What I Saw But Missed 2

Here was the first use of the title.

I took the first four photos here on May 25, 2018 in Washburn WI.  Don’t know where Washburn is?  It’s near the SW end of Lake Superior, just south of Bayfield, and I was searching for fish tugs, i.e., focused.  I recall noticing the masts and that pinky stern over beyond the boat in the foreground.

The mast rake and size was familiar, as were the ratlines.  And the stern lines .  .  . truly unique.

I even walked over there and thought the details of the bow . . .  what I call the head rig . . .  was something I’d seen before.

I recall the words “Thomas Colvin” bubbled to the surface of my brain.  But I saw this before 0800 at the start of a long day that would involved a car trip to Sault Sainte Marie, i.e., lots of miles to gallivant safely while seeing the most interesting sights. That trip ended and led into another in my picaresque journey through this part of my life.

And then yesterday, the social media entity I call “bookface” popped this photo to the surface as having been posted 11 years ago, exactly.  Indeed that was me, slouching way back into a pinky stern, keeping my feet clear of any adjustments the tiller man needed.

And a friend wrote to ask, “and where is that boat these days?”

I was busy at that moment, so only later in the afternoon did I get back to the question.  Since google helps answer a lot of such questions, I consulted it and came up with Rosemary Ruth Sailing Charters out of Washburn WI. At first, I regretted having been through Washburn twice in May.  How could I not have seen it, I wondered.  That led me to go to my photo library . . . thinking I’d seen it and it hadn’t registered.

But there she is, in plain sight, close enough that I could have touched it.  For photos of this delightful small schooner, click here.  For photos of her high and dry from 12 years ago showing the weld signature that I should have checked in Washburn, click here.   For photos of me on the tiller, click here. Then owner Richard Hudson (click on his tag at the top of the post)  put her on the land while he got Issuma, a sturdier schooner. and sailed tens of thousands of miles touching four continents and crossing the Northwest Passage.  For some of those photos, click here.   See Richard’s own blog, as his journey continues, here. For some video, click here.

Thanks to bookface and thanks to Tom Briggs for asking her whereabouts.

Port of Walvis Bay

Are those dunes beyond Durga Devi?

Sandy shore and mountains? Durga Devi is a fairly new offshore supply vessel.

In the same port, here’s Kamanga, a Cambodian-registered reefer from 1977.  But those are two OSVs or AHSVs in the distance.  So what accounts for this collection of speciality, non-cargo per se vessels?

Another reefer here is about a decade newer .. . Isleman, a name sounding like it needs a preposition.

Frontier is a Grindrod container vessel.

But here’s the explanation . . . it’s Seadrill’s West Eclipse, a semi-submersible.

Here’s an introduction to the company.

Hilde K is an anchor handling supply tug, 2008, Indonesia-built.

Topaz Xara is China-built, 2014.   They remind me of what I saw in Guanabara Bay a few years ago.

Most of this is a tribute to global oil, offshore Namibia.   Here’s more of a picture of the Namibian economy.

Many thanks to Richard Hudson for these photos.  Previous photos by Richard and crew are here.

If I ever get to Namibia, one place I’d like to see is the Skeleton Coast . . . .

At the End of the World

A Jules Verne novel set at the southern tip of South America goes by the fabulous title,  The Light at the End of the World.   Richard Hudson passed through here recently and sent along the photos in today’s post.

It’s USS ATR-20, built in Camden Maine, launched in January 1943 and ending her days in Ushuaia, Argentina.  The shipyard is now Wayfarer Marine, which I should do a post about one of these days.  The sixth boro–as does The Graves of Arthur Kill– has its very own disintegrating ATR here.

Fishing vessel Don Herman makes its way past the glacier in Seno, Chile.

 

Here’s a smaller fishing boat near Isla Riesco. 

 

End of the world aka Strait of Magellan, find tankers there?  Of course.  Here’s Sloman Herakles.

Ditto ROROs like Fuegino.

 

Canal Cockburn . . . they fish there too.

Puerto Eden . . . some folks live their whole lives there and like it.

 

 

Here are two more pics he sent a few months ago;  I’m impressed with this tender made of repurposed styrofoam.

Note Issuma in the background to the right.   Here are more.

 

Many thanks to Richard for this.  Follow his progress along the edge of the world here.

 

Meanwhile . . . 8000 Miles Away 5

Recognize the red schooner?  It’s shown here approaching the dock in Cape Town last week in a photo by Colin Syndercombe, whose previous photos you can see here.  Here are previous photos of the red boat on tugster, and here is the blog kept by the crew of the red boat, Issuma.  Since leaving the sixth boro in Fall 2010, Issuma has traveled up the St. Lawrence, northward leaving Canada to port and Greenland to starboard, across the Northwest Passage, southward through the Bering Strait . . . you get the flow.

It’s Richard Hudson.  So if you didn’t click on his blog link above, after traveling southward west of the entire North and South American continents–with a stopover in Easter Island–he rounded Cape Horn, leaving it to port, and kissed Antarctica.  Some time later this week, Issuma will leave Cape Town and head for New Zealand.

 

In October 2010, Issuma tied up briefly along the East River in Queens.  Oh the stories he can tell!

Also, much gratitude to Colin for taking these pics.

Ports of southern Chile

aka GHP&W 4

Some of you might remember schooner Issuma . . .   ?  Since this post and this one five years ago, Richard Hudson has sailed the schooner from the Northern Atlantic, westward across the Northwest Passage to Alaska, down to Easter Island, and now he’s truly been gunkholing along the western side of southern South America, where there’s an archipelago not unlike parts of the coast of Maine.

The boat below, part of the Naviera Ulloa fleet, is also remarkably similar to the transporter in yesterday’s post.

Richard took these photos in mid-September, so this is approaching the start of spring here.

Don Jose, part of the Frasal fleet, is a multi-purpose transporter that sometimes transports commodities such as fish and wine.

 

 

Hull cleaning is done here in much the same way I’ve seen it done in Maine.

 

 

By the way, the distance from this archipelago in the south to the salt mines in the north of the country, Salar Grande de Tarapacá, Iquique-Chile, is about 1500 miles!  These are the mines where much of the road salt stored in Staten Island and elsewhere along the eastern US come from.

Many thanks to Richard Hudson for these photos. Priot to sailing on Issuma, he had a beautiful Tom Colvin-design pinkie schooner called Rosemary Ruth.

Issuma’s Journey

So here’s a prime example of a sixth boro delight.  No, THAT inspector is not immersed in the sixth boro!  But the object of the inspection sailed into the East River last year in late August from the Sound and then out again heading north, up the Hudson River.  Note the place and date on this foto, which I borrowed from Richard Hudson’s Issuma blog.  Click here if you don’t know (like me) where the “Dolphin and Union Strait” is located.

I took this foto of Issuma last October just off the Rondout, where Issuma anchored.  Who would have guesed that Issuma, one year on, would be NORTH of Whitehorse!

Here’s another from that same morning.  Another schooner . . . Rosemary Ruth . .  was buddied up alongside.

This foto, also from Richard’s blog, shows the exact date.

So how does one get a 50′ schooner from the Rondout to the Yukon is less than a year?   Some thoughts come to mind:  very large truck, a C-17, squadrons of helicopters . . .  or by just sailing it through the northwest passage, doing what a namesake failed to do some 400 years back!

Congratulations to Richard Hudson and his crew, who on Columbus Day 2010 poured me a distinctly tropical drink on Issuma, docked in Long Island City, Queens.  Cheers.  I trust you passed the mustachioed one’s inspection gloriously.

Cold Sailin’ 2

I owe all these photos to Mike. I’ll admit to being too cold to focus on my camera.

Words cannot describe this feeling, heeled over in a good wind and running against the tide. Seamanship and design (check pinkies) are things of ineffable beauty, even on a cold day.  Some might say “especially” then.

Staying out of the wind is a good idea… ducking behind the cabin but not being overcome by cabin fever (check Feb. 20)…

…if you can.

Back in the marina just across the dock, the white stuff still emprisons. Or not… One just needs to be resourceful.

Here’s more on Thomas Colvin.