Something Different 65

I traveled RT by air last week, and as usual, tried to spot landmarks, entertainment for the map fan that I am. 

Mount Vernon is how the smart phone labels it.  I’d call it a view of Mobile Bay at dusk, looking south.

I concur with the phone that this is New Orleans, one of the bends in the river below the Crescent City.

Westwego is a western suburb of New Orleans.  I see those bulk carriers anchored in the river and I think of all the wheat and beans grown along the Mississippi River system (or the Missouri River system) to be exported in their holds.  If you want a long fascinating read by John McPhee on the river system, click here.

After five intense days in Louisiana, I was back at another airplane window seat.  It was a foggy morning over the Crescent City.

Westwego again gets the label.

River Ridge is another western suburb of Nola.  These bulk carriers, like the ones a few photos above, will likely take grain and beans for export.

Cambridge MD appeared after almost a couple hours of cloud cover.  I took the photo because of the “outlined” island.  A little research told me this was Poplar Island, a restored island created with dredging spoils.

Greenwich Township seems wrong as a label, but the Salem Nuclear Power Plant is unmistakable.  Also, along the top of the image is the sinuous C & D Canal.

Matawan seems alright as an identifier, since this is the mouth of the Raritan River and the west end of Raritan Bay.

Brooklyn-Fort Hamilton is not visible, but the concentration of orange vessels clearly marks the the east end of the KVK, and beyond that Bayonne, Newark Bay, and Port Newark.

Brooklyn.  Need I say more?  I find it curious, though, that from this perspective the 1WTC gets lost in a cluster of its neighbors.  With all the new tall buildings in central Brooklyn, One Hanson Place, long the tallest building in the boro, has gotten lost near the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic.

Brooklyn is below in this view across to lower Manhattan and Jersey City.

Flushing-Queensboro Hill means we’re about to land, once we make a hard turn to port.  Note the Unisphere and 1WTC on the horizon.  The circular body of water in the foreground is called by the unlikely name Fountain of the Planets.

All photos, WVD, who previously did similar shots here.

A friend recently suggested that “gallivant” should be my middle name.  There’s no need to make it legal, but maybe I’ll get it embroidered onto my hat and jacket.

The first batch of calendars is in the mail as of this morning.  The price this year is $20.  I have about 10 left.

 

 

 

Names 32

Here’s the series.

And there, look at that name.   No, not that one. ..

this one.  And the paint job–or time elapsed since the most recent one–lends authenticity to the name.

She looks to have been “rode hard and put away wet,” but that expression may just apply to horses and this bulk

carrier may just be happy dashing between the Mississippi and Veracruz.  And those streaks of red and yellow . . . they are just like the orange juice and grenadine you mix with the mescal.

I wonder, though, if the rest of the fleet has names like

Tequila Sunset, El Diablo, Margarita  . ..   or maybe like Hotel California, Lyin’ Eyes, or Peaceful Easy Feeling.   Then there could be Tequila Hangover, or Why the Dude Got Thrown out of the Cab.  Of course, if you really want to know the fleet mate names, check here.

All photos and speculation by Will Van Dorp.

Flanking, upstream

OK, it’s time to reprise this, and admit that once again I’ve learned something . . . by means of my error, my willingness to overgeneralize maybe.

A tolerant reader wrote this in reference to my Flanking, downstream post:

“Not trying to burst your bubble, but those photos indicate the Mike Schmaeng was steering the point,  not backing or flanking!  Also, the river is very low at this time, and there wouldn’t be any reason to flank Algiers Point.”

So let’s just call this River Addyson heading upstream at the Point.  So from this angle, what would you guess about this towboat? 

 

From the view head-on, I’d never have guess there was over 180′ of boat behind those push knees.

 

Here are the particulars on this vessel from 1958.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, and keep the corrections coming.

Unrelated:  Does anyone know what Seastreak New York is doing in Florida?   I was looking for something else and noticed here . . .

There were “all fast” on Marco Island by 2100 yesterday, but this morning are underway, heading for  . .  Tampa?

x

 

 

War Wood 3

Here were post 1 and post 2 with this name, both focusing on WW2 torpedo boats.  PT-728 used to be based on the Rondout in Kingston and would make visits to NYC’s sixth boro, but now you’d have to go to Lake Huron for an outing.

The vessel below is PT-305 and “diminished” version of itself spent from 1947 until 1988 in the sixth boro as Captain David Jones.  Does anyone remember it?  Have photos of it?

I say “diminished” because to bypass certain crewing requirements, four yards plus was chopped off the stern.  Click here and scroll through to see a photo of this chopped hull and NYC paint scheme.

If you’ve never visited Nola, you have to;  and if you visit Nola, the World War II museum–easy to get to–is a must-do.  And in one of many buildings–the Kushner Restoration Pavilion–PT-309 is returning to its former glory.   Parts have been rebuilt or returned from scrap heaps and river bottoms–like these exhaust ports salvaged from a wreck in a river in Connecticut.

The plan is for a return to the water, a possible trip all the way to Boston with a stopover in the sixth boro.

PT-305–like many torpedo boats–is a Higgins product, made right in New Orleans.

And before you go, read Jerry E. Strahan’s biography of the Andrew Jackson Higgins.  Click here for a Richard Campanella Times Picayune article with photos on Higgins.  Here’s an excerpt, showing Higgins’ methods when he needed to get fifty small boats built and shipped to the Navy in two weeks:  ”

Low on steel, he “chartered a fleet of trucks and armed plant guards,” wrote Strahan, “to persuade [a Baton Rouge] consignee to release the metal to Higgins Industries.”

Requiring bronze shafting, he sent his men to raid a Texas depot and arranged for complicit Louisiana police to placate livid Texas law enforcement as his trucks crossed the state line heading back to New Orleans. Needing more steel, Higgins begged and borrowed from a Birmingham plant, then sweet-talked Southern Railway officials into bending the rules to deliver the metal to New Orleans. “Never before or since,” wrote Strahan, “has a Southern Railway passenger train pulled freight cars.”

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Random Nola Tugs 4

Despite the distance and the fog covering the escutcheon,  I could immediately identify this tug–once a regular on the Hudson and in the sixth boro– on the Mississippi.

Let me end out this series with tugboats and other vessels:  Sydney Ann

and Brandi,

Mary Parker and

Port Ship Service Little Ray, 

David J. Cooper and

Bulk Guatemala with selfie-shooting watch stander,

Sonny Ivey and

Connie Z,

Moose, 

Jena Marie C, 

Capt CJ, and

fireboat Gen. Roy S. Kelley,

Jo Provel with the 9th steamboat named Natchez.

Now all of this has nothing to do with the photo below, which nevertheless deserves recognition . . . interactive art which really seems to have caught on.  Thanks, Candy Chang.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who’s even now in the cold NYC air plotting a return to

 

Nola.

Random Nola Tugs 2

You might conclude that in this city I do nothing except sit on the riverbank, but the better conclusion is that Nola river traffic volume is phenomenal.  So here’s a sampling of another–say–two hours total traffic, beginning with a vessel that would look entirely at home in NYC’s sixth boro . . . it’s J. George Betz.

Next something you’ll not see except in the inland big river, O. H. Ingram, 185′ loa x 54′ 9200 hp and triple screw,  pushing

at least eight barges heading into a turn with at least two oncoming tows:

Joe B. Wyatt, 170′ loa x 45′ 6120 hp twin screw,  pushing 18 barges and Mr. Pete with a single, but they all squeeze around the turn.

The range of vessels is interesting, considering the likes of Lil Susan S

and Josephine Anne of Bisso Offshore, with Wise One in the distance.

Natalie S . . . and

Blessed Trinity .  .  . and

and Natures Way Commander . . .

Moose . .  and

CSS Savannah . . . and less than two hours have elapsed and I haven’t included all the traffic!

and let me conclude with a photo taken the previous afternoon, another that would NOT look out of place in NYC’s waters, Greg Turecamo.

More soon.  All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Random Nola Tugs 1

I’ll start with the greatest looking tug of all I saw.  It has a name, but I cropped it out and will reveal it as this post goes on.  But isn’t this a beaut?!!  It also has an evocative previous name.  Can you guess her vintage?

I’m in the mood for puzzling today, so what’s this?  I know there’s no tug in this photo, but . . .

now there is.  Check out the scale of those gift boxes!  Here’s the story of the Algiers Christmas bonfires. Scroll through here to photos 4 and 5 for last year’s Algier’s bonfire fuel.

So here’s a closer up of the tug Bunker King passing the tanker Bow Trajectory, heading for Plaquemine.

See the Algiers “gift boxes” over the stern of Cecilia B. Slatten?  See where she fits in her fleet here.   Can anyone explain what if any connections there are between Bisso Towing and Bisso Marine, who recently have had a project in NYC’s sixth boro?

Freedom . . . there’s nothing in the sixth boro with these colors and artwork.

M/V Magnolia . . . as night falls.

Night falls on James Dale Robin and Kimberly Hidalgo.  Less than an hour earlier, prayers had been offered and champagne spilled over these two vessels and another, Dale Artigue.

And nightfall means I should return to the beaut in the first photo . . . here it is with name restored, formerly called Havana Zephyr.  Check out this fabulous line drawing of her by Barry Griffin.

Here’s the whole vessel as I saw it last week.  Such lines!  I’d really love to see a bowsprite rendering of those curves!

Merlin Banta, which my defective eyes first read as ‘merlin santa,” came out of the St. Louis Boats yard in 1946, not long after the yard delivered a fleet of icebreaking tugs to the US Navy and then to the USSR!  If you click on no other links in this post, you have to see these icebreakers . . . last photo in a post I did a year ago here.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Merrily Merry

My sincere Merry Christmas/Happy 2014 wishes to all of you.  Actually, I hit the road Monday morning for the now-annual road trip to see family in greater Atlanta.

Consider this my Christmas card.  Any ideas what this is?  These three fotos come courtesy of Nancy Donskoj.

It’s the tugboat Gowanus Bay delivering Sinterklaas and his entourage up the rondout to Kingston, NY’s annual Sinterklaas festival.   Sinterklaas is the red-clad legend I was first made aware of, and he would supposedly arrive on December 5.   Click here for more pics.    Kingston was the third oldest settlement in New Netherland.

Believe it or not, Sinterklaas stories are clouded in some controversy because of the guy standing to his left.  Actually not this guy per se at all.  In the Dutch tradition, this man is Zwarte Piet . .  or Black Pete.  The Americanization in the foto below is interesting.

As the Dutch say, prettige kerstfest.

The next two pics come thanks to Jen Muma currently of New Orleans, and it’s fuel for the

Christmas bonfire.

Here are two East Coast traditions, but I’m thinking the sixth boro really doesn’t have much PUBLIC Christmas tradition spectacle related to the water at all.  Four years ago, I floated an idea about a harbor tree inspired by what folks do in New England, but I’ve moved on.  For myself, I like the idea below, the nautical clutter tree in my friend Ed Fanuzzi’s backyard.

Have a festive day with your loved ones.  I will repost again in a few days.

Thanks again to Nancy and Jen for use of their photos.

Nola Traffic 4

Quick and succinct:  the way to enter Nola from the east and north is Rte 90.  About 30 miles east of Nola I passed this mystery vessel Poseidon, which looked like a house-forward bulk carrier with a quonset hut over the hold now blown away by a storm.  Anyone know the history?

As sun rose somewhere in a cloudy drizzly day, the first vessel to pass–upbound–was BBC Brazil.

Then a steady stream of traffic moved on the great river . . .  some of them included Amalienborg,

B. John Yeager (?) with at least 13 barges, which round Algiers Point in the most

curious way, which involved backing down, sliding over to the Nola side, and what must have been lots of nail-biting.

Big Sam and a small tow.

From the Algiers side, I checked out Barbara E. Bouchard‘s new pins.

Also on the drydocks at Bollinger’s was Mully and Admiral Jackson.

Alice‘s sister Caroline Oldendorff passed . . . upriver.

And Alley Cat headed downstream herding more barges than would seem possible.

Nola is so much more than all that, and Checkpoint Charlie is a start of that other so-long list, but do check in at Charlie’s when next you’re here.

More soon.  All foto by Will Van Dorp.

 

Nola Traffic 3

From the air you can see the traffic . . . the sinuous lines it scribes into the legendary river.

From the bank, you can see sometimes three tugs abreast (l. to r. Bobby Jones-1966, David G. Sehrt-1965, and Born Again-1974) pushing more than a dozen barges slipping around the turn between Algiers and the 9th Ward.  And when I say slipping, I mean even big vessels seem to slide through this crescent. That erosion in the foreground bespeaks higher water.

Uh . . . a variation on seasnake?

Crescent’s J. K. McLean (2010 at C & G Boatworks of Mobile, AL) and New Orleans (1998 at ThomaSea) maneuver in front of 1995 American Queen.

Close-up of McLean.

Empty Barge Lines’ Grosbec (1980).

Olga G. Stone (1981) pushing oil downbound.

Miss Abby (1960 ?) upbound.

Slatten’s Allison S (1994) light and headed upstream past Bollinger’s.

Ingram Barge Company’s Mark C.  A few years back, I saw Ingram boats all the up in Cincinnati, OH and Pittsburgh, PA.

Another Ingram vessel featured a few days ago . .  . David G. Sehrt.

Vickie (1975) pushing  . . . crushed concrete maybe . . .

Port Allen (1945?!!)

Chelsea (1989)

I’m back at work in environs of the sixth boro, and this is the last set about Nola strictly defined.  Tomorrow I hope to put up some fotos from a jaunt-within-a-gallivant southwest from the Crescent City, a truly magical place to which I really must return soon because there’s much I’ve yet to understand . . . like why

the nola hula only appears to salute certain vessels.

And is it true there’s a nun driving a tugboat somewhere on the Lower Mississippi?  Here’s a ghost story, and if you have a chance to find it, listen to Austin Lounge Lizard’s  “Boudreaux was a Nutcase.”

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who also has tons of fotos from Panama to put up.