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In the chilly windy of a crisp Saturday morning light, Maersk Skarstind made one of the many turns in the KVK. Name the tugboats assisting? Answer follows.
Maersk Skarstind is a 2016 vessel with 9443 teu capacity.
And, yes, that’s
Laura K on the stern.
Jonathan C has a line port alongside.
Less than two miles behind her (my estimation)
Ava M had a line on CMA CGM Columba‘s stern, with Bruce at the ready.
I said less than two miles . . . ? Maybe someone out there has a better estimate?
Columba is an Andromeda class CMA CGM vessel, entered service in 2010 and has 11400 teu capacity. Behold over 20,000 teu capacity arriving for all practical purposes at the same time.
All photos, WVD.
Sarah D is here because before wearing the attractive NYS Marine Highway colors, she wore Moran colors for about 20 years, as seen here.
What I thought remarkable about that afternoon is that all the photos here were taken in the space of half an hour the other day. An outatowner watching traffic on the sixth boro would have concluded that all tugboats in the boro have an M on the stack. What was happening in fact was that three ships were moving and this was a surge to assist these ships.
If you follow this blog, you’ve seen them all before, but you may not have seen a Moran wave before quite like this.
As you can tell, I maintained mostly the same vantage point while taking all these shots.
All photos, WVD.
Moran is one of the quintessential NYC marine companies, formed before the boros existed as such. The harbor then was THE water boro. Since I’m upstate right now, I was intrigued to find a Moran Street in the canal town of Lyons, not far from a asphalt depot on the canal which used to be served by Moran tugboats. Maybe someone can fill in when Moran adopted the distinctive dark red color.
Since I’ve not yet devoted a non-random tug post to Moran yet, I’ll call these part one.
Above JRT takes the stern of Wonder Polaris, while
Jonathan C has the port side.
Same day, Miriam has the port side of NCC Tabuk.
Marie J meets them on her way to a job.
Having returned to the sixth boro, Laura K here heads to a job.
Laura K stays quite busy.
James D here returns from assisting a container ship into Port Elizabeth.
All photos, WVD, who has at least another part of this post coming soon.
More relevant Lyons photos can be seen here and here.
Truth be told, I should have passed this 100 milestone long ago, but I forestalled a number of times by differentiating within the title: for example, besides the August 2007 starting point of random ships 1 but also random ships *1 and really random ships 1 posted inAugust 2016 and March 2019.
Forestalled or not, we are here, and I still enjoy doing this. These photos all date from this month and December . . . like B. Franklin Reinauer here lightering Atlantic Blue.
Atlantic Crown here has a deck barge alongside delivered by Susan Miller, while in the distance you see the Bayonne peninsula and beyond.
The next two photos show Laura K Moran assisting MSC Greenwich as an outbound Seaspan New York
shares the KVK as it heads for sea.
If I’ve learned anything from these years of documenting the traffic the watery boro, it’s the value of light to (duh!) photo graphy. When you have the dawn light illuminating the orange hull of vessels like NCC Tabuk, with red and shadow image of Miriam Moran, and the cold black steel of the barge to the left, what more need I say about the joy of spending time in the cold morning solitude watching and “recording.”
What’s not to enjoy about shivering while taking photos of a CMA CGM with the name of a huge tropical city.
Before completing this post, any ideas about the reference in Tabuk or the age and population size of Surabaya? Answers follow.
One more dawn photo here . . . the enigmatic name Eco Revolution on a tanker escorted into the KVK by a 6000 hp Moran tugboat.
All photos, WVD.
Tabuk, in Saudi Arabia, and Surabaya, on Indonesia’s Java Island, have both been settlements for over a millennium.
As for Surabaya, some of you might know the lyrics of the Kurt Weill song here by Marianne Faithfull, but I prefer this one from Javanese myth.
Tugboats, large and powerful as they are, seem to shrink when beside a global container giant, like Ava here beside Adrian Maersk. What comes to mind, and if a paraphrase of Archimedes is acceptable, give me a tug and position alongside, I’ll move that world-traveling behemoth and make it look easy.
Capt. Brian here and Ellen get OOCL Singapore for the always preferred routine entry, shift of boxes, and then nudge back out to sea.
Ditto Laura K, CSCL Bohai Sea, and Kirby.
Ava stands by here with Mustafa Dayi, in an anchorage usually filled with tankers.
Jonathan C sees Ever Legion in the door.
Mary Turecamo stands by with Endo Breeze.
Ellen escorts a loaded tanker into the Kills. Notice here that the antenna deck is flush with the deck of the tanker, quite unlike the case with the largest container ships into the boro, as in the last image farther below in this post.
MSC Azov gets Kimberly and Laura K as assist boats.
James D has already terminated her business with Cosco Harmony and is now traveling to the next job.
And let’s conclude this post here, as mentioned earlier, the 6000 hp Kirby (?) looks insignificant beside 15000+ teu container ships. The key word here is “looks.”
All photos, WVD.
Happy please-go-vote day. If you know anyone at all who is eligible to vote but won’t, have a chat with that person. As a New Yorker, I voted over a week ago . . . early voting on a Saturday afternoon.
Some photos . . . and your part is to 1) rank these boats by highest to lowest horsepower, and 2) identify which if any were built north of central sixth boro. I’ve provided dates of initial construction, but tugboats are required to be well-maintained, sometimes repowered and extensively rebuilt.
The 1979 Miriam Moran looked this way in her October markings. Cancer is a scourge, and I know this remembrance each October means a lot to folks who’ve seen the disease from nearby.
HMS Liberty has worked in the boro for over a decade now.
Laura K. Moran came off the ways in 2008, spent some years here, some away, but now she’s back in the boro.
Mister T, 2001, has carried that moniker ever since.
Andrea, 1999, has been in the boro a half dozen years. Here‘s how she looked back in 2016.
Shannon Dann was built in 1971.
Dace Reinauer dates from 1968 but has been considerably rebuilt from the first time she appeared on this blog here. See pre-2010 photos of her here and here.
Brian Nicholas, 1966, has been in the boro about as long as I’ve been doing this blog. I did post a photo of her with Banda Sea name clearly on her bow here 12 years ago.
Foxy 3 was built in 1974 and first appeared on this blog as Barker Boys, a name she carried until 2009, when she was renamed Buchanan 16. I don’t believe I ever saw her in the Balico livery as BF Jersey although I did see her with BF Jersey nameboards here. Note the folded back upper wheelhouse.
All photos, WVD.
Answers?
Laura K 5100 horsepower, Dace 3400, Andrea and Miriam at 3000, HMS Liberty and Mister T and Shannon D all at 2400, Brian Nicholas 1700, Foxy 3 1600.
Built north of the sixth boro: Laura K in Maine and Mister T in Rhode Island; all others were built in Louisiana.
Truth be told, I don’t post many people carrier photos on this blog, and I mean no slight to crews who work them. The very best boat handling is in order whenever passengers are aboard. What’s remarkable is that I’ve seen all these vessels/taken these photos since Monday of this week!
Circle Line, which carries at least a million passengers a year in the sixth boro, has a long and interesting history, an introduction to which you can read here. Circle Line Manhattan was launched in 2008, to replace Circle Line XI.
Know this Delaware?
Periodically, the 1974 Cape May-Lewes Ferry sends its boats into the boro to have scheduled maintenance done at Caddell’s shipyard.
Then there are the VIpeople movers. Utopia IV first caught my attention because it was actually US-registered, which made me wonder who this patriotic owner is. Later, I realized I’d seen this yacht before here. It also gained some notoriety about a year ago here, although then owner, RIP, was not on board at the time.
I don’t recall seeing Norwegian Sun in the boro, but don’t take me as a reliable judge of cruise ship comings and goings. Not even half a year ago, Sun was in Alaskan waters.
Ocean Explorer first arrived in the boro just over a year ago, as seen here. She’s here after having spent part of the summer sailing on the Great Lakes. Click here for near future tours on the cruise ship with the Ulstein bow.
If you’re on the sixth boro or the Hudson River today, you may see this Sea Lion, the Nat Geo Sea Lion. She’s Seattle-registered and was launched by Nichols Brothers Boatbuilders as Great Rivers Explorer in 1982.
She and her sister Nat Geo Sea Bird get around; unfortunately they can’t fit through the Erie Canal. Having said that, the Hudson River is a world-class scenic ride, and has always been.
There’s that bossy head again….
All photos this week/any errors anytime, WVD.
I’ve seen lots of pairs in winter, some in spring, but never until now in fall, at least not acknowledged until this post.
Two sets of pairs appear below, one Centerline and another Moran, the latter escorting in CSCL South China Sea.
Ellen and Patrice here are going to different jobs.
Mary Turecamo and James D Moran here work on the CSCL box ship.
Lots are boats here; clockwise from the farthest, Haggerty Girls (I think), James D, Margaret, Marjorie B, and James William.
Around 0900, a brace of migratory birds headed north . . . F-18s maybe.
B. Franklin got an assist from Matthew Tibbetts.
Two old ferries ply their trade: Barberi with the highest flagpoles and Marchi.
Two top of the line sixth boro McAllister tugs joins forces.
Two old style boats: Manhattan II and Wanderer, the latter from the Sippican River.
And finally, this juxtaposition passed and allows a comparison of the lines of the 2015 6000 hp Kirby Moran with the 2008 5100 hp Laura K.
All photos in the past week, WVD.
Why does time pass so quickly?! As if it were just a few years ago, I recall this Wilmington NC stop on the road trip return from family in Georgia. I was surprised by the amount of traffic in this Cape Fear River port, like Margaret McAllister here passing Corpus Christi with Petrochem Supplier. Margaret McAllister is one of McAllister’s ex-USN Natick-class tugs, in Margaret‘s case previously known as Tonkawa (YTB-786)
Kathryne E. McAllister (the 1980 one) followed the Margaret to sail a tanker.
Kathryne E. is currently laid up, but Moran’s Cape Henry (That’s a popular name for tugboats; I know of at least two others, one Kirby and one Vane.) below is still working, although currently in the Caribbean.
The first few days of January 2012 were as mild as those in 2022. Here Ellen S. Bouchard heads west in the KVK pushing B. No. 282. Ellen S. now wears Centerline’s lion logo.
Iron Mike might still wear Wittich Brothers black, blue and white, although I’ve not seen her out in the boro in a while.
Atlantic Salvor passes in front of a quite changed Manhattan skyline, as seen from St. George.
Gramma Lee T. Moran has departed the sixth boro for Baltimore. Southern Spirit is an active crude tanker but she goes by Celsius Esbjerg, currently departing the Bohai Sea for the Yellow Sea.
A light Mckinley Sea heads west in the Kills. She’s currently painted in Kirby colors, but laid up in Louisiana. Beyond her, Laura K Moran–now based in Savannah–assists tanker Mount Hope.
Marion Moran is out of the Moran fleet, and is likely wearing Dann Ocean livery, although I can’t confirm that.
The 1983 Sand Master was always a favorite of mine; she was sold into the southern Caribbean, but she may be scrapped by now.
Capt. Fred Bouchard was sold to a southern California construction company.
And we hold it up here, midmonth, with a vessel type I’ve not seen in a while . . . a livestock ship, Shorthorn Express, which had come into the Upper Bay for services, not to transfer cargo. The 1998 Luxembourg-flagged Shorthorn Express is active, currently traveling between Israel and Portugal. I used to see these regularly coming into the Kuwaiti port of Shuwaikh. I also recall a horrendous sinking of a livestock ship heading for China back in 2020.
All photos, WVD, in January 2012.
Ten years ago, the lower Manhattan skyline looked quite different. A vessel bringing orange juice from the southern hemisphere was also a smaller one; the 1985 Orange Blossom last sailed into Alang six and a half years ago, and if you don’t know what that means, click on the Alang link. As it turns out, I may have caught photos of her last voyage inbound Port Newark here. Orange Blossom 2 completes her most recent voyage today, arriving in Santos BR–read this link for some superlatives–after departing the sixth boro on November 13.
I’d thought 1976 Barents Sea was a goner, a reef candidate, when I caught this photo of her running after a long hiatus, but she was thoroughly rehabbed and lives on as Atlantic Enterprise.
The 1970 Evening Tide below was nearly 40 years into her career with Bouchard; she’s now a Stasinos boat but her superstructure still painted in this brilliant red.
Laura K Moran–launched 2008– was among the top horsepower assist tugs in the harbor then. She currently works in Savannah.
The 1981 McKinley Sea is currently laid up, carrying Kirby livery.
Ice Base and I had a misunderstanding; upon first seeing her and lacking at that time a smart phone with AIS, I read her name as something different that I can no longer un-see. She’s currently in the port of Quintero CL, 50 miles north of Valparaiso, with the less ambiguous name of Cabo San Vicente.
Back in those days I often took advantage of the walkway along the west side of the Bayonne Bridge, something I’ve not done with the new walkway. Note the absolutely ship-shape Gramma Lee T Moran as seen from above assisting
NYK Romulus with Margaret Moran standing by. Margaret is still in our fair boro, Gramma Lee is in Baltimore, and NYK Romulus is currently in Southampton UK.
The 1973 Amy Moran has been sold out of the fleet, and was last in the Jacksonville FL area wearing Stasinos tan and green as John Joseph.
And tomorrow I’ll post a part B of December 2011 retrospective, building on the odd orange vessel shown below.
All photos from December 2011, WVD, who’s astonished by the amount of change in a decade.
tugster: a waterblog 
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