Retro Sixth Boro 50 A

June 2012 was pivotal for me.  A photo sent along by a friend alerted me to Canal commerce–Canadian corn– entering the US at Oswego, a place I knew something of from my youth. 

If that was a spark, then the breeze that fanned it was an invitation to do my trial article for Professional Mariner magazine, which led me to Kingston NY, the mouth of the Rondout, and a project involving use of a half century old tug Cornell to do TOAR signoffs.  My most recent article in the magazine came out today and can be seen here.

On that assignment, I was privileged to have a mentor, Brian Gauvin, do the photography.

Other big events for June 2012 included the movement of shuttle Enterprise from JFK airport ,

ultimately to the Intrepid Museum to be

hoisted onto the flight deck as part of the display, now covered.

My daughter went off to Brasil (again) and the Amazon, leading me to go there myself a year later, fearing she’d never return because she loved it so much there.

I’d given her a camera before she went, and was rewarded with some quite interesting photos, like these small motor boats that looked almost like slippers …

with straight shafts coming straight out of air-cooled engines.

During my trip up to the Rondout, I stopped in Newburgh, where replicas of La Niña and Pinta, crafted using traditional techniques on the Una River in Bahia, Brasil, attracted crowds, one of many stops along the great loop route. 

Other festivities on the Hudson that summer . . .

included the sails and music associated with the Clearwater Festival, and of course the small boats moving in some of the venues.

 

Patty Nolan and Augie were the small tugs, and of course the sailboats including Mystic Whaler, Woody Guthrie,

 

and of course the sloop Clearwater.  The Clearwater organization will not be doing a music festival in June 2022.  Mystic Whaler is now working in Oxnard CA at the Channel Islands Museum.

Summer time and the living is easy well, at least it feels that way some days . . . . 

All photos, except the first one, WVD.  That first photo was taken by Allan H. Seymour.

 

Summer Sail 1

Tugster has been a work in progress, evolving organically, without a foreseen plan.  So I just noticed that although I’ve done many posts on autumn sail, I’ve not used the summer sail title.  Until now.

What better place to start than with SSV Oliver Hazard Perry.  GCaptain calls it a 21st century ship mindful of its historic roots.  It heads to Boston this weekend to pick up its first crew!   I caught the photo here back on June 27, but the prescient bowsprite caught it passing through the sixth boro here over seven years ago.

Also, in late June near 79th Street, I caught schooner Columbia, another 21st century sailing vessel with vintage lines a la Burgess.

Sloop Woodie Guthrie is currently undergoing a makeover in Kingston.  You can donate to help here.

I believe this is OMF Ontario, on the hard over in Lysander, NY. In the background that’s an unidentified tender 1937 tender Dana II (Thx, JD) and  Reliable, the sad (engineless) twin of Syracuse. See more of Reliable and Syracuse here.

Anyone know why OMF Ontario is still on the hard?  Launched in 1994 at the site of the former Goble yard in Oswego, It purports to be the first Oswego-built schooner since 1879!   I’d love to learn more.

Here’s OMF Ontario rigged and at the dock in August 2013.

Here’s Steelwinds, a wind turbine cluster built on part of a former Bethlehem Steel plant south of Buffalo and designed to take advantage of the fetch created by the prevailing SWerlies.

Here’s 1992 built Spirit of Buffalo.  Does anyone have photos of her transiting through the sixth boro, the Hudson, and Erie Canal back in May 2009?

Here’s another 21st century sailing ship, also with vintage roots that go back way further than the 19th century, and a close up

of her figure head.  Click here for a good starting point of this vessel’s construction.

And finally, here’s Inland Seas, anchored near the Straits of Mackinac.   For more on the ship project and its late founder, click here.

 

All photos taken by Will Van Dorp, who is back in the sixth boro but unpacking from the Go West trip and planning a Go North trip .

A View of Ships and Boats

Wordless foto essay on vessel fronts.  See  a bowsprite rendition here.

OK, I guess I can’t be wordless with this one above.  Clue:  vessel above is the same as vessel below.

I took this one of Woody Guthrie and Clearwater three months ago at Croton.

Foto of Woody Guthrie‘s improvised figurehead was sent to me by Steve Schwartz.  Thanks much, Steve.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

River Day 5

I still find it strange to call this Day 5 of River Day:  I’d feel better calling it hours 97 through 120 of the Day.  Regardless, Day 5 ended in the former capital of the state of New York, a city today of 22,000.  Saying Kingston lies about 80 miles north of the Battery does not address how different it feels from New York City.  And yet this brings up  Heraclitus:  No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.   In other words, the water in Kingston today will flow through the sixth boro maybe only a few dozen hours later, so . . . by my own fuzzy logic, Kingston could be considered part of the sixth boro.  Here’s Cornell and Governor Cleveland, equally at home in Kingston’s Rondout Creek here or the Upper Bay of NYC.

From a distance, the Day 5 flotilla looks similar to other days, a stretched out procession impossible to photograph well in its entirety.  From a different perspective, I wonder whether during the upriver trip of the Half Moon 400 years ago, canoes may have accompanied it for parts of the way:  use your imagination here to transform fiberglass runabouts to canoes.  The shore here may appear today as it did in Hudson’s day.

Onrust, Governor Cleveland, and John J. Harvey are in this procession for the duration,

as is Clearwater, here with the sloop Woody Guthrie.

More Woody Guthrie soon, I promise.  By the way, the singer Woody used to live on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, location of the mermaid parade NEXT weekend!  That’s cutter Ridley in the background, named for a turtle!

Meet Owl, who came to greet.  Anyone help with info on Owl?

So did a host of small steamers, a unique throwback to an earlier Kingston.

Also, this cabin cruiser sports an exotic propulsion system:   an outboard clamped onto the swim platform;  now that’s something you’d never seen 80 miles to the south.

The same is true for Willi Bohrmann.  More Willi fotos tomorrow.

Even the wildlife came along the creek, as had deer of 100 generations earlier when Hudson first sailed in.

Thanks to Jeff for this concluding foto for today:  a cyclopean tugster happily perched on tugboat Cornell.

All fotos except the last one here by Will Van Dorp.

For a different take on the end of Day 5 of River Day, see Old Salt here.