Retro Sixth Boro 37 B

I’m away from the sixth boro, so here’s another from the vault, archived May 2011.

 Twin Tube back then still had her lighter stick.  Lichtenstein now sails as Mr Tigris. 

Sand Master, the sand miner, had not yet gone to South America.

A company called K-Sea still existed, and Norwegian Sea still sailed.

The 1976 tug now sails as Miss Rui for Smith Maritime Ocean Towing and Salvage.  She’s currently in Amelia LA.

Colleen McAllister was still in salt water;  she’s now on Lake Michigan but not in service.

Stena Poseidon is now Espada Desgagnes, sailing the Saint Lawrence, where I saw her less than two years ago.

In late May, the first attempts were made to load a half dozen tugboats onto Blue Marlin,  the heavy lift ship, but I talk more about that when I open the vault next month. Blue Marlin still sails the seas with unusual cargoes, currently between the Philippines and Shantou, in SE China. 

And this boat, the 1951 Dorothy Elizabeth, begging to be captured on a painting, imho, was still intact.

All photos, WVD.

 

 

 

 

 

Retro Sixth Boro 16

Here for some context is a post with drawings bowsprite did exactly a decade ago … .

I took the photo below of the same setting.

Whole fleets that existed a decade ago are gone.  For example, K-Sea has been subsumed.  Some boats like Maryland are still in the boro,

others are still on the East Coast but in other fleets like this Falcon.

But still others like Coral Sea and

and Baltic Sea have gone to another continent.

Others might be scrapped . . . like Volunteer and

Bismarck Sea.

Others like Adriatic Sea have crossed over to the other side of North America….

Another fleet subsumed under Kirby–as is K-Sea–is Allied.  Here in July 2009, Sea Raven–now scrapped–and another Falcon have rafted up.   Here’s the link to read in this post:  how Sea Raven was built!!

Hornbeck had a fleet in the sixth boro, with their base in Brooklyn at the current Vane base.   I don’t know what Atlantic Service is currently doing, if anything.

Spartan Service has been sold to a Mexican company,

Sandmaster was still sand mining with this rig.  She was since sold to the Caribbean, and according to AIS, now flies the flag of Niger, which to me says she may be scrapped.

Cheyenne was still red back then, and has since changed colors twice, and exchanged salt water for fresh.  She’s also won the International Tugboat Race on the Detroit River for the past two years.

And this Kristin Poling, 1934 built,  still plied her trade, always a treat to see.

All photos from 10 years ago by Will Van Dorp, who is amazed by the amount of equipment change in the sixth boro in the past decade.

 

Really Random Tugs 36

Really random means photos from widely separated places by different people.  So here goes . . . the first two from Jed, who took them in the former Dutch Antilles about a year ago.  Triton is home-ported in Ijmuiden, another must-see place in the Netherlands if you’re interested in workboats. Click here for some posts I did about Ijmuiden, the mouth of the waterway out to sea from Amsterdam. Click here for a photo of Triton I took a few years back in Ijmuiden.

photo date 23 APRIL 2016 by Jed

Andicuri, named for a beach which itself is named for an Arawak chief,  was built just south of Rotterdam in 1983.

photo date 23 APRIL 2016 by Jed

Until about a year ago, Sand Master worked out of the sixth boro mining sand;  recently it was sold to interests and was spotted–not photographed–in Surinam.

photo date January 2012 by Will Van Dorp

Here’s a strange photo taken in April 2012 by Don Rittner, and part of a post called “Jets Along the Mohawk.”  Maybe I should have called it “early Cold War jets up the Flight of Five.”

And finally, here’s a photo I took in Beaufort NC in June 2013, Fort Macon tied up near the phosphate dock.

I hope you enjoyed these bounces within the northern half of the American hemisphere.

 

Transits 1

I started a series called transitioning, but here’s something new.  Actually I did a transit post a few years back when a Boston ex-fireboat transited the sixth boro on its way to  Lake Huron to reinvent as a dive boat.

This post started with Glenn Raymo catching a shot of NOAA 5503 northbound in Poughkeepsie.

Then, unprompted, Mike Pelletier, engineer of Urger noticed it between locks 2 and 3 in Waterford, westbound.  When I noticed it on AIS, southbound on the Welland, I knew she was doing a long haul.  So here’s what I’ve since learned:  this vessel “was transferred to NOAA from the CG in Fort Macon NC.  Its final destination is Muskegon MI,  where it will undergo a full overhaul and be refit for service as a research vessel on the Great Lakes.”   Many thanks to Glenn, Mike, and my other sources.

But if NOAA is transiting far, Sand Master is going much much farther.  Any ideas what HN RTB is?

Here’s a photo of Sand Master I got just over a month ago at the Great Lake just west of the Bayonne Bridge.

Try Roatán, Honduras.

Thanks all for the photos and the information.  And please help keep eyes open for unique transiting vessels and those who work mostly here.

Random Tugs 126

The sixth boro has pyramids?

It does have fortifications, here patrolled by Gelberman.

And lots of interesting names, making for great juxtapositions.

And every now and then some seldom seen boats pass like this one, always out there but rarely –it seems–coming in close.

Kendall J. Hebert for a closeup!

I regret I didn’t get a close-up of the stack.

Ron G rotates through the sixth boro now and then.

So . . . back to those pyramids, there’re over by South Amboy, at Amboy Aggregates.  Sand Master is involved, of course.

Thanks to Ashley Hutto for the pyramids and Sand Master photos.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

 

Something Different 11

Cold winter waterscapes –like especially hot dry landscapes –delight with the optical ilusions they yield.  Behold Hyundai Glory . . . or maybe just an assemblage of coherent containers hovering together.

Have a look at MSC Catania.   On the left in the distance, notice the very long  arm of the Statue of Liberty, and midway between it and the ship . . . a very tall building in Queens, One Court Square, looking much taller than its 50 stories.

Rosemary Miller ? (center)  meets Torm Aslaug, which triggered today’s series.

Sand Master and sand mining barge nearly spans the Narrows.

Tanker Cape Tallin heads for the anchorage, passing the tops of the towers of Marine Parkway.

Here’s the foto that started the series.  notice two grayish shapes forward of the bow of Torm Aslug?  I could see them all the way from the top of a bridge on the Belt Parkway.

Here, as seen from Mount Mitchill, the highest headland on the east coast south of Maine . . .  you can see the same two vessels–MSC by the color of their stacks–and McAllister Responder.

This is the closest I could get . . . . T-AKE 13 USNS Medgar Evers at the Leonardo docks of  Naval Weapons Station Earle.

East of her . . . I don’t know, but my guess would be a T-AOE.

Any guess on the viewpoint of Manhattan with Hood Island departing back south for more tropical fruit?

It’s taken from the same ridge at Sandy Hook, looking down across the still closed Sandy Hook National Park area.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Second Lives 10

Huron Service used to be Eric Candies.  Look at the lines of her hull and house.   Do they

look like these on Na Hoku?  No surprise . . . Na Hoku used to be Chris Candies.  At least a half dozen other ex-Candies boats work as regulars in the sixth boro.

Now look at the barge on Na Hoku‘s hip.  DBL 85 used to be

Freedom.   Stuff doesn’t change that much;  it just gets renamed.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

And this just in from Birk, another fleet sib, Sandmaster, (ex-Ben Candies).  You recently saw this angle wet here on tugster.

Cheers.

Ceremony and Traffic 1

Between 0800 and 0900 this morning, sunshine poured down onto the KVK, and deepened all the colors.  Sand Master (more of these fotos tomorrow) was positively radiant while waiting–it seemed– for something to happen before it can get into the fuel dock.

Then I saw the “something” as Mount Hope began to inch stern first into the stream.   Laura K. Moran surged from port

to starboard to assist in the rotation, her power and precision captivating me.  But then, way atop the superstructure, movement

caught my attention, a bit of ceremony I’ve never noticed before.  A crewman made the flag fast to the halyard and

ran it up, as if to say . . .  we

are now open for business.  Here  is some of the traffic:  Mount Hope outbound passes APL Japan inbound.

OOCL Nagoya seemed to try to get up on plane, and

in doing so . . .  tailed by Barbara McAllister, deftly carved an arc between the bank and an incoming Affinity on the hip of  Marion Moran.

I then went to my appointment on the land side of Richmond Terrace, noticing from indoors two Ital container vessels (Moderna and another) passed.   Before noon, as I headed back home, I noticed that Oyster Creek with the bunker barge was refueling  Shorthorn Express  north of the VZ Bridge as

(this foto thanks to John Watson) Queen Elizabeth headed into port.  Draw what conclusion you will from the juxtaposition of these last two vessels.

Thanks to John for the foto.  All others by Will Van Dorp, who imagines that without that flag-raising, none of this traffic would have happened.

By noon, bright sunshine had turned to overcast gray and then drizzle.  No snow, though.