Coral Queen

Thanks for today’s fotos and text go to James Ash, port captain for Poling & Cutler.     “I took [these fotos of Coral Queen]  about 12 years ago from the Boston Post Road Bridge in Eastchester ( Mt. Vernon).

The “Rock Cut” is one of the most challenging transits as lining up for the turn around the last corner under the B.P.R. Bridge is a widow maker in a single hull, single screw, tanker built in 1920.

Probably a highlight of my career [is] the 1,200 trips up the Hutchinson River in my time on this vessel.

There was a time when she made two trips per day up this river,

one on each tide.   Master mariner Tony McDonald is at the helm on this trip.

I came in for crew change.”

Thanks much, Jim.

Here are my fotos of Coral Queen, which began rebirth through the scrapyard portal a few years back now.

Moving Fuel 2

I last used this title over three years ago, and every day  since then, fuel has flowed through the harbor, as blood through healthy veins.  And it will keep on doing so by an impossibly wide array of vessels.  Below, yesterday afternoon the 1934-launched ship Kristin Poling pushes over 21,000 barrels of oil in the direction of the 1931-opened Bayonne Bridge.   Kristin‘s destination COULD lead it through the ice-choked waters up the Hudson, captured here less than a month back by Paul Strubeck.  Part of what the foto below says to me is the immense care and maintenance in keeping both these harbor icons in use.

Lucy Reinauer pushes the 2008-launched RTC 83 southbound on the Arthur Kill.  Lucy was launched from Jakobson’s in Oyster Bay in 1973 and since then has borne all the following names: Texaco Diesel Chief, Star Diesel Chief, Morania No 5, May McGuirl. I’d love to see a foto of her when first launched.

Lois Ann L. Moran (2009) pushes barge  Philadelphia out toward the Newark Bay portion of the sixth boro.  The destination of the fuel beyond that I can only guess at.

As an indication of changes in scale over the decades, load capacity of barge Philadelphia is 118,000 barrels, relative to Kristin Poling‘s  . . .21,000 and a bit.

Fuels moved through the harbor have a range of users:  Vane’s Doubleskin 301 moves in to fuel container vessel NYK Delphinus even before containers start moving off the ship.

Maneuvering 301 is not a Vane tug but Dann Marine’s East Coast.

All fotos in the past 48 hours by Will Van Dorp, who is convinced that millions of dollars will go to whomever figures out how to move food and retail goods through the sixth boro to the consumer as efficiently as all our fuels already are.  All fotos were taken from Arthur Kill Park in Elizabeth, NJ.

Random Ships 14

The vessel is Tor Viking II, I didn’t take the foto,  and it’s nowhere near the sixth boro.  Nor is it near Vancouver BC or the United Arab Emirates, although it’s linked to both those places.   Have you seen or heard of Tor Viking II?

Tor Viking II is one of two tugs currently towing bulk carrier Golden Seas with its 60,000 tons of rapeseed for making canola oil in the Emirates.  Robert of Oil-Electric tells a thorough story about the distressed bulk carrier that may (by now) have arrived in Dutch Harbor.  You may recall Robert’s report on Deepwater from May 2010.  You’ll also find out what a “canola plant” looks like.

The foto below shows old-style 1941 coastal oil ship and a 2006 ice-strengthened Aframax tanker.  (Doubleclick enlarges.)

To see a foto of Stena Antarctica moving oil through the ice, click here and scroll.  See how a Stena fleetsibling, Poseidon, and Kafka get linked in a post from over two years ago.

Australian Spirit, far-off and all ashimmer in the cold.

Bravery Ace, delivering cars to a someday (?) car-free Manhattan?

A single-hull 1934 oil ship . . .  Kristin Poling, nears a turn in its road.

Jurkalne at anchor.

AKR310 USNS Sisler with its new black paint in GMD Bayonne.

And finally, crossing in the KVK, Euro Spirit and HanJin Chittagong.

Most exciting of all . . . Alice is back in town!  Anyone get a foto of her?

All fotos, unless otherwise attributed, by Will Van Dorp.  Be sure to read the Golden Seas story linked above and written by Robert of Oil-Electric.  Here’s the canola story.

And –just confirmed– see you in Charleston for New Years!!  I can’t wait to gallivant.

November Light

Here what a quarter day (sunrise until very early afternoon) can look like in November . . . the same weekend the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree came to town.  To digress on this last point just a second, would it not be fantastic to have the 2011 (and all subsequent ones) Rockefeller Center Christmas tree arrive in the city by tug and barge?!??  Let’s make it happen.

So, Homie commuted from Gloucester again yesterday to make the sun rise.  Thanks Capt. Joey!

The early morning survey boat heads out as soon as Homie causes the sunrise.

Norwegian Gem shuttles in its passengers from the “chartless sea”  as a tiny Andrew Barberi shuttles its passengers between Manhattan and Staten Island.

Atlantic Salvor muscles its way around the Upper Bay.

Margaret Moran sees Ever Diamond to the door.

Timthy L. Reinauer cruises past Cape Taft, still bathed in rich morning light.

By late morning, the air is clear, as Freja Selandia emerges from remnants of wooden barges toward the Arthur Kill fuel terminals.

Inimitable Odin returns to Mariner’s Harbor, and

CG 40450 heads in the same direction.  40450 last appeared here.

Some say “ugly” and others say “unique”  but I’ll say Lil Rip should  cruise through the harbor more often, as here with a crane bound for Poughkeepsie.

Snow Goose stopped by the fuel dock to slake its huge thirst from the same source tugboats do.

And last but never least, Kristin Poling, dating from the same half decade as the  Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, hurries along for just another day of work, its engine heat radiation turning the superstructure of Ajax into shimmer.

All fotos taken in one fabulous mid-November weekend by Will Van Dorp.