Hudson Surprise

April ends with transitions, endings and beginnings, decisive moments.  May 1 is cross-quarter day aka Beltane, and a time for juleps, mead, or mint tea–or rainchecks for same.

And into the midst of all that excitement into my email popped the foto below, thanks to Kaya, who had surfed the Queen‘s wake last fall.   Kaya:  you made my day by sending a foto of the gray and green ships below passing along :  I know that gray one (Georgia S)  AND that green one, but I know the green one more.  To digress, from this angle, doesn’t the Hudson look like a minor water course?

Marlene‘d steamed away from me before,  for other missions and destinations,

after I’d witnessed her sidle up to handlers like a tame animal . . . not tame at all really but one with adequate self-assurance and strength to tolerate for a spell the appearance of being domesticated, the illusion of being led on a tether, giving herself if only for a short time in spite of her immense power relative to the handler.

Marlene Green she calls herself, and she gets around and through some straits.

And if anyone upriver sees Marlene headed back south, let me know ETA the sixth boro.  I’d like to get some good fotos of Marlene powering herself back out to sea.  Here be her sisters.

Of course there’s always the not-so-minor inconvenience of having to report for work the hours I–like most folks–have to.  And of course I’m grateful for my work, but all the passages, transitions, transits–just plain sixth boro traffic– I miss!!  Like BBC Konan a few weeks back.  Yes, the house is way up forward.  I’m endebted to Dan B for catching the shot below of  BBC Konan and sending it along.   See info on the entire BBC fleet here.    It turns out that Marlene gets chartered by BBC sometimes.

Ah, well . . . I know that if I lived along here, I’d never get work done, never have the chance to be decisive because I’d always be scanning for surprises moving in and out of the sixth boro.

Thanks again Kaya and Dan B.  Fotos 2, 3, and 4 by Will Van Dorp.

Tails

Unlike most ships in the sixth boro, smaller ships–both lakers and salties on the Great Lakes–sport stern anchors.

Check out the anchor on Canadian Provider, and one

in the same location on English River. Where do you imagine the other complicated stern gear leads to?

Up the silo, as she offloads in Oswego.

So do stern anchors pose additional challenges, given proximity to the prop? Here’s a final stern anchor shot of a “light” salty taken and posted here in mid-July. Last week Tuesday early evening I spotted Marlene Green traveling upbound through the 1000 Islands with a new load of wind towers and turbines for–Duluth? Can anyone confirm that these towers ship from Spain?

I intended to call this post “tailhooks” until I remembered some convention almost two decades ago that leads me to make the association with “scandal” if I hear “tailhook,” even though it denotes just a device designed to assist in carrier landings.

See this link for interesting laker and salty fotos.

Photos, WVD.

Seaway Surprise

Note: Part of the surprise lies in a link between the last ship foto and the farm foto.

A thin strip of ocean access flows across the rural areas of uppest-state New York at the Eisenhower Lock, and I wonder how bluewater mariners see this region.

The two crewmen on postside bow of Marlene Green take radically opposing approaches to the bright sunlight.

Tension on docklines holds the vessel in place as it lowers to exit downriver.

Marlene Green up . . .

down, and out, bound for the Mohawk Nation of Akwesasne and then Cornwall and beyond.

Check out this link to the cargo a salty like Marlene Green might have delivered way into the American heartland? Sections of towers like the ones below. Wind farms like the one below (I took the foto from Rte 11) up in the north country intrigued me. I count 15 on this shot alone, although in this low-res format you might not see that many. The future is now up here.

Photos, WVD.

Names 8

From left to right, the remorqueurs below in the port of Ogdensburg, New York, carry the names Lac Manitoba and Ecosse, seasoning exotique from north of the border. Lac Manitoba, built in Trenton, Ontario in 1944, hails from Montreal. Ecosse, from Wheatley, Ontario 1979, hails from Hamilton. Thanks to boatnerd, here are close-ups of Ecosse and Ecosse again. Thanks to shipspotting, here’s Lac Manitoba.

Unlike convenient ports of registry carried on the sterns of most cargo vessels in the sixth boro, here’s a refreshing name, aka the Soo.

I’ll post more on this salty soon.

Photos, WVD.