New York Media Boat 2

The NY Media Boat has a pick up point in Manhattan, but I chose to board the boat at Liberty Landing in Jersey City, where this view of lower Manhattan awaits. From here, our goal was almost 20 nm away, even though we’d not take the shortest route.  Some tasks call for efficient and direct routes, and other tasks crave scenic, gunk-hole exploration routes.

This was the goal, the station boat, in this case Pilot No. 1 New York. Of course,  “on station” may not be at anchor, rather it might be steaming slow circles or figure eights in the vicinity of the entrance to Ambrose Channel, with an America class boat ready to deliver pilots between ships and the station boat.   This is entirely stating the obvious, but standing on shore, you may not be able to see the station boat; however, from the station boat, you can clearly see a large city spread out before you.  Obviously, you can’t see the tidal zone of the beach  . .  and more . . .  because of the curvature of the earth.  At one point, an Ambrose lightship was in this vicinity.

Our actual goal was the “A” buoy, aka the “sea buoy,” which marks the “sea” end of Ambrose Channel.   Note the green patina “whistle” in the lower half of the buoy;  it makes a sighing tone as water motion pressures air through it. Click here to hear a variety of buoy noises.   Here‘s another view of the type.  By the way, in the image below, that’s the station boat in the distance, the white speck to the right of the buoy.

But all that is not the story.  See the bird “swimming” to the right of the A buoy?  Well, it was trapped, tangled in discarded fishing line. 

This turned into the adventure.  Click on the image . . . and you’ll see the rescue and hear the sounds, including the buoy whistle and VHF crackle.  That’s Bjoern at the helm and then carrying the bird after I cut the main line.  I’m the guy with the white hat and knife. 

The gull’s body and right leg had been entangled in the line.   What this photo doesn’t show is the blood on Bjoern’s foot and my hand.  Gulls have a reputation for biting the hands that disentangle it . . .  as reward for saving them from certain death by starvation.   Oh well, you’ve seen blood before, and salt water heals everything.

Here’s closeup of some of that line.

Click on the clip below for the context of the video.   By the way, the footage comes from the in-cabin CCTV camera.

Many thanks to Bjoern at the Media Boat for the views from “sea” and the adventure. 

Photos, unless otherwise credited, WVD.

PS:  If you’re looking for food ideas for tomorrow, that gull was plump as a small turkey, given all the bunker out there.  And if you are spending T’day on a vessel and feel like it, send me a photo of your table, give me some info, and I’ll do a post about that.  I know this book  is out of date, so classics live on and maybe it needs to be updated.

I’m thankful we have so much to be thankful for every day.

Random Ships 85

“As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean” is a line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner 220 years ago.  This ship might be painted, and the ocean and sky nicely colored, but that ship is certainly not idle.

MOL Glide  . . . glided in through the Narrows a few days ago, and has also glided out, heading for Charleston SC.   The approach to the sixth boro is not always that pretty.

When Leda Maersk arrived, the sky was overcast and the colors subdued.

 

Overcast with wispy clouds that allow some reflection from OOCL Berlin.

It was just after 0800, so I’d

call this morning fog.

All photos, WVD.

 

 

More Cargoes 20

Cargo I’ll define as “goods transported for profit.”  Click here to see the range of cargoes posts.

So what’s this?  That’s what I wondered when I first glimpsed it yesterday, over by the Sandy Hook Pilots’ pier.

I got no confirmation, but there’s no mistaking what this is.  And there was this tugster post involving Onyx Arrow from just two weeks ago.

In an ideal world, I would have had means to look down onto the tow, say, from Fort Wadsworth or a drone.  From my vantage I didn’t get olfactory evidence, and maybe I should be thankful for that.

Just the facts . . . Gelberman towed the carcass and traveled a distance roughly 50 miles to the SE from the end of the Ambrose, and then returned.   The whale, I gather from this NOAA article, at some point such that it would not drift back into land, became a “whale fall.”  This surfing writer, based on who knows what authority, suggests this is the best way to dispose of such a carcass.

So who profits here are the locals of all the boros being spared the smell of decay but also all the creatures in the food chain around the whale fall.

Tangentially related and tied to the focus of most of my attention these days, did you ever hear the story about the what in the Erie Canal?  Well, go back to 1891, a Capt. Nickerson killed a 65′ whale off Cape Cod.  And he must have been really tired of salt water and his erstwhile profession because he decided to try making a fortune showing off his catch to folks along the inland waterways, in this case the Erie Canal, that highway mainlining immigrants into the American heartland and creating boom towns along the way.  I’m not sure what sort of steamer he used to tow the whale, but westbound he went, stopping at docks and charging folks . . . kind of like his own unique Coney Island show.  I’m told that the farther west he got, the less he could charge . . .  Check out this article telling of the whale’s impact in central New York state in November 1891 . . .   and for anyone not familiar with the route, Seneca Falls is on a cul-de-sac off the route to Buffalo.

Rembert, frequent contributor of wit and esoterica here, read my mind and informed me of a beluga that swam more than 100 miles up the Rhine back in 1966, animating a generation with a desire to clean up the watery environment and more . . ..

 

All photos above by Will Van Dorp.

And on yesterday’s post with the three landscape shots . . . commenters gussed it:  photos #2 and 3 were both taken from the Newburgh area looking south.  Photo #1 prompted me to do the post because at first glance, I thought it too was a photo taken from the Newburgh area looking south.  More careful study showed it was not.

Anyhow,  a friend and former colleague Scott Stroot recently took that photo in Oregon, and wrote this: “Columbia River Gorge, just downstream of Hood River OR. Some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world (IMHO).  Tugs & barges sharing the river with sail & para boarders is a pretty common sight in certain spots. Eastern end of this gorge is likewise dramatic, but the topography is temperate desert, as opposed to “wet side” verdant [as he usually sees in Kentucky]. Absolutely stunning.”  This is all the encouragement I need to add the Columbia River Gorge to my very long list of places to gallivant . . .  Thanks, Scott.

 

High and Dry 9

Here was 8.

Do you recognize these vessels?  At the moment I write this, both are working together to escort in NYK Meteor.

In the drydock earlier this year . . . Joan Turecamo and the other?

This one is unmistakeable.  A year ago she was preparing to steam all night inside the sixth boro to ride out the storm.

Click here for a foto of her in late October last year after Sandy had punished some more than others.

From the land side, you can see some of the work recently done.

And here from the dry side of the first shot . . .  it’s Kimberly  Turecamo and Joan.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Pilot No. 1

Since noon it’s been raining, but the sunrise brought this sequence:  CSAV Romeral outbound for Baltimore and one of the most beautiful work vessels of the sixth boro inbound.  Also, that’s Vane’s Magothy in the distance.  And for outatowners, way in the distance is Coney Island, home of the mermaid parade on the summer solstice.

Pilot No. 1 New York first splashed into the waters in May 1972.

She’s 180 feet loa,  gorgeous, and “related” to a good dozen varied regulars in the sixth boro.

Here she passes between  European Spirit and Fort Wadsworth light.    Given that New York comes off a Great Lakes shipyard

in the tiny town of Marinette, Wisconsin . . .

she shares that Green Bay/Lake Michigan place of origin with

Vane’s Brandywine and three Staten Island Ferry vessels (Spirit of America, Marchi, Molinari).  See tugster posts features the following Marinette constructions.  Katherine Walker, Apache, Jennifer Miller, and Ellen McAllister.  Here’s Marinette’s current website.   Here’s Strong, another Marinette product I never expect to see, but clearly a forerunner of the Brandywine type tug.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who would love to see contemporary fotos of the vessels built in Wisconsin that made their way  into the navies of Vietnam, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Here’s my post-Sandy New York Pilot No. 1 foto.