Retro Sixth Boro 56

This monthly practice of looking back a decade gives me an opportunity to dust off a specific part of the archive in tugster tower.  Besides sneezing sometimes because of the dust, I also feel amazed about the amount of change, small changes maybe but significant it seems. 

Evening Mist has become Everly Mist, and is in a new endeavor.  Palva is now Laurentia DesGagnes operating on and out of the Saint Lawrence River where I saw her a few years back.  Only Eastern Welder in the background remains.

I made a few trips out to Greenport a decade ago, and walking through a shipyard saw this vessel from Suffolk Count Department of Health and its unusual top deck exhaust.  Is that still around?  I’m guessing it might check water quality on shellfishing areas . . .

Bebedouro (1974) and Atlantic Conveyor (1985), now both dead and scrapped.  Brendan Turecamo still works here all day every day.

Rebel (138′ x 46′) is still on the NJ side of the sixth boro, waiting for an opportunity to get back to work.

Viking (132′ x 34′) has been cut up.

Annabelle Dorothy Moran was on her delivery run, making her way to the Chesapeake/Delaware Bay area, where she still works. Those range markers are no longer in place on the Brooklyn Heights bank of the sixth boro.

John B Caddell was nearing the end of this shore leave, heading for her final one.  Note Sarah Ann tending the crane barge and WTC in the distance not yet completed. 

Commander, a WW1 USN vet as SP-1247, was still showing its rotondity.

Joan Turecamo, a late Matton product, was still in the boro.  Now she winds her way around the curves of the Lower Mississippi. 

Sarah Ann and others of the Donjon fleet kept me up most of the night in December 2012, as she stood by a barge carrying WTC antenna sections that  were lifted onto Manhattan . . .

across a blocked west side highway . . . lowered onto a vehicle with dozens of axles . . .

and trucked inland

In other night photos, quite rare on this blog . . .  it’s Clearwater lifted onto Black Diamond barge with Cornell standing by.

I hope you enjoyed this backward glance as much as I have.  I might have to get out and do some documenting of nighttime events on the sixth boro this December. 

All photos, December 2012, WVD. 

If you’re still wanting a tugster calendar 2023 version, click here for info. You can even order a few or a dozen . . .

Pairs in Autumn

Here are all the previous “pairs” post, a direction I glanced at after seeing Bouchard Boys and Linda Lee Bouchard rafted up last weekend . . .  I’m not sure why the formation, but it certainly showed their relative size.

And once I see a pattern in one place, I start to notice it in others.  Here Otter and Pike almost appear to be in the right lane for Exit 10.   I’m eager to see Muskie and Gar.

Over in Hudson Yards below “the vessel” a pair of Schenectady’s finest EMDs hold a place in the rotation out east.

Between Montreal and Trois-Rivieres lies Lac St. Pierre, where I saw this pair.  To the right, I’ve already commented that Espada used to call in the sixth boro as Stena Poseidon.  Now I look up Laurentia–to the left–and discover she used to call in our watery boro as Palva!   If it’s about the witness protection program, the effort would be foolproof.  I’d never have seen Palva in her new color, suggesting to me that paint and color trump lines.

A report that continues to fascinate me about Lac St. Pierre is that it spawns “ice rocks,” which are rocks that become embedded in the winter ice in the shallow portions of the lake that freeze solid all the way to the lakebed, until these rocks are carried downstream encased in floating ice and become lethal targets for fast spinning propellers.  Ice rocks, what a concept!

Pairs of dug canal banks, as seen in midSeptember west of Rome, show how surveyor straight some parts of the waterway are.

Guard gates are essential canal infrastructure.

And I’ll conclude with a pair of liberty statues, one pointed east and the other west.  A few of you will know immediately where a pair of these “crowns” a building, and I’ll just wait for someone to make the identification.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who asks as treat that you share your favorite tugster post or obsession or vessel  . . . today with some friends.  Be safe.

Oh, and one of my favorites is this post I did about a Halloween-escape trip seven (!!) years ago.

 

Blueblue 2

There are many blues in the sixth boro . . . besides my own.  Saturday I caught an unexpected glimpse of King’s Point  Liberator.

DonJon has their unmistakeable blue.

But then there’s this one, which mesmerized me for the first time almost six years ago and when the vessel was just off the ways.

Palva is a midsized vessel of the NesteOil fleet.

And these blues are just part of their corporate colors scheme.

No matter . . . I’m still captured by these colors,

arrested and drawn in.

Five years ago I wrote: “It’s the color of sky, water, twilight ice, and distant land.”  When Palva left for sea yesterday, it’s destination was Murmansk, possibly 11 days away.

Murmansk . . . exotic though not  balmy.   Fair winds and frazil ice . . . if any.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who’s frustrated by wordpress interface changes which prevent the fotos from enlarging when you click on them . . . the way they used to.  If anyone has a solution, let me know, svp.

Blueblue

It’s the color of sky, water, twilight ice, and distant land. Which blue would you call the vessel that has been anchored outside the Narrows this week? Dark azure or indigo? Certainly not cerulean, though I wanted to use that word.

The colors draw me in, and I’m not alone.

 

What I find fascinates as much as the color: Palva is less than three months off the ways at Brodosplit in Croatia and a first-timer to New York and its nightlife.

Palva incorporates redundant safety features in its design: two separate engine rooms, rudder and steering gear systems, props, control systems. Blueblue. 700 feet long, 100 feet beam, 60 feet draft. Double hull to operate safely in three feet of ice. Crack and crush. Check out this March shot in the Baltic. Palva works for Neste Oil; see the ice and similar vessels on ice.

See the stern windows of the pilot house that give 360 degrees view of ice or blue sky and water all around.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.