Retro Sixth Boro 18

Let’s go back to September 2009.  CMA CGM Marlin, launched 2007,  was the standard size back then . . .  The 5092-teu vessel has since been scrapped, after only nine years of service!!

Over a dozen sailing barges came to NYC to sail in New York waters in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the Half Moon arriving here all those years ago.  Here are more posts from back then. Groenevecht, below, is a 2000-built replica of a lemsteraak.

Also in town to celebrate were Onrust and HNLMS Tromp. Here’s more on Tromp.

Old and new came.  On one end of the spectrum was Day Peck, 

her great hold still waiting to be transformed into museum.

Urger still operated, here sidling up to Lehigh Valley 79.

A different Rosemary McAllister worked here.

Irish Sea (1969) was still at work.

Yessir, stuff changes.  All photos in September 2009 by Will Van Dorp.

 

Retro Sixth Boro 14

I hope you all are enjoying these glances back a decade as much as I enjoy putting them together.  If you weren’t paying attention back then, this hints at how much the traffic in the harbor has changed, just as it has on the roads.  If you were watching back in spring 2009, you might have this same appreciation at the changes;  In addition, you might be amazed how quickly time has passed.  Maybe you’ve forgotten about some of these boats.

Pegasus, quo vadis?  I’ve heard some ominous scuttlebutt, the kind you’d hear about any 112-year-old vessel. Your project site is still up.  Here she was in front of the Hoboken Terminal, which opened the same year–1907–as Peg was launched.

 

Starboard view and port .  . it’s the 1968 McAllister Girls . . . if she’s still around, I’ve not seen her in quite some time. In the background over near the Jersey City river’s edge, Clipper City and Pioneer sail toward each other.

Ditto the 1977 Sisters.

Ellen (1967) and Amy C (1976) are still active in the harbor, but it’s been years since APL Cyprine has called here.

The 1978 Mary Gellatly has been sold up down east, and last I knew, working as Alice Winslow for Winslow Marine Inc.  out of Southport Maine.

The K-Sea fleet in the sixth boro in 2009 was quite large.  Norwegian Sea was a workhorse on the Hudson;  now she’s Miss Rui operating for Smith Maritime. 

Houma (1970) has been scrapped.

Taurus (1979) recently reappeared here as Joker.

Onrust was launched into the Mohawk River in May 2009, and I believe she will again be sailing out of Essex CT.  Her splash up and over the riverbank trees was quite spectacular.

All photos a short 10 years ago by Will Van Dorp.

 

From “Jacht” to Yacht

You’ve seen Onrust on this blog many times even before she floated.  Click on the link that follows for the time she flew through then air  in transition to taking the waters for the first time. “Jacht“, the term, originates from the Dutch word for hunt.  The “j” in jacht is pronounced like the English “y” and the “ch” sounds like you’re rudely scrapping your throat.   You maybe know this if you’re a fan of Jägermeister, translates as master of the hunt, or something like that.

Here’s a yacht I saw this summer, Trumpy design, Trumpy being an American naval architect born in Bergen, Norway.

For more info on Trumpy and Mathis, click here.

For more info on Freedom and other yachts including Enticer, click here. I’ve seen Enticer in places as diverse as Kingston NY, Buffalo, and Mackinac Island; however, it appears I’ve yet to do a post on her.

Here Freedom is made fast at Chelsea Piers.

And Onrust, she was a sight to see the other night almost appearing to float through the night air.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who has previously posted about yachts here.

NL4

Being in the low countries, I thought I’d ask around if meow man–certainly a sixth boro staple– had ever made an appearance.  And I thought I’d ask in places where I stood a chance to get a response.  Like Lelystad, a city of over 75,000 people at 10 feet below sea level.  My “Hey there.  Do you know meow man?” got this fang-baring big eyed response  . . .

“Miauw man? Ik heb nog nooit van hem gehoord.”   I’ll translate word by word:  “I have ever never from him heard.”

At first I feared my red friend–figurehead of De Zeven Provinciën would catapult out of his enclosure, but he only pulled himself to an above-sea level-perch to ask his big friend . .  .

this guy, figurehead on Batavia.

And the big red guy’s answer was:  “Miauw man? Wie of wat is hij, dit miauw man?”  Word by word, it translates as, “MM, who or what is he, this MM?”  So the Batavia figurehead roared out across the sea looming over the farmland and asked this guy . . .

this really big guy . . . 60 tons known by various names . . . suggested by the pose.

 

And he said not a word, which made me suspect he actually knew something, had associations with MM, and was keeping the secret.

All photos and interpretations of conversations that really really did happen by Will Van Dorp.

Here are previous figureheads posts.  And what follows is a set of photos I took at the December 2008 boat show, all depicting the struggle-into-shape of Onrust’s big cat.

 

x

With mallet and gouge, Dave is truly a master sawdust maker.

Unrelated:  I’m not dedicating a post to names at this time, but I just noticed that Herman Hesse was entering port as Irene’s Remedy was departing.

 

Waterford Tugboat Roundup 2015 b

It’s been a few years since Lehigh Valley 79 was there, but David Sharps added a new feature to the parade–a

brassy salute

to each vessel that passed for review.

And what a potpourri of vessels that was!

 

 

 

Folks who from Monday to Friday work on precision instruments indoors . . . on weekends go to the physics lab on the river and experiment with vectors.

 

 

Others compete shoreside commanding line to fly.

 

 

 

If you missed this one, make plans now for 2016.

Lehigh Valley #79 was last at the Roundup in 2010.  See it here and here.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp.

Canal Barges

This photo was taken in late spring 2009.  Onrust had been splashed just a day or two before, as recorded in post 1 here and then 2 here.   But look over to the right side of the photo, the two bollards on squarish platforms in the water.

These.  Well, at summer pool . . . when the water level of the canal is up to allow navigation, they look like so, but

when winter comes and the state hydrologist directs draw-down of the pool, the bollards are on platforms that

are actually concrete barges, ones that do NOT rise and fall with changing pool levels.  The snowy photos I took last weekend.

Click here and here for some of the history of these century old barges.

Note the reference numbers below and

below.

Here’s how they look on google satellite view.   For more on the builder behind these, click here . . . G. A. Tomlinson.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Canal Corp Boats 12

Enjoy more blue and gold boats today, and these are called SPS’s . . . as in self-propelled scows.  Generally they have a house at stern and lifting capability forward, as you can see on SPS 52.  The inclusion of these details is where the similarity among these vessels ends . . . as you will notice in the variety of houses below.

SPS 59.

SPS 60 in summer of 2014 and

in late spring of 2009.  For details on this photo, click here and here for photos of the launch on Onrust, assisted by an SPS.

And then–as with the tenders and buoy boats–there are SPS’s with registry numbers but no “numeric name,”  if you catch my drift, like the one below with registry ending in …305 seen here and

here, as well as

. . . 327.

Let’s look closer at SPS 60’s propulsion.

For more info on Thrustmaster propulsion, click here.  For thrusters like these on a huge crane, click here.

I have no idea how many SPS’s operate on the canal or how old these are or when such vessels first served the canal.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

 

Waterford Tugboat Roundup 2013 d

Here’s a collage of images as my last roundup 2013 post:

a half dozen working tugboats and a covered barge as seen looking east from the Second Street Bridge,

a float plane that might have imagined this to be a different type of gathering,

a swimmer in the water either doing a northern style Richard Halliburton re-enactment or setting out to do an underwater survey mission as the lock is –unbeknownst to her–about to open,

(For more complete info on what’s going on here with the swimmer, check this post by bubbling-blowing bowsprite.)

my possible future employer shoehorning an Eriemax passenger vessel into the first lock in the flight,

waterdogs go fishing,

Onrust resplendant,

a Dutch barge,

Urger dried out for some emergency surgery along

with Tappan Zee II,

Eighth Sea and Bill’s exercise machine,

Stu’s Dragonfly,

the pilot’s understanding of the pushoff contest,

and in Troy, some public art designed to assist memory . . .  the Soldier’s and Sailor’s Monument with goddess Columbia blowing her horn high above Troy, as seen from Tug44.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.  See you in Waterford in 2014, I hope.

Jets Along the Mohawk

When I was in high school upstate, I had to read this novel about drums . .  and history.

Now imagine this interior monologue . . . our speaker doesn’t read much . . . he works and then goes to the river to fish with his best friend the bottle . . . a riverine Rip van Winkle.  He slings in some bait, he dozes, he hears an approaching engine . . . and he sees this!

He shuts and reopens his eyes . . . and it’s closer.  He rubs his eyes .  .  .  and it’s still there.  He flings the cursed bottle into  . . . nearest recycling bin (of course), swears to mend his dissolute ways, and runs along the bank yelling  “OMG!!  It’s a Douglas F3D Skynight!!”   He just happens to “favorite” that aircraft of all the ones ever developed . . .  because of having built a model of one as a boy.

Our Rip has found new purpose.  The 2012 Erie Canal season has delivered the vehicle to turn his life around!

He vows to walk or run or bicycle along the Erie Canal as far as he needs to in order to see where this jet will land.

Then he hears another noise … another DonJon blue tugboat pushing a scow laden with

OMFG!!  He has no idea, and all the life-remedying he’d promised minutes ago . . . is in danger.    He turns and walks back to where moments before he had enjoyed the bliss of fishing along the Mohawk.  He stopped once and

looked back at Cheyenne and the scow.  “Nah . . . that never happened,” he decided.  Never.

Downriver some 100 plus miles, the day before, another blue DonJon tug had been pushing this dredge spoils scow toward the Bayonne Bridge when the 747/Shuttle flew past.

To be serious, the wonderful fotos above come compliments of Don Rittner, of the Onrust project, about which I did many posts a few years back.  Here are a few representative Onrust links:  2010, September 2009 (see the last foto), May 2009, and 2008.    Use the search window to find many more.  Last foto is by Will Van Dorp.

The aircraft –a Skynight, a Mig-15, and a Supermarine Scimitar–have migrated from Intrepid Museum, which needs to make room for the Shuttle display, to ESAM, an upstate aerosciences museum.   The blue tugboats have all appeared here before; in order they are Empire, Cheyenne, and Caitlin Ann.

Clearwater Rebuild

All fotos and information here comes from John Sperr, last referred to here in relation to ice yacht Galatea, as its pilot.

Today’s post comes from the same area of the Hudson where iceboating was happening a mere two months ago.  Ice has now given  way to the fine color heralding leaves.  Clearwater has wintered on a mobile shipyard, a barge.  The “whiskey plank”  aka the last part of the hull to be closed up post-repair was recently steamed, jacked into place, and fastened.

Libation followed and then

parade, as the shipyard itself danced upriver clutched tight by Cornell to be offloaded in anticipation of rigging, which

would happen at

Scarano Boat.  The barge was slid into the travel-lift dock, slings

moved like fingers under the hull, and

Clearwater, cradled in these sturdy arms, was

carried onto the high-and-dry.  Notice Onrust in the background?  And Adirondack directly beyond Clearwater‘s stern?

This left the barge Black Diamond to assume other duties, become other things.

All fotos by John Sperr.  Thanks, John.

By the way, start imagining the weekend of June 19 and 20.  Mermaids on Saturday (with Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed !@#@! as Queen Mermaid and King Neptune)  and music on Sunday (with Pete Seeger and Lucy Kaplansky and many more!@#@##@!!)  ?  How can one make a choice like that?

Also, a tall ship and volunteer opportunity in Brooklyn:  PortSide NewYork FreeSail Clipper City 4-12-2010