Landmarks 4

Here’s a previous post with this title.

For anyone venturing upriver, no landmark is more intriguing than Pollepel Island, 50 miles north of the Battery.  But it’s changing.   Note this difference between these fotos I’ve taken over the past decade.

2003, as seen from the Channel, looking roughly east. Notice the lower wall and the upper wall with four sides, which I’ll call west, north, and east and south sides not visible.

earlier this August 2013 as seen from Patty Nolan from the same approximate location.  Notice that the upper structure NOW has only a west-facing wall.  Unrelated to this landmark, but you can see the photographer in the mirror.

Here’s an August 2013 closer-up, showing the upper west wall only.

Here are the south and east walls as seen from the land looking west in spring 2007.  The east wall is now all gone, as is a large portion of the south wall . . . here bathed in the most sunlight.

Same vantage point… south and east walls, as seen from MetroNorth train later in the spring 2008.

And another view of the west and north walls from fall 2008.

The island is off limits, but you can get a tour via Bannerman Castle Trust, Inc.

I took the tour yesterday.  Here’s the south wall.  Compare what remains of the stairs here with what you could see in the 2007 and 2008 fotos.  Click here for more before/after views.

Closer-up of those stairs.  Notice the metal tubing near lower right side of the foto?

Here’s that metal tubing, remnants of a drawbridge.

More of the south side.  Bannerman saw architectural cannonballs as his logo, and they are everywhere.

Balls and balls and more balls.

Here are closer-ups of the north and west walls.   Scaffolding will soon appear here, as attempts are made to keep these facades from crumbling as well.

More cannonballs.

Reportedly, these “balls” are cementaceous orbs stuck onto surplus bayonets embedded in the brick.  I can’t verify this story, but Bannermans business was Army/Navy surplus, which his father started while the family lived near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.  Click here to see a six-minute video of their 1927 catalog;  if you generally click on no  links in this blog, this one is worth it.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who plans at least another Bannermans Island psot soon.

How to Swim FROM a Tugboat

You may have seen this foto sequence yesterday of Orlando Duque diving from a helicopter near the Statue of Liberty?  Well . .  more on the foto below later in this post, but the diver here is in fact she who inspired my post today by her instructions on how to swim from a schooner . . . a few years back.

If you’ve looked at bowsprite’s link above, you’ll notice that my instructions begin differently.

1.  Choose your location, and few locations are as enticing to me as the Hudson north of the Bear Mountain Bridge, where I hiked a few months back.

2.  Select a tugboat.  Buchanan 12, here managing eight stone scows just below Breakneck Ridge,  is photogenic but absolutely the wrong choice for this.

Nor should you choose Kimberly Poling, here headed southbound on the Hudson in the same bends.

Patty Nolan, however, fits the specs perfectly.  You may remember Patty here  from a few years back looking just a little different and facing a dilemma.

3.  Here’s where I concur with bowsprite’s first item:  find a captain who will let you off the boat.    We did.  The dock worker here belongs to the blue-hatted union.

And off we go in search of an anchorage.  Now I know that since contemporary life comes with an infinite lists of troubles and limitations,  to relax . . . and celebrate life  . . . you gotta do it!

The mature days of summer demand celebration.

4.  Anchor in a safe location.  Bannerman, haunting in springtime, seems more welcoming in late summer.

5.  Check the equipment.  Will Patty the figure figure be enticed to come up out of her cabin by this gold lamé?

6.  Set up the sturgeoncam

and deploy

the crane.

7.  Swim . . . without the strap or

or with, in a variety of entrance styles.

8.  Board the boat when the day is done . . . if you can figure out how.  I need to work on that one.  Or sturgeoncam here might have to swim down the Hudson . . . .  In late summer, that’s not a bad option.

Would you believe this waterspotted lens proves I followed Patty and crew all the way back to Bear Mountain?

Do you think I’d conclude this post without a video of tugster swinging from the crane?  Click on the foto to see.

Don’t let Labor Day find you without a Hudson River dip in your experience.

By the way, from the local paper, one of my favorite weekly columns,  twelve places you should also visit in the Hudson Valley.