Whatzit 7

Even though she glowers at me whenever I say it, the six-eyed bowsprite IS perspicacious.  As she hops from cliff to cliff and down along the ledges near water level, she misses no detail.  She sent me these fotos to share.  What is the orange sheet dangling from the yellow frame suspended from the 532 crane?

Erosion control mats?

A Christo project?

A nutrient-rich bedding for oysters?

Part of a future underwater moving sidewalk?

A riverbed loom for a  seaweed weaving project?

An attempt to soak up sugarmud drifted down from Yonkers?

Habitat for sturgeon and plesiosaurs?

A diversion intended to lure bowsprite down from her  cliffs?

Preparations for next year’s Red Bull Air Races?

An attempt to recover aliens and their secrets from the wreck site of an OVNI?

Ichthyosaur survival training drill?

All fotos blamed on credited to bowsprite, whose narative goes like this:

“09h20 Virginia and Elizabeth go upriver to bring mats and crew to the crane Weeks 532.  The engines roar, smoke comes out, the spuds are dropped, the crane lifts the yellow loom-thing and splashes it into the drink.  A lunchtime crowd gathers, asking each other what’s going on.  They say ‘I think they’re dredging.’  Or ‘I don’t know.  Been here a few days.’  Or ‘What’s your guess?  They talk, they speculate.

Back on the barge, The loom comes up sans the orange mat.  Men with stepladders go around and weave on the next mat.  Spuds go up, engines roar, smoke again, winches drag in the white buoy, and the whole barge setup moves farther into the middle of the river.  Later another mat is laid down just a bit east of the last one.”

And the answer to Whatzit:  the truth is out there, or in here.

Random Tugs 55

Quick post here.  Laura K Moran rousts Westerhaven off the dock.  Notice the docklines at the bow, starting to unlace like a shoe.

F. Dawson crosses the Buttermilk Channel.

Socrates gets some bottom scratching.  Uh . . .  if Socrates gets lavished with this sort of attention, who’s minding Sugar Express?

Why . . . Sugar‘s having a blast in the same shipyard–GMD–of course.  Click here for some earlier fotos from GMD.

And to conclude, here’s GMD from the water . . . with North River and Sea Hawk waiting outside the door.  By the way, does anyone know the specific role played by that (obsolete) horizontal antenna atop the building in the background right?

All fotos this week by Will Van Dorp.