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The first photos here comes from John Jedrlinic, who took the one immediately below in Norfolk in August. So far as I know, Julie Anne has not yet seen the sixth boro.
I’m also not sure A. J. McAllister has seen the sixth boro. Believe it or not, A. J. dates from 2003, built in Panama City, FL. Jed snapped this shot as she passed USS Bulkely. Unknowable from the Oct. 16, 2015 photo, the tight light on A. J. was attached to bulker New Spirit.
Can you guess this one?
It’s a nicely tidied up Quenames, New England bound.
Charles A has been in the harbor since at least this summer.
Coming in out of the rising sun, it’s Marie J. Turecamo and Kirby Moran.
And headed in that direction, it’s Elizabeth McAllister.
Now let’s size down . . . Robbins Reef is 42.4 ‘ loa,
Helen Paker is 39′,
and Ava Jude is 25′ . . .
This last photo I can’t identify, although I count at least four crew. Photo comes thanks to Phil Little.
Thanks to Jed and Phil for the first and last photos here; all the others are by Will Van Dorp.
Curtis Bay Fells Point built 1956. Taken 1987. Click here for Fells Point with more of the fleet. Scuttled in 2008 at Redbird Reef near the mouth of Delaware Bay.
James Turecamo built 1969 . . . in my first 2015 photo of her. In the dry dock directly between James and the WTC, it’s MSC Harry L. Martin.
It’s the classic 1965 built Bushey-built Cheyenne. Here she was in Oswego in June 2014 about to head into the Great Lakes, making her a truly anadromous vessel.
Miriam Moran built 1979.
Bruce A. McAllister . . . built in 1974.
Ruby M . . . built in Oyster Bay in 1967.
Robbins Reef . . . 1953
with entourage that may have salvaged the white fiberglass boat on the barge.
And the current Fells Point, Maryland built in 2014.
Photos of both vessels Fell Point come thanks to Allen Baker. All others by Will Van Dorp.
It’s snowing in the sixth boro now, but Sunday–between threatening clods–it looked like this.
Let’s start with Discovery Coast and GCS 236.
Shelby passing Grace D of
D & G Launch Service . . .
Buchanan 12, again light . . .
And a close up of Discovery Coast . . .
and another ending with Robbins Reef Light, which looked like this in 1951.
All fotos taken on Sunday by Will Van Dorp, who hopes you can come to the auction at Noble Maritime this Friday evening.
OK, so I’m a curious blogger who looks in on a world I don’t really inhabit, a set of professions I wish to know more about than I do, a realm where I might re-engage. If I’d made different decisions years ago, I could have been this crewman, almost lost among the steel members of bow and crane at the dock where President Polk will discharge and accept containers with goods worth millions. I’m guessing he’s a docking pilot, sixth boro crew as opposed to Polk crew. Might some of Polk crew be asleep as their vessel docks, here at Howland Hook?
I might have come to work the clamshell dredge this morning on this crew boat. Or I could have been boat crew bringing these dredgers to their job site. English is strange sometimes: crew boat just isn’t the same as boat crew. The tug there is Miss Gill. More Gill and dredge fotos soon. Is Gill a day crew only boat?
When Grimaldi Lines Repubblica di Amalfi came through the Narrows the other morning, I first saw a RORO container ship painted the same bright yellow as . . . a Ferrari or a Fiat. Well, maybe less glossy. But I didn’t think of the crew: how many, what life stories and dramas and talents, what nationalities. But as the vessel came closer, I noticed the bow
had five guys visible. They were taking in the sunrise as I was. (I’m trying to figure out how to upload fotos such that when you click on them, they enlarge, but I don’t have it yet.) The closest guy wearing a chartreuse life vest had a phone to his ear. Talking to whom and where, I wondered. I’d certainly call friends and special friends all over the city just to say I was back in the sixth boro, but could he even get off the ship?
About the same time into the harbor came this beautiful tanker, Orange Wave, carrying my favorite drink fresh from groves in Brazil. And the Orange Wave crew, what color uniforms do you suppose they wear?
But who is he? How many trips between Santos and Newark has he made?
Robbins Reef . . . I could be wrong, but I’m guessing what we see here is the entire crew, one man sitting at the wheel. Correct me if I’m wrong.
And the crewman of Falcon standing beside the railing near the stern of the barge, how many fellow crewmen are on the tug?
As Miriam Moran with white protective sheet over the rubber pudding trailed a cruise ship into port last weekend, a crewman looked upriver maybe at the stern of the cruise ship, resting on the warm H-bitt.
This is one of my favorites and I posted a different shot in the series a few days ago: one crewman of Gramma Lee T Moran working out on a rowing machine while hundreds of people on the cruise ship look on. Does he realize he appears to be such a spectacle. Of course, you say, those folks were looking at Manhattan, not the crewman, and I know that.
My point: crew is crew. They’re not passengers, family, friends, staff, associates, castmates, colleagues, teammates, partners . . . I could go on. Crew. They’re crew.
If I were crew, there’d be gains and losses. I’d know some of the answers to questions like those raised, but I wouldn’t see myself or my vessel in its entirety the way I can now. On the other hand, I’d see the world from it, see the insides. Gain some, lose some. Makes it hard.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp since July 1, 2009.
I took all but the last two fotos here between 1230 and 230 today at Pier 66, where Elizabeth and I met Rick of Old Salt for lunch. Good company, tasty grub, wild weather, diverse traffic describe the lunch; see if you agree.
First Robbins Reef passed southbound, some swells washing the stem bitt.
Spartan Service pushed oil upriver. I’ve never previously seen Spartan. Weehawken cliffs make up the horizon.
Bandersnatch (a sailboat converted to a powerboat?) of Charleston heads south, a great Lewis Carrollian name for a snarky hybrid.
Lunch over, we were packed up and ready to head out when the skies opened, water washing off the roof atop us like snow past Bounty‘s bountiful figurehead, whose garments then clung to her body. The bowsprit just beyond Bounty belongs to Bel Espoir 2, of Brest.
Rain reduced visibility to less than a mile at this point. Notice here as Adirondack powers upriver, the tower at the Hoboken Terminal is barely visible; the menacing point… resembling thunderbolt, is Bounty‘s martingale. And the crew and passengers huddled in the yellow slickers give the impression of all members of the same religious order, reminiscent of one of my favorite all-time Bowsprite drawings here. Rain then
tapered off as Dutch ketch Saeftinge, Falcon, , plowed northward. Imitating Hudson? Geer is a tiny village less than 20 miles south of Amsterdam.
Falcon moved a light barge on the hip, southward past the Lincoln Tunnel vent.
Speaking of Bowsprite, here’s a tribute foto, with two visitors–Bel Espoir 2 and Bounty–as backup. Strangely, I was seeing shadow and still covering my camera from rain as I took this.
By the time Erie Service headed past, the air felt positively (negatively?) tropical.
The next two fotos were taken yesterday. As the western sky over North Hoboken reddened, I couldn’t resist hauling out my camera.
Cameras are vision-aids for me. The more I looked, the more what I saw on the French three-masted schooner intrigued me. Note the “collage” through the glass on the aft end of the cabin. Would this combination EVER appear on an American vessel?
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
By the way, I just got an email from Rick in which he swears he saw an old man in a strange large vessel made of gopher wood and pitch and carrying a lot of animals, pairs male and female, as he ferried over the Hudson to Hoboken. I watched what Rick drank at lunch, and he consumed in moderation, so . . . draw your own conclusions here.
In the foto below, Odin is the smaller of two tugs. Groton, the green ITB catamaran tug with stern facing us, dwarfs it. Yes, that’s tug. If you missed my earlier posts, type ITB in the search window and you’ll find lots of fotos in three posts. According to USCG documentation, Groton is 127 loa, 90 beam, and 39 draft… make that “hull depth.”
Gulf Dawn, ex-Francis J built in 1966, hails from the Big Easy.
L. W. Caddell, loa 46, was outside the yard some time back.
Vera K, ex-Goose Creek built in 1967, had me thinking she was her much younger and previously-blogged-about sibling, June K.
This was my first glimpse of Robbins Reef, ex-Glenda D and Gerald S, loa 42 and built in 1953.
Unrelated: Thanks to my friend Peter Mello for calling my attention to a photographer named Shuli Hallak. Peter does a great blog called Sea Fever and a podcast called Messing Around in Ships, with John Konrad of gCaptain.
Photos, WVD.
tugster: a waterblog 
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