Three Hours on the Sound

This follows the post where I got to spend four times as long on Long Island Sound, a truly remarkable place.  The trip last week brought sights and surprises enough to warrant a repeat trip soon.  Here, a bait boat (?) passes a renowned Plum Island facility.  Back to this later in the post.

We’re headed to New London, the name of this RORO/WOWO.

Here Marjorie McAllister tows RTC 60 past Little Gull Light.

The only house on Hobbs Island in Groton needed to have a story, and I found one when I learned it was built by the Hays family, who wrote this book a friend gave me for my 45th birthday.

Here Mary Ellen departs New London for Orient Point, passing New London Light.

Amistad awaits, for sale at the dock.

Sea Jet  . . . takes on passengers for Block Island, a place I need to visit soon.

Since our destination was Blount for the wind farm vessel ribbon cutting, I wanted to get a photo of the newly launched replacement for Capt. Log.   Click here to see the plans and specs.

Chandra B, coming to the sixth boro soon.

At the dock just south of the I-95 bridge, it’s 100′ scalloper Chief, also for sale.

Electric Boat 2 does patrols around the pens,

which enclose a submarine.  Now look closely at the tail vertical stabilizer.  Now look at the one in this “news” story about a submarine getting stuck in Shinnecock Canal.  If not the same sub, then it’s at least the same type.

But if you start thinking about it, Dan’s is having way too much fun.  This story and this one are clearly boaxes, spoofs about boats.  When I heard the story about Shinecock, I thought maybe the Hamptons PD had gotten ahold of this one, which I spotted on the North fork just a few summer months ago.

Heading back across to Orient Point, you can line up New London Ledge Light with Race Rock Light, in the distance.   Tours for Ledge are available in the summer, when the ghost is around.

On a leg between Newport and Oyster Bay, it’s Knickerbocker, Wisconsin-built by a shipyard that started out doing fish tugs!  If you’re not familiar with fish tugs–of which Urger was one–go to Harvey Hadland‘s site.

Now here, back near Plum Island, is a surprise.  I figured it was a fishing party boat, but Justin suggested otherwise, and indeed he was right.  M. S. Shahan II IS a government boat, owned by Department of Homeland Security!!

And a final shot of Plum Island just before we return to the Orient Point dock, of course, it’s Cape Henlopen, former USS LST 510. 

 

By the way, I am still looking for folks with connection to this vessel as LST-510.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

 

Second Lives 20

Here’s the index on previous second lives posts.  I use “second lives” for what land folk call “adaptive reuse.”  It strikes me that there may be more instances of repurposing re-design and -engineering on water than on land, but that’s may just be my opinion.

But first, I thought to call this “pre-boomed” to follow up on yesterday’s post and the wonderful backstory I got in email yesterday from William Lafferty, frequent contributor here.  Here also sent along the photo below, which shows Twin Tube in 1951, i.e., before I was born and I’m 63.

Here’s part of what William wrote:  “It shows the Twintube just after it entered service in fall 1951.  Twintube was launched 28 August 1951, Captain Blount’s mother doing the honors, and built on Blount’s account.  He used it as a travelling “demonstrator” for his shipyard’s products (it was Blount’s hull number 6) but also used it to haul oysters.  Power plant originally was a rather rare 4-cylinder Harnischfeger 138-hp Diesel.  (Click here for a 1950 news article including a photo of a 6-cylinder marine diesel.)  Harnischfeger (the H in the mining equipment manufacturer P & H) had been set up in 1945 at Port Washington, Wisconsin, by P & H to exploit the workboat and yacht market.  P & H closed the division, then at Crystal Lake, Illinois, in 1963.  In spring 1952 Blount sold the vessel to the Staten Island Oil Company, who converted it to a tanker with a 40,000 gallon capacity in eight 5,000 gallon compartments within its “tubes.”  The rest is, as they say, history.”

By the way, reference to “Staten Island Oil Company” brings me back to one of my favorite articles by the late great Don Sutherland here.

Here’s the index for all my previous Blount posts.

All this repurposing leads me to the second half of this post.  A friend named Matt–former all-oceans sailor–is looking to write a serious history about Cross Sound Ferry vessel Cape Henlopen, ex- USS LST-510.  Note the 510 still carried on its starboard bow.  She was built in the great shipbuilding state of Indiana.

Cape Henlopen preparing to depart Orient Point March 2014

Here she passes Orient Point Lighthouse at the start of its 80-minute ride over to New London.

Matt is interested in interviewing past and present crew and seeing old photos of the vessel in any of its previous lives:   Cape Henlopen, MV Virginia Beach, USS Buncombe County, or LST-510.  If you send your interest in participating directly to my email, I’ll pass it along to Matt.

Many thanks again to William Lafferty for the Twintube story and photo.  I took the photos of Cape Henlopen in March 2014.  Here’s a version of the vessel by bowsprite.