Transitioning 5

Notwithstanding all that . ..    sometimes the thought that a day is the first day in the rest of one’s life is superlatively vivid.    Enjoy my pics and maybe you’ll get this sense also.

Sunday afternoon, Zhen Hua 10 enters the Kills. Does anyone know if “Zhen Hua” means anything?  Note Manhattan and the tip of Bayonne to the left, and tug Brooklyn, Robbins Reef Light, and the boro of Brooklyn to the right.

The new cranes arriving and the bridge their squeezing underneath are integrally related parts of the same story, as . . .

… are the cranes and the dredging equipment in the background.  Note tug Specialist in the background

Margaret Moran tends the port bow.

Gramma Lee T Moran supplies the brakes and rudder.

The ship completes its journey of thousands of miles.  Is it true that Zhen Hua 10 arrived here via Cape of Good Hope?

On the same theme . .  here’s a handsome team of tugs, good paint all around.  Working on a tandem assignment?

My thought when I read the name on the nearer tug was . . . this is historic . . . Crow‘s last ride;  the Bushey tug might also be in the last mile of its thousands and thousands in a half century of work.

She’s being escorted in by Emily Ann . . .

Crow and her sister Cheyenne DO have classic lines!

Machines on shore were already staged . . . .

while not far away a last spring seal lollygags on some warm rusty metal, once also a brand new machine.

And on the other side of Staten Island rubble of a light indispensable a century ago adapts to a new life as a rookery.

Many thanks to NYMedia Boat.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who will be transiting himself soon.  Thursday I leave on a grand gallivant, and in early June–if all goes well– I start a new chapter working on Urger, that handsome young centenarian tug you see upper left at the top of the page.

Stuyvesant

Know what the “D” on the stack is for?

The Dutra Group . .  . a California company with a vessel bearing quite the sixth boro name.

Click here for particulars on the dredger.

Until two years ago, it belonged to Bean.

Surely . ..  she’s an industrial and industrious vessel.

Robbins Reef

. . . sometimes aka Kate’s Light.   And I did a Katherine Walker post here without including the light in that post.   So here’s my attempt at amends.  All Robbins Reef today . . .

The tug Robbins Reef is an ex-army tug, sibling of 8th Sea, built in 1953 in Fells Point at American Electric Welding.  Can anyone add info on the former American Electric Welding shipyard?  National also appears to be a sibling, but I am starting to digress.

Back to the light by that name . . . in the distance.

See you at the Noble Maritime auction tonight, I hope.

KVK

Sometimes the most heavily trafficked waterways are the least known to landfolk. Consider Newtown Creek in 2007. Tis true also of this waterway between New York and New Jersey, Kill Van Kull aka KVK. When I first moved here a half decade ago, I thought to kayak here, a plan I quickly discarded after seeing how heavily it’s trafficked. Until I found this article on Staten Island name origins, I wondered who the Van Kull is; check out “Arthur Kill” as well as “Het Kill van het Cull.” As a Dutch speaker and linguist, I find this Anglicization explanation finally satisfactory.

The tug below enters the west end of KVK about a mile on the Bayonne side of the Goethals Bridge; astern is visible the waterfront of Elizabeth, NJ. Just to the right of of the twin steeples of St. Patrick’s Cathedral is the shadowy tower of the Union County Courthouse; off the bow is the Singer plant that I blogged about a few days ago.

If Stapleton Service were to turn to port, it would enter Newark Bay, the busiest portion of the port of greater New York.

Of course, Newark Bay, which handles all this traffic, can only do so because of its shoreside transportation links–rail and road–as well as major dredging, which doesn’t even keep up with the increasing vessel size, or more accurately, depth. Check this link (scroll all the way through) for a Maersk container ship with three times the cargo capacity of the Maersk vessel above, three times, 300%!!

Notice this shovel barge is “spudded” in place; the spud is the pillar or foot just in front of the bucket of the crane. But dredging means mixing what has lain inert in the mud with estuary flow, and what has lain in the mud might be nasty.

Given the traffic, KVK is home base for at least 100 tugs, according to an August 2005 article by Wendell Jamieson in the Times. Moran is one of the bigger fleets.

Here a fearless helmsman “stays the course” and checks room to starboard while a huge bulk carrier, flanked by a Moran tug, passes to port.

The east end of KVK is marked by Robbins Reef Light, shown below.

So ends the KVK at its east end, but it’s all sixth borough, and the sixth borough . . . well, it connects to all the watery parts of the globe.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.