Retro Sixth Boro 57

All these photos were taken in the second half of January 2013.  This 1973 livestock carrier Falconia was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard getting some work done.  I’d love to see a cargo layout for the vessel.  Also, just back from the foremast, those are large bales of either hay or straw for the livestock.   What would you guess her disposition in second half of January 2023?  Answer follows at the end of this post.

The tanker here is today in the Gulf of Guinea on a run between Gabon and Netherlands.  Kristy Ann Reinauer was scrapped in 2015. 

The green tug Mary Gellatly was transformed into the very busy CMT Mackenzie Rose. 

The behemoth Rebel has become Ken Vinik, awaiting a makeover in the Arthur Kill. 

The name of the hull–we’d spell it “Sovkomflot“–is one you will not see in the sixth boro these days, and it seems the icebreaking tanker is currently

anchored  where it has been for at least the past six months in Murmansk. 

The Penn Maritime Coho has become the Kirby Coho, currently in Savannah. 

Note the ice and snow on the boats above and below;  January a decade ago was frosty!  Barbara McAllister has become Patsy K, which I’ve never seen.  She’s in Panama City FL right now. 

It’s clamming time in the boro, and many of these clam/fish boats come out of this creek in NJ.  More Dutch Girl tomorrow. 

Grey Shark may be a dead ship or even a scrapped one by now, last recorded in the DR. 

And finally, Megan McAllister is alive and well, busy as Charles James.  

All photos from January 2013, WVD.  

And the answer to the question about the current disposition of Falconia:   she’s renamed Dragon and in Midia, Romania on the Black Sea, flying the Togolese flag, and still working, having just arrived in from Libya. For a tour of a much newer and sophisticated purpose-built livestock carrier, click here. More on this category of vessel here, and Dragon specifically on page 49.

For a disturbing report–if you choose to followup here–google Queen Hind livestock carrier, which capsized in Midia in 2019  and resulted in the “lost cargo,” i.e., death 14,000 sheep. 

 

 

 

Arctic Shuttle Tanker

So on the coldest day –so far–of the 2012-2013 winter, what kind of vessel might you expect to see in the sixth boro–maybe a “super strength icebreaking tanker?”  If so, Mikhail Ulyanov matches your expectation.   There’s no ice on NYC waters, so if you imagine this vessel breaking 1.5-meter ice, you start to have an appreciation for cold in places where it’s really cold, polar cold and dark.   Click here for a foto of her namesake AND an aerial view of her deck.

Can anyone explain what appears to be a house in the bow?

Is it that this vessel operates in seas so cold that areas like the after portion of the bridge are glassed-in and heated?

Writing on the side of vessel translates as “Sovcomflot,” and 0nly once before have I seen Cyrillic alphabet on a ship in NYC, although I can’t remember the details.

Here’s a frontal view of the “bowhouse.”

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Let me add a note here from Tommy Bryceland in Scotland   “The house on the bow of the Russian tanker is the Single Point mooring position.  This attaches via a hose or hose’s over the bow to a Single point mooring bouy (SPBM) out at a remote place at sea usually over an oil field. Covered in like this is unusual but will be done so for extreme cold temps working.  Im pretty sure this tanker drives astern INTO the ice and churns the ice with its props. That is why you have the strange wheelhouse shape.”  Tommy–thanks much.

By the way, this marks tugster post 2000!  Click here to see post 1000.