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I knew it was coming. VHF chatter alluded to it. AIS showed it. And for going on 10 minutes I’d heard it . . . sound, at intervals of not more than two minutes, a prolonged blast, of which I’d heard no fewer than five . . .
Then in addition to the chest-penetrating blasts, I became aware of a low rpm throbbing. When the bow first appeared, it came with no hint of what followed.
A gray ship on a mild but foggy winter’s day . . . its size seems exaggerated. It was so foggy that Bergen Point was closed to all traffic over a certain tonnage, although waivers could be requested and granted.
The white bridge remained invisible.
It seemed the vessel tiptoed out,
restrained by the Moran tug.
And after she had passed, the stern remained visible as the bow blended into the fog. The fog horn, now oriented away, seemed to have moved much farther than the ship had.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Day in day out . . . and night in night out, port work goes on. Here James D finishes up escorting a gargantuan “flower” ship out.
Sea Eagle stands by with her barge while Dace refuels.
Pearl Coast heads for Caddells,
where Kings Point is getting some work done.
Discovery Coast leaves the Gowanus Bay berth.
Atlantic Coast lighters a salt ship while Lucy waits in the anchorage.
Lyman moves Sea Shuttle southbound while some Bouchard units heads for the KVK.
And completing this installment, it’s Kirby, all finished with another assist.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
Update on the calendar voting, i.e., “polling… 1 through 4” you’ve now seen the options for each month, but voting remains open, and I’m still accepting candidates for the December page. And I’m grateful for all the voting so far.
Less than a handful of years back, a buzz could be heard in all the boros about these new ships that were going to arrive. Well, they did and now seem routine.
Antwerpen Express departed the other day.
She and all the other ULCVs are longer than the Chrysler Building, once the first building to exceed 1000′, is tall. The Chrysler is now obscured by all the taller buildings in the distance.
The same morning, the next “flower ULCV” departed. We’ve seen Jasmine, Peony, and Camellia . .. welcome . . .
Sakura!! aka cherry blossom.
The Moran 6000s arelarge tugboats, but here Jonathan C barely extends upward of the bottom paint.
Yesterday I drove past a trucking company yard with lots of trailers. Compared with the “trailer boxes” you see here, that trucking yard was tiny.
“O ship!!” indeed!
And the story does not end here; later Sunday afternoon–the day I took these photos–another ULCV YM Warmth arrived, but I was tied up and couldn’t run out to get a photo. O ship!!!
All photos here by Will Van Dorp.
Seen from this angle, Houston Star, 817′ x 144′, is a wide-bodied petroleum carrier, recently
assisted in with
Kirby Moran on her port side. I was having difficulty finding more info about the tanker until, using her IMO number, I stumbled onto her previous name. Any guesses?
This, I gather, is an ice breaking bow.
All photos and investigations by Will Van Dorp, who was surprised to learn that Houston Star was once named for the Egyptian goddess, Isis.
And here’s an interesting cable-laying vessel that came into the sixth boro this morning . . . while I was tied up. It’s a poor photo of Decisive, but if you out there got some better ones, I’d love to hear from you.
Life gets lived in a linear fashion, but that’s not how it’s processed. It seems the longer we live, the more chaotic we want processing to be.
Kirby and Margaret assisted this ship into the pier this morning.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’ll be processing regularly starting tomorrow, or so I hope.
Let’s start with Alice Oldendorff, inbound with a hold full of Nova Scotia stone and about to turn to starboard on her (almost) final approach to Brooklyn. Alice and I have a long history.
YM Wind makes the final approach her into Global Terminals, her first call at sixth boro docks. In contrast above, Alice has already made hundreds of calls here, always transporting aggregates. Visible assisting Wind are Alex McAllister and Ava M. McAllister.
E. R. Montecito is a large ship, but containers are stacked 17 across, versus 20 across for Wind above.
Undine here takes on bunkers and other supplies. The small black/red/white vessel long her stern is Twin Tube, the venerable 1951 harbor supply vessel. In dry dock in the distance it’s USNS Sisler.
MOL Emissary travels the last few miles before Port Elizabeth.
Uniquely named tanker Forties waits in the Stapleton anchorage.
COSCO Vietnam enters the Kills and passes Houston at the dock.
Since Kriti Amber is Greek-flagged, I’m guessing that’s a variation on “Crete,” but that only conjecture.
QM2 takes on fuel while transferring passengers on the port side.
And let’s call it a day with Unique Explorer.
All photos recently by Will Van Dorp, who considers himself fortunate to live in this large port.
While waiting for Triton, I had a surprise, a big pink surprise. I hope someone gets photos of Triton when she departs.
But here, 24 days and 13 hours out of Singapore,
it’s
ONE Apus, which rhymes with “tape us.” Since she’s a duplicate, I think, of ONE Stork, I assumed an apus referred to a bird in some language. Any guesses?
Here are my first photos of ONE Stork.
See that messenger line coming down to send up
the big line?
It turns out that “apus” is the Latin word for the common swift, a fantastic name for a ULCV.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s minutes late for the noontime posting.
Ten years ago I did a series called “meditations” as I was pitching about to structure my days. The series was keyed to the alphabet, A to Z. The L meditation focused on “line.” Picking this back up has been prompted by the photo below.
Notice anything unusual about the line seen here? By the way, CS Peony was underway when I took the photo.
Contrast the line in the images above and below. Notice how taut the one from the OOCL ship is.
See the somewhat diagonal line between the port side of the green vessel and the Moran tug? It’s tightly stretched.
Below . . . both lines are tight.
Ditto . . . below.
And along the other side of CS Peony . . . bar tight.
In a different context, a tightrope walker like Philippe Petit could navigate that non-sagging line.
But here . . . I find this unusual.
Any ideas?
Photos and observations by Will Van Dorp.
Spring and fog coexist a lot, and from there, the gradation from fog to summer haze is somewhat blurred. Blue-hulled Oyster Catcher, in the foreground, gives clearest indication that this in not a black/white/gray photo. I’ve searched online fruitlessly to confirm that Oyster Catcher is an NYC DEP vessel. When
A panoply of vessels converge in the Narrows as the great gray ULCV approaches from many days at sea.
I’ve not been paying attention to how many of these ULCVs have multiple bow thrusters. Anyone know the horsepower on each?
Three 6000s, one 3900, and two brants . . . all converging along with Cosco Faith.
For scale, notice the 25′-to 30′ outboard passing just to the right of the letter O in COSCO. More to scale, note the size of engineering crew next to this crankshaft.
I waited for a messenger line for the deckhand to send up the towline, but . . . it happened after they were out of range for me.
All photos here by your faithful observer, Will Van Dorp.
Way back when, I had some fun abridging “__ Express” names, generating Glex and Sex. While out at the KVK, then, I thought I’d seen Dublin Express aka Dex before, so I’d take some photos, of the box ship and
the two escort tugs.
And I wondered about the unusual pyramidal arrangement of containers on the stern.
I hadn’t known that Gary Haszko, credited for the next two photos, was taking photos almost simultaneously from Elizabethport, and aware of something else.
Here the two tugs assist in pinning Dex to the pierced in Howland Hook. He also knew something else I was unaware of, ie, containers tumbling overboard during a rough ocean transit may have damaged the hull and led to oil spilling into the Kills. For more on this spill, click here.
After a concerted investigation and clean up effort, USCG cleared the ship to depart.
Many thanks to Gary for use of the last two photos above; all others by Will Van Dorp.
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