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It’s that time again . . . a glance back at exactly a decade ago. Back in June 2009, the 400th anniversary of the Half Moon going up the Hudson kicked off with a 20th century version of the Half Moon going up the Hudson. Note the banner hung to the old TZ Bridge along the right side of the photo. That replica is now in the Netherlands, looking for a new home, and that bridge–parts of it–have become fish structure somewhere off Long Island.
A newish boat in town was Peter F. Gellatly, now Vane’s Long Island.
Bounty–alas her fate–was still an irregular visitor to the sixth boro. Here she’s made up to Harvey just outboard of Frying Pan.
Brian Nicholas moves a scrap barge out of the East River.
Paul T. Moran made one of her really rare visits to the sixth boro.
Container vessels calling in the ports of NY and NJ had not yet become UL . . . ultra large versions
Harvey follows Half Moon northbound on the Hudson.
Michigan Service and Erie Service gather near IMTT.
Sisters assists with a tanker, and
here’s more of the River Day procession marking the year of Half Moon the first.
All photos taken in June 2009 by Will Van Dorp.
V . . . void is my head. Well not entirely. Vent . . . French for “wind” which was as abundant as rain today. And I came up with Radio Veronica, the iconic 1960’s pirate radio station in the North Sea. And V. and Vineland, novels written by one of my favorite writers, Thomas Pynchon, who has another book out soon called Inherent Vice . . . another V. Pynchon, the reclusive writer, was born in Glen Cove,
New York. The vessel here (1975) also carried the names Philadelphia and Capt. Danny once.
But on this foggy then stormy day, I’ll go with “vacation.” Even if I tried hard today, a desire for vacation would slow me . But . . . I took all these fotos today. I’d never seen Great Lakes Thames River before. Thames (1980) is ex-Lorrie S.
Margaret Moran pushes past Miriam Moran, who had just assisted Marinoula into a foggy berth.
Laura K, also part of the Marinoula assist, retrieves the docking pilot.
Turecamo Boys feigns pursuit of the small boom boat.
Michele Jeanne swings by, possibly to verify some dredging? and
appears–only appears–to make herself vulnerable in the process, as Baltic Sea slings in a barge,
drops it, and then hurries off to other business.
Vacation . . . we all need it. I have vacated some things/thoughts/goals/pursuits this summer, but others have possessed me. Maybe I don’t want to vacate them and therefore will accept a degree of possession. And these preoccupations will serve as my security blanket, despite the cost.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp, to–foggy–day.
Click on an image to enlarge it.
N . . . nudge. A little touch goes a long way, especially on low-gravity days. Marjorie B. McAllister nudges self-unloading bulker Atlantic Superior away from the dock where Alice sometimes offloads.
Margaret Moran tails MSC Ancona, ready to drive the stern to starboard for the bend in the KVK. Is that graffiti on the base of the mustard-colored stack?
Miriam Moran shadows Carnival Miracle, white sheet in place on the bow fendering, in case the passenger vessel needs a smither of propelling as she eases into the dock.
Jennifer Turecamo and Turecamo Boys follow MSC Dartford, ready to check any adverse momentum (aka drift?) rounding Bergen Point.
Gramma Lee T. Moran trails Ever Refine, lest some thrust is called for.
Marie Turecamo, wedged under the flaring bow of MSC Endurance, stands by to shove as needed to keep the hull in the channel.
Nudge . . . I can do do it; as I can guide or shove. And . . I need nudges myself sometimes, maybe even often. Of course, many gradations of pressure–lateral or longitudinal– exist from almost imperceptible to measurable on the Richter scale. It’s been a bunch of decades since I last shoved someone with testosterone rage. Nudges may range from super-tactile to mildly-so to verbal to even non-verbals. Non-verbals are my favorite, although I’m as fond of mock-combat as the next randy boy, so shove me if you wish; just keep a smile on your face, and don’t be surprised if I shove you back. Oh . . . and you’re near water . . . soft wet landings make me jolly. Nudge when it’s consensual . . like the 1980’s dance called the “bump.” Nudging and bumping have their place; it could never happen here though, atop the future pedestrian bridge in Poughkeepsie.
But then again, I’m jollier when we just team up with no nudging required.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
M . . . mast. I love the wikipedia disambiguation pages, where a range of contexts for words like mast or masthead defies expectation.
Cornell sports its mast toward the stern; running lights there convey information about vessel size, type, and activity.
Clearwater, a sloop, has a one mast topping out at about 110 feet.
On City of Water Day, USACE Drift Collection vessel Hayward sports code flags on its mast and a sampling of collected debris on its foredeck.
Pioneer, a schooner, has two masts, the mainmast topped out at just under 77 feet.
Sandy Hook Pilots vessel Yankee has units (besides the radar and GPS) on its mast I can’t identify.
Bunkering tanker Capt Log‘s foremast carries a red flag, signaling fuel.
So does barge DBL 76. Mast height on Adriatic Sea is 85 feet, if airdraft equals height of the highest mast or antenna. I fear I might be blurring a definition here.
Volunteer, air draft of 114 feet and pushing DBL 105, meets Turecamo Boys assisting Seven Express out to to sea.
USCG WPB67356 Sailfish, not surprisingly, carries mast gear not readily identified by a civilian like me.
Miriam Moran, assisting with docking, keeps the upper portion of its mast safely lowered where flaring bows cannot damage it.
Masts can signal information but of course sometimes signaling is optional or even undesired. Masts allow things to be seen, but one has to know what should remain unseen. An effective mast needs strength, and sometimes that means it is flexible.
Both submarines and whaling ships have masts. For some good fun, check out this six-minute video of a struggle between Captain Ahab and Moby Das Boot.
Also, just for fun: How might you complete this sentence:
All fotos by Will Van Dorp. Send me your original sentence completions.
Bowsprite put up an interesting post recently of shots made sans tripod showing ships passing in the night as some runny ooze (oozy run?), but it’s pretty and she herself makes comparisons with fruitcake, which I like. But I wish to show here that ships do NOT always pass in the night, do NOT always approach and separate without making a difference or lasting impression. They also pass in the day, in the effulgence of 10 am springtime warm sun. Like Zim San Francisco,
Dynamic Express with its orange shimmer on the water that would give Monet inspiration,
Dynamic Express neither upwind nor upriver but surely uplight,
Zim San Francisco uplight,
Atlas Valor being muscled like a heifer on a halter and
struggling back against Rosemary‘s bollard pull,
Azov Sea offloading not unlike a nursing mammal (the young here being IMTT Bayonne,
with crew boat Matthew Scott passing above and Bismark Sea (I think this is a first appearance for Bismark Sea on this blog.) and Turecamo Boys passing below,
and Jo Ask of
somewhat web-secretive Jo Tankers.
Some interesting statistics on the decline in shipping demand and prices can be had in this article from a recent issue of the New York Times.
Remember . . . ships do NOT only pass in the night. I prefer mine in daylight, if I might choose.
Photos, WVD.
I recall once hearing a crewman talk about the “wench.” She was on the aft deck making a strange noise, he said. He had me intrigued until I realized he was talking about the towing machine, like the one below on Nathan Stewart.
Nathan Stewart has a double-drum winch.
So does Turecamo Boys. Professional Mariner has a great introductory article on towing winches here.
To wind the wire rope onto the drum neatly, a winch has a level-winding device
Notice that on each of the fotos above, one drum has wire rope and the other, what a farmer like me might call rope. Here’s a clear article on “rope.” Oh, I know I’m going to be corrected for my use of the word “rope,” which might mean nylon and high-strength materials marketed as plasma and spectra that might be twisted or braided.
Lots of tugboats have no winches. Check June K. There’s a capstan but no winch.
More on this later. Now about the “wench,” I guess she just lives in sea chanteys and my mind.
All fotos by Will Van Dorp.
Unrelated: Henry’s sent in another message across the seas of time from the docks of Amsterdam. Check it out here.
So there’s Turecamo Boys,
Turecamo Girls here getting the attention of Greenland Sea,
McAllister Sisters,
Bouchard Girls,
another shot of Turecamo Boys,
and Barker Boys.
Other tugs elsewhere have “boys, girls, sisters” in their names, but I don’t know any with “brothers, daughters, sons.”
But to get back to the fotos above, I know that less than a half mile from one of them there’s a certain establishment called “Jersey Girls” and a quite different one that begins “Sisters of ..” Hmmm . . .do you suppose these are tugboat enthusiasts organizations?
Meanwhile, I’d love to hear of tugboats with names that include “brothers, fathers, mothers, daughters, granddaughters,” etc . . .
Photos, WVD.
Sirens . . . their brief season arrives Saturday. Check out the cartoon on p. 72 of the June 23 2008 New Yorker. The siren above . . . what do her hands signal the fish? The fish above . . . what might their interaction with the siren here remind me of? Of course, for me . . .
naturally, it’s like the choreography of Laura K Moran and the great Hapag Lloyd Essen Express as . . .
the couple tango away, Essen back stepping with immense momentum, and although Turecamo Boys urges restraint,
no holding back will happen until . . .
Essen Express pirouettes with proper form as
Boys inspects, approves, and then
Laura K backs away also. Essen has found its spin and not even the smoke pouring from a hasty Yemitzis can delay the trip toward the ocean. Meanwhile, Boys has other errands to run, maybe bigger fish to fry, so to speak. Meanwhile, suppose Essen will anchor off Coney Island for the parade?
More fotos of Essen Express here (scroll about half thru this page). Check out the other several thousand thumbnails also.
BTW, Laura K generates 5100 hp and Boys, 3200. See also Jed’s comment to the left.
Photos, WVD.
So when water sprays and tug horns start to blow, throngs leave the Noble Maritime “Tugboats Night & Day” exhibit at Snug Harbor, and–let me to trifle with the first page of Melville’s Moby Dick a bit –“crowds, pacing straight for the water . . . nothing will content them but the extremest limit of land . . . fixed in ocean reveries . . . some seated on the pierheads . . . does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all those ships attract them thither?” Do they await a ferry to get back home?
No, it’s a parade led by Turecamo Boys, looking back here at Miriam Moran, Thornton Bros, and two Reinauer boats;
Jean Turecamo and Gramma Lee T Moran circle in from the east while
Curtis Reinauer flanking South Street Seaport’s W. O. Decker (ex-Russell No. 1) take the south side of the channel and
Lee T turns inside FireFighter 1 as the water in the KVK starts to swirl and
Curtis and Franklin Reinauer follow two Moran boats around and
then Ellen McAllister, hoses able to douse any remnants of winter, comes in along the south side of the channel.
What was the show at Noble Maritime? Here’s an update showing the Decker as depicted above. Was this parade really a get-ready-for-spring festival?
All fotos Will Van Dorp; thanks to Capt Andy and crew of Moran’s Turecamo Boys.
As a farm kid, I used ladders on silos, grain bins, and haymows. Painting barns and picking fruit could not happen without them. We expect them on fire engines and contractor trucks. Only recently did I notice their ubiquity on tugboats and around the waterfront.
On Turecamo Boys, lashing holds a wooden ladder to the rail.
Look closely for the ladder lashed in same location on Janice Ann Reinauer.
Taurus‘ ladder is lashed to the rail.
Pushtug Glen Cove has one. They serve as cheap and flexible means of access onto barges and anywhere else.
Most Erie Canal locks have ladders visible only in an empty lock chamber.
Hard hat divers take a ladder to their workspace maintain pilings,
an aluminum stairway to the bottom of the harbor.
Photos, Will Van Dorp.
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