Retro Sixth Boro 69

Happy dawn of a new year.  I’m out seeing the sights of 01012024.  A decade ago, Capt Log still ranged, filling tanks wherever beckoned.  Now extinct. 

Stephanie Dann and Sarah Dann tag teamed these dump barges out into wider water, where 

Sarah began her solo tow south.

SS United States already languished then, holding on for a savior.

Elizabeth McAllister, now recycled,  passed the anchored Mattea.  Mattea became Runner, then Oil Runner, and is now likely recycled as well. 

Mary Gellatly became Mackenzie Rose, and will soon arrive in the sixth boro with an interesting tow.

Tuckahoe is currently in Norfolk.

Specialist was looking good but unaware of a sad fate.

McAllister Girls has been scrapped, and Sassafras lives on as George Holland.

Twins works on, and looks as new as the day she launched.  January a decade ago was a cold month.

Chesapeake is the new Kristin Poling.

And the big crane first arrived in the boro on January 30, 2014.

I got to my regularly scheduled job late that day because Lauren Foss arrived from SF Bay with the Left Coast Lifter later than expected, and I was not going to miss it.  The crane instrumental in the replacement of the bridge at Tappan Zee is  still towering over the harbor although finished with her projects.  Lauren is at the outer edge of the Salish Sea as of today. 

All photos, any errors, WVD.   May your year be the best.

 

Super Bull Crane 4

As I approached the stoplight, I had to look twice . . . is it possible that

a repurposing of the super bull crane has been implemented?  I know it’s sometimes breezy out this time of year, so might this be a sturdier way of supporting traffic signals?

I made the next available turn to check it out . .  that is indeed a large structure to dangle a traffic signal from.

 

Shooting over the fence, I confirmed that it is the one-and-only and twice-named Left Coast Lifter, twice named so in fact.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who will be following this not-so-easily-hid crane.  I’ll have to start looking for it from other perspectives.

Adding to its previous unofficial renaming, how about Traffic Light Heavy Lifter, Richmond Terrace Lifter,  New York Wheel Alternative . . .?  Got a better name?

Below is a late-add photo of the crane as seen from Bay Ridge Flats today . . . evidence of how large that crane is set along the north side of Staten Island.

 

Super Bull Crane 3

She arrived in the harbor almost six years ago, just before the annual football event, and that’s why I called her that.  Speculation about a name change then from Left Coast Lifter had been rampant, but so far as I know, she has remained LCL.

Above, that’s the last photo I took of her by the TZ Bridge, with Hook Mountain in the background, and below, that’s where she now waits, likely to be down rigged.

I suppose speculation now will be her next destination.  Meanwhile she’ll be a part of the temporary landscape at Weeks, skyline, or crane forest, and she’ll be photographed, as I’ve done here here with MC-41 Snazzy Kitty,

Lady May, and

Thomas J. 

Check her out before she’s lowered for travel.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Other large cranes I’ve posted include Paul Bunyan, Grasse River, Pelicano 1, and Herman the German.  Then there’s the Chesapeake 1000.

 

Chicago Bound 1

 i.e., CB.  I’m writing this on the 8th . . .  my first encounter with serious wifi. After today, I might not have wifi again for a spell.   Last year I posted about this trip under the title GWA.  Two years ago it was Go West.

Let me post some highlights from August 1 and 2, and Chelsea Piers to the Rondout.  Note the fireboat 343 below,

Left Coast Lifter at Spuyten Duyvil,

 

USAVs Chickahominy and Missionary Ridge across from West Point,

Helen Laraway pushing a handful of barges southbound toward the Highlands,

 

Our vessel down the hill from

Newburgh’s historic district,

Penobscot Bay heading down river,

Philadelphia upbound,

Hudson leaving the Rondout for the Hudson,

and Johannsen Girls doing the same.

All photos by Will Van Dorp on August 1 and 2.

Infrastructure 4

Thanks to John Paul for this photo of the big crane as seen the land area called Spuyten Duyvil in the Bronx.   The tidal strait–entrance/exit of the Harlem river–is also called Spuyten Duyvil.  That 328′ boom shrinks the swing bridge it’s assisting with the repair of.  Of course the crane is the one that arrived from California 4.5 years ago here to raise components of the new TZ Bridge and lower the old one.

Paul Strubeck caught the crane from the water side, showing relative size of crane and swing bridge.  The higher bridge is Henry Hudson crossing.  For much more info on that bridge, click here.

I got these photos yesterday from Inwood Hill Park.  The railroad swing bridge was opened in 1900, although it was closed for most of the 1980s.  Now it carries 30 trains a day and opens about 1000 times a year, mostly for Circle Line boats.

According to this source, maintenance will focus on mechanical and electrical equipment damaged by Hurricane Sandy.   “Navigation strikes” may be another explanation.

The crane is rated at lifting capacity of 1929 tons, powered by three diesel 601 kW (806 hp) main generators and one 91 kW (122 hp) auxiliary generator provide its lifting power.  It has no propulsion power of its own.

The manufacturer is ZPMC, the same Chinese firm that provides state-of-the-art port gantry cranes here and here.

I’m not sure whose crew boat this is,

but the tugs on the scene are Dorothy J and

Robert.

Maybe I’ll find time to go back up that way tomorrow.

 

Left Coast (Dropper) Lowerer

About four years ago she arrived  . . . and has been lifting into place this huge structure sometimes described as one of the largest current civil engineering project in the country.  Her original name Left Coast Lifter , a ZPMC product, stuck despite attempts at New Yorkizing it, renaming it I Lift NY or Ichabod Crane.

I saw the size of those blocks recently when I drove across the new bridge for the first time, but being alone in the car . . . obviously, no pics.

But the Lifter has been repurposed now.  I don’t suppose my attempt to rename her now will succeed any better… But how about Downstate Dropper Lowerer, Tappan Zee Deconstructor, Dewey-Driscoll-Wilson Dismantler?

But thankfully, the crane does more than just drop lower the sections for scrap, and I’m often not so thrilled by state or federal decisions, but here’s a good one:  sections of the old bridge will be used to replace compromised infrastructure in the Hudson Valley.  Here’s a story.

And the rest of these photos, thanks to Glenn Raymo, show these sections on their way to re-use, signs and all.

 

 

Many thanks to Glenn for use of these photos.  The top three photos by Will Van Dorp, who has posted about this bridge many times . . .. 

 

GWA2: Hudson River

I took these photos over a two-day period in late July, traveling the entire 130 miles of the Hudson from the Battery to Troy while on the trip from Narragansett Bay to the “source” of the Chicago River.  RV Shearwater here surveys the river/bay;  that’s Willy Wall on the horizon left, so the Battery is behind us.

The Tappan Zee nears completion:  the gap on the left side is all that needs to be bridged.  The Left Coast Lifter will then become the “left coast lowerer,” I assume.

Infrastructure materials come out of the ground here in Haverstraw,

Viking passes below Osborn Castle,

summer play happens in the Hudson,

Buchanan 12 pushes more raw materials for infrastructure,

a tribe paddles over to Bannerman’s,

a truck lifts three vessels in imitation of Combi-Dock III,

Vane’s Delaware pushes DoubleSkin 50 upriver,

Spring Sunshine offloads aggregates at Caymans, where

a 400-ton 12-story structure awaits (then) its float down to NJ [more on that soon],

yacht named Summer heads south for Key West,

raw materials that once rolled on roads await the trip back to the blast furnace,

a horde does sun salutations on shore,

the American goddess Columbia trumpets at the top of a needing-to-be-updated soldiers/sailors monument in Troy,

 

and an oracle wearing a sea creature hat and using an old-school device taps out verbiage suggesting I’m headed for Ithaca and not Chicago, although I’m pleased with that too.

All photos and observations by Will Van Dorp, who is grateful to the oracle.

Somewhat related:  Click here for a CNN Travel clip called “Liquid City” and starts out with the sentence “most people think NYC has five boros, but there’s really a sixth one;  it’s the largest one and it connects all the others.”  I heard it while waiting at the airport in Indianapolis the other day and was stunned.  Do you suppose Justin Davidson reads tugster?

For blog posts written by folks going first northbound and then southbound on a LNV tug, click here and here.

 

Random Tugs 170

Here’s a seldom-seen tugboat, delivered in 1977 by Gladding Hearn, who builds everything from rowboats to pilot boats to tugboats . . .   it’s Tappan Zee II, 

dedicated to serving the bridges  (for now, plural) and waters called the Tappan Zee.  In the distance is the renowned Left Coast Lifter.

Here’s a photo of Patriot, which had a mishap the next day from when I took the photo.

 

Here’s Fred Johannsen, formerly known as Marco Island.

 

Here comes Kimberly Poling with Edwin A. Poling, rounding the bend between West Point and Garrison.   Can anyone identify the yellow/tan house on the ridge line?

 

In roughly the same location, it’s Mister Jim with some very deep stone scows.

 

And I’ll end today’s post with an unidentified tugboat near Newburgh.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s back in the sixth boro but recapitulating the trip west . . . a task which could take a month.

I hope to see some of you at the screening of Graves of Arthur Kill at the the Staten Island ferry terminal on August 13.

 

 

Go West 1

By 1330 Tuesday, we docked at West Point, the first non-red pushpin in yesterday’s map.   Working backward, we saw Tappan Zee II at the TZ, as we did

the Left Coast Lifter.

Off the Palisades, we saw Sarah D;

in Wallabout Bay, C. Angelo;

at the southern end of Narragansett Bay, Dace Reinauer; and

and Suomigracht with Cape Wind turbine blades,

and soon after departing Warren, we saw Buckley McAllister.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is posting these without any alterations.  We saw much more as well.  Cheers.

Random Ships 32

Red Hook with Alice Oldendorff in background.

Lia with Stolt Effort on the far side.

Hellas sisters with Left Coast Lifter in the background.  Anyone know when the gargantu-crane will move toward the TZ Bridge site?

Ever Divine has seraphic lines . . .

Zim Luanda follows a sinuous path through the KVK with assistance from Brendan Turecamo…

… as does Hanjin Durban, escorted by Miriam Moran…

maintaining a steady course between the two container ships as MOL Excellence bounds seaward…

and encounters a sister MOL Expeditor waltzed in with Marjorie B McAllister.

So . . . what do you know about this ship?

Answer tomorrow.  All photos here by Will Van Dorp.