Exotics 33

This exotic is extraordinarily exotic.   Any guesses based on appearance of  the red and white vessel below?

I’ll give a little more time to study while you prepare your guess.   Given her specs, which I share below, she’s not for offshore wind or the sixth boro, unless we have extraordinary weather  ahead.

I wish I’d been able to get closer, but 

that’s why I have a distance-shrinking lens.

Built in 2006 by Vard Langsten in Tomrefjord Norway with some construction at the Vard yard on the Black Sea in Romania, for the Russian Federation, the 243′ x 56′ icebreaker (technically, icebreaking tug) Polar Circle sailed into the sixth boro in 86-degree F weather.    The Vard facility in Romania is about 40 miles up the Danube from the Black Sea.

Previously she was home-ported in Kholmst, Sakhalin, formerly Maoka in Japanese Sakhalin.  At some recent point, she left there, registered Maltese (or maybe she was registered Maltese while up in eastern Russia, and she arrived in the sixth boro after a month-and-22-day voyage from Busan Korea.  Click here for more info and great photos of her in ice.  A previous name was Polar Pevek, “Pevek” being a settlement on the “north coast” of Russian, above the Arctic Circle.  

I’m wondering if there’s any connection between her arrival here and the “embargo” on Russian gas/oil.  Here her Norwegian owner lists her as available for charter. 

 

 

All photos, yesterday, WVD, whose previous major ice breaker photos are listed below.

Fennica and Nordica here and here.

Mackinaw and Polar Star and Sea.  I never did get closer photos. 

And a surprising set, scroll through for Soviet-era icebreakers built in St. Louis MO!!

From the Line Locker 16

Inquiring minds have demanded more context . . . to Whatzit 16.  It’s called Harvest Dome, SLO Architecture‘s fun art project, which is intended to float in the Gowanus near 3rd and 3rd til late Spring 2014 on the watery side of this place.  Here are some fotos of the trip from Governors Island to the Gowanus Canal.

Note the Times photographer lower left here at the foot of the bridge and

lower right seen through the frame and recycled umbrellas. Unrelated:  Check out this informative article on recycling in Taiwan.

R/V Blue Sea passes in front of Pier 5 BBP.

And since we’re on the topic of water and recreation and/or art . . .  it’s Beacon NY and this sloop.

Woody. . .

as well as these arts panels.  The next few fotos I took in August 2013.

The idea of these “line locker” posts is that they allow me to catch up and throw in even the kitchen sink if it relates in even the slightest way, check out this “river tug” byulit in St. Louis, MO by the same shipyard that built the Stephen L. Colby, which sank in the Upper Mississippi earlier this week.  Check out the 1966 as well as the 1967 work on hull#2326.    Now travel back on this shipyard list to the icebreaking tugs built in 1944 and ’45.  Click on the foto below for more pics of these unusual looking US-produced tugboats.   Does anyone have updates on this class of vessel?

Some random things I stumbled upon yesterday include these old fotos of NYC harbor aka sixth boro;  a Canadian self-unloading bulker that was weather-bound off the mid-Jersey coast about a week ago was actually Algoma Equinox, a newbuild on its way to Canada from a Chinese shipyard;  a Christmas train from Canada visits northern NY state and captured by Fred of tug44.    (No, the train wasn’t captured per se.  I just meant in fotos, although I’m sure Fred could always have surprises in store.)