Conch Republic 1

In case you think life has slowed me down in Key West, you’re somewhat right, but it’s been only 97 here, cooler than some places in the US and as cool as it is for my brothers in the snow belt of upstate New York.

A guide here kept referring to this vessel as a “chug” although I thought he said “tug.”  Guess the story?  See end of post.

Chickens roam everywhere and constant need to cross roads here in the Conch Republic, a micronation with its own passport, coin, and more.  For a list of numerous other “micronations,” created as vehicles for agenda self-promotion, click here.    As the so-called mayor of the “sixth boro,”  I find the idea of declaring micronation status for the waters around NYC very exciting.  Feedback?

Foto of Nav/Air 38 for Rod of Narragansett Bay Shipping . . .   here in her usual setting.

Greetings to the crew of Yankee, built 1982 in Atlantic City.  More Key West schooners . . . soon.

Fotos I missed:   sailing on this dreamlike expanse of Gulf of Mexico, we saw scores of flying fish and ballyhoo . . . but nary a one consented to being on a tugster shot.  Imagine that!

Behold Fort Jefferson, 70 miles west of Key West, 900 … east of Brownsville TX, 200 south of Tampa, and less than 100 north of Havana.

Here’s one way to  get there at just under 30 mph.  The Yankee name caught my attention… not because I live in NYC but because I used to live north of Cape Ann, MA, where a whale watching vessel refers to itself as part of the “Yankee fleet.”  Well, same company has operated in both Key West and Gloucester.  Furthermore, this vessel was built by Gladding Hearn of Somerset, MA, and the captain grew up in Hampton Beach, NH . . . where I lived back in the late 80s!!  Gladding Hearn has built numerous ferries, pilot boats, and other vessels for the sixth boro.

Foto for Bonnie of frogma:  you never told me Sebago had boats here!!

And for the unfrazzling bowsprite . . . herself galivanting where time gets forgotten, a foto of  WPG-78 aka USS Mohawk, resplendent in gray and gray and gray, whose story reaffirms the point I tried to make the other day in reference to vessels in Mayport.

So . . . if you are artistically inclined . . . should an eventual “sixth boro” micronation have its own flag?

OK . . . back to the “chug.”   The National Park rangers have decided to house this vessel, which was instrumental in getting Cuban refugees “dry-footed” onto US soil, at Fort Jefferson.  “Chug” derives from the noise the automobile engine makes while the vessel is underway.  chug-chug-chug . . .  Too bad they didn’t keep this 1951 Chevy truckboat.  Maybe Mel Fisher‘s crew will seek it out one of these days.

How’s about this for a once- and future-newspaper ad?  How many years before this service gets re-established?  Here’s a business idea:  trips across the Florida Strait on replicas of Hemingway’s Pilar . . . on converted 1951 Chvy trucks and vintage Buicks?  I bet it’ll happen.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  More from the Conch Republic soon.

Oh, also, I hereby claim rights to any and all sixth-boro micronationalistic paraphernalia.