Gravesend Spring

It’s the best season, as long as you stay on the water or near it . . . not in it.

Sailors come out of hibernation to catch some breezes.

Container ships head south to shuffle containers elsewhere.

Aggregate work goes on as it does all year round.

Shearwater continues to plumb the bottom terrain.

 

They all meet up somewhere…

 

 

but a better lens than mine catches it.

All photos, WVD, who loves springtime, when all the fish eggs are about to burst.

East River Float-by by JM

JM, that’s John McCluskey, sent along these photos yesterday.  I’d planned on doing that same trip yesterday, but time got away from me and today it’s rainy and darker!

This shot greatly resembles one of the first set of photos I ever posted on a blog, my very first post. You can see it here.

Alice and two Oldendorff siblings have been sold to Algoma; hence the name change to Algoma Verity.

As John passed the shipyard in the old Brooklyn Navy yard, he also got photos of some of the other vessels there, like R/V Shearwater and in the graving dock behind her, Cape Avinoff.

 

Waiting her turn in the graving dock is Cape Ann.

Many thanks to John McCluskey for sharing these photos of a short stretch of his float-by on the East River.

 

 

Autumn Sail 10

Here was 9.

It seems that sailing just gets better as summer turns into fall.  Like Pioneer.   Click here for bookings via Water Taxi.

America 2.0

Shearwater

Adirondack

There are also those sailing vessels I’d like to see under sail.  Like Angel’s Share with its twin helms, here

a close-up of the port helm.

Slim Gunboat 6606

with its Marshall Islands flag

Heron . . . which I’ve seen as far south as Puerto Rico.

Clipper City

I’d love to find the time and invitations to sail on all those wind vessels.  But I actually did sail on Pioneer the other day.  Come with the vessel and crew as we leave the pier,

ride the wind in a busy harbor for a few hours, and

then lower sail before returning to the pier.

All fotos taken this week by Will Van Dorp.  Time’s now for me to head out and enjoy more of this autumn air.

Around the Sixth Boro 3

Here was ASB 2.  There might be eight million stories in the naked city, but in its primary boro aka the sixth boro at least half again that number of other stories could be told  . .  by the collective whoever knows them.

Captain Zeke moves with the diverse stone trade past folks waiting below our very own waving girl and

all those folks waving and taking fotos from the ferry and every other water conveyance.

The 1950 Nantucket‘s back in town . .  for the winter.

Yup . . . no one could have predicted these . . .

back when Shearwater was launched in 1929.

A cruise ship shuffles passengers as Peter F. Gellatly bunkers.

Kristy Ann Reinauer stands by a construction barge.

Mary A. Whalen . . . is a survivor from another time.

A barge named Progress has returned to South Street Seaport Museum, here between Wavertree and Peking.

Emerald Coast is eastbound on the East River.

Two views of Adirondack, one with WTC1 –or is it 1 WTC or something else–and

another with the Arabian Sea unit.

And Sea Wolf heads north . . . .

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Autumn Sail 6

A yawl?  Know the name?

I can’t help with the name, but it looks fun and wet.  It raced today as part of the New York Classic.

The competition seemed fierce.

Slower, but more stately, it’s Pride of Baltimore 2, who’s gone east as far as Lunenburg and west as far as Duluth this summer.

Scarano’s Adirondack here

trails America 2.0.

K-Sea’s Maryland has enough house to qualify as sail.  Here Maryland meets Shearwater.

Clipper City is the larger sailing vessel here.

And Liberty Clipper . . . I don’t know her story.  She breezed in yesterday but was not in the race today . . . Saturday.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

River Day 1 Redux

River Day 2 happened today, but I stayed on shore, among other things revisiting day 1.  My attempt here is to impose chronological and spatial order.  For starters . . . off Global Terminal in the Upper Bay, could there be a more diverse set of onlookers?  If the original Henry had seen indigenous equivalents of these, he’d have gotten his artillery out.

Lined up just south of the Statue before 9 am, helmsman of Shearwater resorts to an ancient coping device.

Around that time, Gateway Towing’s Navigator exited the Buttermilk Channel with an unidentified cargo on barge Sea Shuttle, which

looked like this as it passed.  Anyone hazard a guess?

Around 9:30 near Pier 82ish, this avian-wannabe brown truck cuts through the procession, triggering a siren/horn/hailer reaction in Lady B;  NYC Ducks simply continues and Lady B relents, all the official noise notwithstanding.  I suppose Ducks is commercial traffic and as such immune.

Near Inwood a half dozen or so swimmers, each one escorted by a kayaker, make their way out of Spuyten Duyvil Creek and southward toward Battery Park City.  Swimmers and River Day processionistas remain largely indifferent to each other.  Can it be that New Yorkers have such passion for swimming that they spontaneously make their way in numbers around the island?

This is lo-res, but after watching Onrust grow for over a year, I enjoyed recognizing its jolly crew, but who’s the guy in the red jacket and enormous feather in his cap.  Doesn’t the whole crew get ginormous feathers in their caps?

If you read Juet’s log for June 1609, you learn that storms carried away Half Moon‘s  foremast.  What would that look like?  In my other blog, I try to channel Hudson’s thoughts, using what’s recorded in Juet’s journal to speculate on rambings in Henry’s head . . . historical fiction, of course.

Yonkers gives each vessel a cannon salute.  Some return the salute.  I believe Onrust doesn’t, or maybe I was just not hearing things.

Here a lone canoeist watches the procession from near Alpine, off the Palisades.  Does anyone know the design of local Lenape canoes of Hudson’s era?

Large exploreNY400 banners hang from the vertical supports on either side of channel under the Tappan Zee Bridge.  Half Moon shows the scale.

I regret I couldn’t follow Day 2 . . .  but I hope to catch up for Day 5.

For a short video of the procession passing Battery Park City Day 1 around 9:15, see old salt blog here.

All fotos taken Day 1 by Will Van Dorp.

River Day 1

River Day is eight days if you want to be technical.  I’d like to do all of them, but . . .  The fotos here are roughly chronological and exclude relatively new active duty government boats.  Most of these vessels have appeared on this blog before;  use the search window if you wish to locate these posts.  Minimal prose today.  First, the raison d’etre, Half Moon passing Robbins Light.

The “other” Dutch boat Onrust, not actually a replica of a boat made in the Low Countries.

Shearwater passing in front of MOT (or MOTBY) and Explorer of the Seas.

Fireboat John J Harvey.

Vintage sky traffic.

Mystic Whaler

Clipper City

Clearwater

R. Ian Fletcher

Governor Cleveland

Adirondack

Harvey again

Onrust again

OK, this is the quiz portion of the post.

Quiz continues. . . .

. . .

A little over 25 miles (and six hours)  from the starting point, Half Moon passes the Tarrytown Light.

And judging from the “face” in the stern of Onrust, launched less than a month ago, she’s a happy yacht.

River Day will give Bowsprite so much fodder for continuing her sailing ship guide that she might not know where to begin!  Tomorrow’s itinerary is the 30 miles approximately between the Tappan Zee and Newburgh.

Many thanks to ExploreNY400 for the press passes and to Nicole for going the extra mile so that we got got the best fotos as well as to the staff of Circle Line who ran the very hospitable but unpictured vessel we were on.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp on River Day 1.  More to come.

So . . . can you think of any sixth boro schooners NOT depicted here?  I can think of a handful.  I wonder why they didn’t participate . . . .

Also, given the dearth of historical detail on the real Henry Hudson, Bowsprite and I have been reading his mate–R Juet’s log–and “interpreting/extrapolating Henry’s thoughts here.

Autumn Sail

Schooner rig on a cat?  Anyone know this cat named Peace?  Thanks to David, check Wharram.

Here’s a closer shot at stern, where an inflatable tender hangs.

In fall the prevailing sail traffic around the boro is south.  Registry on this ketch was Naples, FL, I think.  That line trailing might cause troubles.

Pioneer – here motoring off the dock – works for another month or so, as

does Shearwater.  Both had a respectable paying load Sunday afternoon.

Photos, WVD.

Dog Daze

I’m putting the link for “dog days” a la wikipedia here, but I want to quote part of what’s there: “[Dog days are] popularly believed to be an evil time “when the seas boiled, wine turned sour, dogs grew mad, and all creatures became languid, causing to man burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies” – Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, 1813.

Well, the skies and seas frothed today. Here’s to hoping you escaped the daze enough to make sense of the foto below, taken yesterday morning.

It’s from Erie Basin, looking west past the NY Shipyard crane grayed out by that blue-yellow Swedish store, the ruins of the sugar pier, a row of water taxis, a warehouse, and the upper tip of a Manhattan-bound cruise ship approaching the Statue. How about the next one? and the next and the nexts…

It’s shot down a street (I can’t believe I fail to note the street name) in Red Hook as an unidentified cruise vessel leaves the terminal.

Recessed bitts (another more technical term??) in a car carrier hull.

Either wine turned sour or a jelly gone languid. I don’t know the type of jelly here.

Fixins’ for a very tall sour drink?

This one I really can’t identify either. Anyone help? Looks like a research vessel of some sort leaving eastern Staten Island.

Here’s a closer-up showing some gear stowed off port and a derrick. It crawled out the Narrows this morning between lightning and rain.

Photos, WVD.