… and into Tampa Bay 1

From the sea buoy to the dock where we’d arranged to refuel at the top of East Bay was 40 miles!  I’d never really studied Tampa Bay…

On the way in, we passed an outbound Fednav bulker, a pilot boat alongside and some excursion boats on Egmont Key.  This is marks the beginning of the end to my trip:  out of the bayous and into the keys.

Outside the Sunshine Skyway we met outbound USCGC Pablo Valent.

We made it inside safely, leaving a sine wave wake. This bridge opened in 1987 after some spectacular tragedies. 

Keeper-class cutter Joshua Appleby was maintaining navigation aids. 

A shrimp boat was headed out to work. 

The channel in was long and sinuous.

American Rotortug (ART) Trinity headed outbound for an assist.   An older sister, Trident, appeared on this blog here. 

but not for Jones Act tanker Garden State. 

Bulker Sumatra (likely not named for Sumatra FL) was bound for sea. 

After passing the sea buoy four hours before, we still had not reached East Bay portion of 

Tampa Bay when we passed Liberty, a Marine Towing of Tampa tug built at Washburn & Doughty in East Boothbay!

All photos, WVD, with more Tampa Bay to come. 

Summer Yachts 9

Maiden is in the boro, an impressive thoroughbred sailing since 1979!  I hope you click on that link for her amazing history.  Here‘s more on its current voyage.

The definition of yacht is quite loose.  I’d argue that the sloop passing in front of the Statue is someone’s yacht, although it’s not a global circumnavigator like Maiden.

 

Sportfish Markella was eastbound on the East River . . .  maybe trolling for tidal strait tuna . . .

Or this one, Zada Mac, in pursuit of and hoping to snag Hudson River halibut?   Yes, those were written in jest.

Mariner III looks delicate and outsized here passing alongside a tanker in the Kills.

Yacht Liberty carries the St. Vincent Grenadines flag, but besides that, I can’t tell you much.

Yacht Full Moon is a 65′ beauty once owned by Jerry Lee Lewis, a stunner now operated by Classic Harbor Lines and

dating from 1950.  It was built by Grebe. 

All photos by WVD, whose tugster blog is currently operated by riverine robots.

 

More GHP&W

Can you  place this pilot boat?  The name on the bow, almost visible, says Chelsea.

Tanker New England I’ve seen in the sixth boro at least once, although I don’t think I took a photo.

I’ve not seen the tug here though;

 

Harold A. Reinauer, a 1972 3000 hp boat,  looks quite a bit like Jason Reinauer, a 1968 3000 hp boat which spent time in New York waterways a few years back doing assist work.

 

Liberty I have seen  . . . in Quincy MA more than a decade ago.

The Irving tanker New England mostly shuttles between Boston and St. John NB.

All photos, WVD.

Retro Sixth Boro 12

March 2009 . . . Stephen Scott here passes Port Ivory, near my old job, pushing RTC 70.   I’m still looking for Stephen Scott photo is her new profile, sans upper wheelhouse.  Port Ivory was an intriguing place name for me when I first moved here;  once a North Shore Branch of the SIRR even had a station there.

Kimberly Poling already had the color scheme, but adding a few more teal stripes to her current appearance is a big improvement.

Lettie passed by once while I scheduled my lunch break.  As of today’s posting, Lettie G is in Mobile AL!!  If she continues, she could end up back in Lake Erie by way of the great loop.  Is that what’s happening?  A few months I caught her at the top end of the Welland Canal here.

More Port Ivory area, Specialist was around, then called Specialist II.

So was the huge K-Sea fleet, which included Falcon.

This post should be called “sixth boro and beyond,” since I took this photo of Justine with RTC 120 up near Saugerties.  Back then,

was that a red canoe along her portside rail?

Side by side  in the Rondout 10 years ago were Hackensack, the 1953 colorful one, and Petersburg, 1954 vintage and still in the general area.  Last I knew, Hackensack was in Guyana pushing molasses barges.

And going  farther out, it’s Allie B pulling Goliath on a cargo barge Brooklyn Bridge out of Quincy MA, with assistance from Vincent D. Tibbetts Jr and Justice.

Here’s a closer up of Liberty.  For the entire reportage on that journey to Mangalia, Romania (!!), click here.  Damen operates the crane in their shipyard there, the largest shipyard in the Damen collection.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who hopes you enjoy these looks back as much as I do.

Random Ships 54

Here was 53.

So many large ships pass through the sixth boro that unlimited time and a large staff of passionate observers could make ship watching (and learning from the experience) a tourist attraction.  Some of the names intrigue . . . like Stove Friend . . . recently built in the home of a quarter of all seafarers, the Philippines.

Axel Maersk may be one of the “longest” container ships that have called in the sixth boro, loa 1155′ x 140,’  assisted here by JRT, Jonathan C, and Miriam Moran.

Ibrahim Dede, here with escort Amy C McAllister, has been calling in NYC for almost as long as I’ve been doing this blog.

Eternal Ace . . . one of the 6400-car capacity PT, looks quite streamlined for a PCC or PCTC, but a newer design is coming . ..

Navios Venus is another fairly new bulk carrier.

I’ve seen CMA CGM Maupassant before, but this is the first time featured on this blog.  Kirby Moran, along the starboard side, seems to have a swell approaching from astern.

Liberty . . . last time I saw her she was Topeka, one of the T-class, and yet I can find no reference to a name change.  Hmmm.

Tanker MTM New Orleans . . . barely over a year old, is assisted here by Eric McAllister.

SCT Matterhorn leaving the Narrows bound for sea here has Basel as her homeport.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp, who just found out about this related event . . . related in that it focuses on the wet 2/3s of the planet.

 

Random Tugs 184

Here’s the previous in the series . . .

but for December 2016, Robert IV leads the way with season’s wreathings, at least the first I’ve seen.  All these photos were take on a windy day a week ago.

Quantico Creek crosses westward toward the Kills  . . .

while at about that same moment, Marie J Turecamo heads in the opposite direction, passing

the Lafarge barge Alexandra (It’s likely Doris Moran standing by off her stern)  and JRT Moran escorting in Auriga Leader.

 

Bering Sea also heads eastbound,

as does Joyce D. Brown . . .

 

while the longtime HMS tugs Liberty and

St Andrews.  With them virtually side-by-side, I can see some livery nuances distinguishing them.

 

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Ports of the Acushnet

I took these photos in early September.  That’s New Bedford on the far side of the Acushnet River;  I was standing on the Fairhaven side of the hurricane barrier.  Acushnet was also the whaleship name in Moby Dick.

Note the Portuguese name:  Sao Paulo, built 1977

A member of the crew looks homeward.

Mary K, built 1990, and registered

in Woods Hole.

Megan Marie, built 1980, is registered in

Montauk.  If you want to watch fish boats, the hurricane barrier is a good spot.

Sao Jacinto, 1977, and registered n New Bedford. And following them out, it’s

Jim Dandy, 1977,  of So. Dartmouth.

Direction, Westport, MA.

 

Michigan, Fairhaven, 1947.

 

Nicole Danielle, Atlantic City, NJ.

Whitewater, Marathon FL!

Here are four vessels of the Eastern Fisheries fleet. 

There are two boats by this name in New Bedford, as is

true of this one.

The registration on the stern says “New Bedford.”

The density of boats on the docks makes credible that this port is rated #1 in the US for catch value, and has been for the past decade and a half.

 

Check out Cape May NJ and Lowland, NC.

 

All photos taken over a two-day period around the mouth of the Acushnet by Will Van Dorp.

Someone more informed than me could identify what fishery each of these vessels engages in.

Allie B Details

aka closer-up shots from Saturday’s departure.  Might we have to wait til the Gilbraltar port call to get the next closeups?  And is the person on the barge just forward of Tibbetts the last one to set foot there until Europe?  If I could get a cheap ticket to Gilbraltar in two weeks or so . . .

Liberty glided to starboard

and then port

to line up through the bridge.  (Yes, I was shooting through chainlink.)  Does Liberty have z-drives?

Less than a quarter-mile from the “slip” Allie B showed signs of settling into the harness.

Brooklyn Bridge‘s cargo has robust bracing forward

and aft.  And are those bundles corrections to balance?

Not every early March day lends itself to so much outdoor activity.

Towmasters’ comment leads to a link about another crane named Goliath in Belfast’s Harland & Wolff, builders of the Titanic.  Belfast landmarked the crane to ensure that it stayed in the port.  And that led me to a link to about Kockums Crane here and a poignant site in Swedish (if you don’t read Swedish, you can surely read the fantastic fotos) about a crane that, like Quincy’s, went away.

If you’re interested in a soundtrack to this series, try Downeaster Alexa even though it laments a different Northeast maritime industry;  it just happened to play on my radio Saturday . . . as if anything “just happens.”

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.

Allie B’s Epic 2

Imagine you worked at the shipyard for 10 or more years.  You put in the strength of your best years with friends who did the same.  You were young then and eager to get out of bed in the morning to hurry to the job you loved:  building LNG tankers, huge vessels that sailed the world’s oceans and delivered fuel and  withstood the challenges of the roughest seas.  Then  the shipyard gates closed and the 300-foot-high Goliath idled and rusted.  Weeds grew up where 32,000 workers once built ships.   Today, between the fence and the tow, several acres of unsold automobiles stood parked there, awaiting buyers.

Here’s Allie B about a half hour before departure today.

And this is how a voyage of more than 4000 miles begins:  assist tugs Liberty and Vincent D. Tibbetts Jr.  ease the barge Brooklyn Bridge into the Fore River, and Allie B moves the tow seaward.

Liberty and Tibbetts guide the tow through the 3A bridge between Quincy and Weymouth and

and then you hurry to Great Hill to watch your crane disappear towards Peddocks Island,

and Hull Gut, past the other islands of Boston harbor, and then

to sea, over the horizon, to build great ships elsewhere.  And you may never see it again.  How would it feel?

See sackrabbit’s fotos here, and check back there for updates over the coming month.

All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.