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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.
Since W. O. Decker may soon be seen albeit briefly in the sixth boro, let’s start with this photo from July 2008, as she chugs past the waterfall under the Brooklyn Bridge, thanks to an Icelandic-Danish artist named Olafur Eliasson.
Reinauer had some of the same names as now assigned to different boats here a decade ago but now no more on this side of the Atlantic, like Dean.
Some names have not (yet) been reassigned like John.
Now for some that are still here, though some have different paint and names: Juliet is now Big Jake. Matthew Tibbetts is still all the same, externally at least.
Stena Poseidon–a great name– is now Espada Desgagnes, and Donald C may still be laid up as Mediterranean Sea.
The long-lived, many-named Dorothy Elizabeth has been scrapped.
Rowan M. McAllister is still around, but the Jones Act tanker S/R Wilmington has succumbed to scrappers’ tools in Brownsville TX.
Falcon has left the sixth boro for Philly and Vane, and Grand Orion, as of today, is headed for Belgium.
And finally . . . June K here assisting with Bouchard B. No. 295 . . . she’s still around and hard at work as Sarah Ann.
All photos by Will Van Dorp in July 2008.
A few days ago I stumbled into a rabbit hole and enjoyed it down there. I won’t stay in 2008 for too long, but evolution I found in the ship department intrigued me, change change change. It also made concrete the reality of the scrapyards in the less-touristed ocean-margins of the globe. Take Orange Star; she’s scrapped now and another Orange Star delivers our juice. But what a beauty this juice tanker is,
with lines that would look sweet on a yacht. Laura K has been reassigned to another port. This Orange Star was cut up in Alang in October 2010.
Ditto Saudi Tabuk. She went for scrap in November 2013. The tug on her bow is Catherine Turecamo, now operating on the Great Lakes as John Marshall.
Sea Venture was scrapped in January 2011.
Hammurabi sold for scrap in spring 2012. She arrived in Alang as Hummura in the first week of summer 2012.
Some D-class Evergreen vessels have been scrapped, but Ever Diamond is still at work. Comparing the two classes, the Ls are 135′ longer and 46′ wider.
Stena Poseidon is now Canadian flagged as the much-drabber Espada Desgagnes, which I spotted on the St. Lawrence last fall. Donald C, lightening here, became Mediterranean Sea and is currently laid up.
And let’s end this retrospect with a tug, then Hornbeck’s Brooklyn Service and now just plain Brooklyn. She’s been around the block a bit, and I’ll put in a link here if you want a circuitous tour. I caught her in Baltimore last spring in her current livery.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who wonders what the waterscape will look like in 2028, if I’m around to see it.
Here are all the previous “pairs” post, a direction I glanced at after seeing Bouchard Boys and Linda Lee Bouchard rafted up last weekend . . . I’m not sure why the formation, but it certainly showed their relative size.
And once I see a pattern in one place, I start to notice it in others. Here Otter and Pike almost appear to be in the right lane for Exit 10. I’m eager to see Muskie and Gar.
Over in Hudson Yards below “the vessel” a pair of Schenectady’s finest EMDs hold a place in the rotation out east.
Between Montreal and Trois-Rivieres lies Lac St. Pierre, where I saw this pair. To the right, I’ve already commented that Espada used to call in the sixth boro as Stena Poseidon. Now I look up Laurentia–to the left–and discover she used to call in our watery boro as Palva! If it’s about the witness protection program, the effort would be foolproof. I’d never have seen Palva in her new color, suggesting to me that paint and color trump lines.
A report that continues to fascinate me about Lac St. Pierre is that it spawns “ice rocks,” which are rocks that become embedded in the winter ice in the shallow portions of the lake that freeze solid all the way to the lakebed, until these rocks are carried downstream encased in floating ice and become lethal targets for fast spinning propellers. Ice rocks, what a concept!
Pairs of dug canal banks, as seen in midSeptember west of Rome, show how surveyor straight some parts of the waterway are.
Guard gates are essential canal infrastructure.
And I’ll conclude with a pair of liberty statues, one pointed east and the other west. A few of you will know immediately where a pair of these “crowns” a building, and I’ll just wait for someone to make the identification.
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who asks as treat that you share your favorite tugster post or obsession or vessel . . . today with some friends. Be safe.
Oh, and one of my favorites is this post I did about a Halloween-escape trip seven (!!) years ago.
Here are previous posts in this series.
Below . . . could that almost be a dawn or twilight background? And is that a canot a glace aka ice canoe –with oars instead of paddles–maybe? Ice canoeing, some would say, is the real Canadian winter sport . . .
Well, no matter how much you squint, that is convincingly a small craft. The 751′ Espada does a successful job of obscuring the small craft. Without looking it up, I’d never have guessed that this Desgagnes tanker appeared in tugster here back in February 2013 as Stena Poseidon!! This connection clarifies to me my often-felt question: why do some ships call in the sixth boro once or a few times and then disappear forever? They just get repainted, rebranded, and show up here or elsewhere….
This one was hard to understand until I learned it was started life as a warping tug built 1946. Click here for some posts I’ve done about warping tugs, aka alligators.
To me, this runabout is the water equivalent of a 1950s sports car like these, in case anyone wants to buy me one . . .
This drift boat, I’m guessing, and I had to shoot it from a bridge through chain link.
New York State Bridge Authority? I can’t find evidence they own such a boat . . .
This one’s truly intriguing, given the approaching season, but I suspect this is as simple as a pair of hunters with supplies to conceal their duck blind. I did not however see any armed punts or sneak boxes.
And since we started with a human-powered small craft, let’s end here…
All photos by Will Van Dorp, who is happy to post any photos of unusual small –or any sized–boats you may come across.
Sometimes the shapes, hints and colors are enough. You’ll see two more fotos of the ship farther down in this post. Tug–I believe–is Mary Alice.
Same vessel disappears off left as Atlantic Elm heads for the Narrows bound for sea as well.
Leaving town she drew only
about 14 feet.
Here’s Baltic Mercur, the vessel disappearing over the horizon above.
Other vessels in the sixth boro yesterday included Stena Poseidon turning and outbound,
Torm Helsingor and Southport,
Grande Congo and Rio Madeira,
and Overseas Texas City and an unidentified Vane unit.
Notice the pairs . . . . it’s Valentine Day, and I see imminent kisses in places.
And then there’s this . . . if anyone gets a foto of Temptation with a capital T . . . I’d love it.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. AIS capture credits to marinetraffic.com
For V’Day . . . check out this post from bowsprite and this one she inspired.
not “bare ships.” They remind me of a friend who drove a “circus truck,” his phrase. What he meant was the post office vehicle he delivered mail with, one sporting several USPS logo eagles.
Poseidon sports this endangered bear. It (the ship, not the bear) can crush its way through one meter ice while transporting carry 74,000 dwt out of Baltic ports like Primorsk. Interesting report with ice damage fotos at this link.
Framing Stena Antarctica‘s hull this way lends itself to what Elizabeth Royte (in Bottlemania) calls “infrastructure disconnect,” as in . . . what exactly does this vessel deliver.
Antarctica is huge, 113,000 dwt.
Not all Stena Bulk’s fleet can be called bear boats.
The link below shows which 15 countries we imported the most petroleum from in May 2008, but . . . guess (who’s there, in what order, in what amount) before you click here.
Channeling Galahad, Tennyson wrote: “My good blade carves the casques of men,/My tough lance thrusteth sure,/My strength is as the strength of ten,/Because my heart is pure.”
Mostank delivers the lubrication.
Diana plays lead romantic interest in my own personal mythology. In foreground, the tug Lee T. Moran walks her Norwegian tanker like a dog on a leash, or vice versa.
Daedalus, who built some really imprudent toys for his son, otherwise plays hero in my imagination. The tiny workboat Becky Ann zooms chooses not to linger nearby like a tool.
Hero was the ancient engine guy whose work we’ve mostly all seen.
We all know about Poseidon, although it might seem arrogant of titanic proportions to name a ship so. But where’s the Kafka?
Recently a good friend inspired me to pick up a Franz Kafka anthology, and I saw a short piece called “Poseidon.” Dedicating this to kennebec captain, whose blog about a recent voyage I’m really enjoying, I quote the first and then the best lines from Kafka.
“Poseidon sat at his desk doing figures. The administration of all the waters gave him endless work. He could have had assistants, as many as he wanted–and he did have very many–but since he took his job very seriously, he would in the end go over all the figures and calculations himself . . . ”
For all the hilarious set-up, the ending disappoints me: “Poseidon became bored with the sea. He let fall his trident. Silently he sat on the rocky coast and a gull, dazed by his presence, described wavering circles around his head.” Only Kafka would imagine the seagod as a frustrated pencil pusher.
Click here to read the short Kafka but complete text.
tugster: a waterblog 
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