Linda and Inspiration

Overcast midwinter light has its own beauty.

And here in that beauty, Linda L. Miller eases alongside the sulfurous yellow color of this Stolt tanker. 

Minimal gear or not, the approach is the same. 

The crew makes fast. 

Work can begin.  

I’m not sure what the job was. 

All photos, WVD, who’s currently heading north.

 

Random Tugs 372

Dana Alexa is another seldom seen tugboat in the sixth boro of NYC;

although painted DonJon blue, she’s now a Breakwater Marine boat, I believe.

It was good to see the 1958 54′ boat with a barge of what appears to be sheet piling.

William F. Fallon Jr. has appeared here several times recently.

Robert IV has worked in the boro for over 30 years.

 

Linda L. Miller originally was called Frog Belly.  I like that name.

And finally, you most likely by now have heard about the barge carrying scrap metals that caught fire on Delaware Bay and you may have wondered how scrap metals could burn.  What follows is a series of photo I took in mid-April of a similar load.

This load was towed by Mackenzie Rose;  the one that caught fire was towed by fleetmate Daisy Mae. Loads like this have been fairly common on the run from the sixth boro to the Delaware River.

Of course an investigation of the fire, which was confined to the barge, will take some time,

but scrapyard fires are fairly common.  Here‘s an unrelated though germane article from the BBC.

All photos, WVD.

Random ULCVs 11

With Eastern Dawn in the foreground, the massive scale of these box boats is apparent.

Foreshortening gives the illusion that MSC Lauren cannot possibly avoid a collision.

Although this may be her first arrival in the sixth boro, this 12400 teu vessel has sailed the seas for a decade already.

See the crewman near the port bow quarter?

Now you see him?

 

If I recall correctly, she arrived here from Jamaica;  from here she travels to Italy.

Again . . . Linda L. Miller and the 6000 hp tugs show scale.  MSC Lauren is one of 560 container vessels operated by MSC, the second largest shipping company in the world.  Know the largest?  The third largest?  Answers are here.

So here’s a merger of truckster! and ULCVs, a photo I took last week from a parking lot.  I know what was loaded into that 20′ MSC container.  I invite you to guess.  Answer will be posted tomorrow . . . .

All photos, WVD, who is always happy to collaborate.

 

Linda and Henry

These foggy days offer an enhancement to a photographer with a telephoto;  the background nearly disappears, causing the subject to pop out.  In this case, it’s two tugboats of different sizes. 

Linda L. Miller length is just a bit over half Cape Henry‘s beam. 

Linda L. Miller (ex-Frog Belly, a name for the ages) is 25.3′ x 14;  Cape Henry is 109’x 36′.

 

 

Each has its role.

All photos, WVD, who recalls a lecture I once heard called “Is this a tugboat?” given the late great Don Sutherland.  It made the same point as these photos.

Another post showing scale and involving W. O. Decker I did here.

Random Tugs 278

I’m not disparaging, but my first thought was “just another” Vane tug heading across the bow, until

we passed and I noticed it was Charleston, which I believe is Vane’s newest tug in the sixth boro.

The new “ubiquitous” vessels on the sixth boro waterways move containerized trash.  Pathfinder is one of the tugboats assigned to this duty.   Covanta first got the contract for this business in 2013, and my first knowledge of these barges was here.

Two different generations of McAllister tugboats headed out recently, Capt. Brian A. and

Ellen.   Launched a half century apart and having a difference of almost 3000 hp, they are both working daily assisting ships in the harbor.

Janet D is a mere five years old and works in marine construction, working for the aptly named Construction and Marine Equipment Co.

Franklin Reinauer was built and christened by that name in 1984.

It appears to me here that Linda L. Miller, the truckable tug, is the prime mover, pushing Catherine C. Miller.  Click to enlarge the photo and you’ll see a handsome spread of Manhattan architecture, sans the peaks.

And let’s conclude with Mister Jim, who back in 2016 did not have the gray/red livery.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who missed the return of Atlantic Enterprise this morning, back from the work in Georgia.

Linda, Mary, and Girls

I had no idea what I was seeing until I zoomed in on it here and recognized it as one of the small Miller tugs with a deck barge.

Linda L Miller heading across the Upper Bay, where

QM2 was in port.

Later, I saw Linda L sans barge, passing two anchored Reinauer units.

x

A couple days earlier I saw this and initially failed to identify what I was looking at.

I took photos anyhow and then realized it was Miller Girls with the northeasterly wind splashing a mess of water over the bow.

Here from earlier this year are photos of Miller Girls in a previous lifetime, 1974.

Earlier this year I’d seen her with skimming outriggers on, working in Poughkeepsie.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Any Number of Tugboats

All the photos in this post I took over a two-hour period Friday.  I post this in part in response to the question raised by a commenter recently, how many tugboats operate in the sixth boro, aka the waters around NYC.

They pass one at a time,

you see them in twos . . . . and that might be a third with the crane barge off the Battery in the distance,

a trio might be assisting a single ULCV,

foreshortening might collapse four into a single shot, and

if you look across the repair and docking yard, you might see five tugs plus one science boat.

And finally for now, move the huge box ship away, and six of more are revealed.

This is the sixth boro, folks, one of the busiest ports in the US.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

 

Random Tugs 255

Just for ships and figgles . . . have a glance at 155 and at 55 in this series. While we’re reconnoitering the past, here’s 5.

And here’s springtime 2019.  Might this be the last view I get of tug Viking?  Scuttlebutt’s bumped into me saying so. Her first (I believe) appearance on this blog was over 11 years ago here. She had some near twins, but none evolved quite as she did.

FB has this group I really enjoy called Freighters in the Night;  I could submit this one. Jonathan C escorts an MSC box ship out.

Liz Vinik is a former fleet mate of Viking;  I caught her yesterday entering the kills with a Cashman barge carrying barges. Click here for some photos of previous iterations of this boat.

A dark, slow-to-wake morning like yesterday provides lots of points of light.  Here Joyce D. heads out, likely for her railroad work.

Enjoy these contrasts, Linda L. Miller and Hayward, two specialized boats.

Let’s end with a transient, sporadically seen in the sixth boro, a formerly Pacific Ocean Crowley tug . . .  Morgan,  out of New Bedford.

All photos e-watermarked with invisible metadata as taken by Will Van Dorp in the past month.