Winter Light 2023

If it seems I have a dirty lens, I don’t, but this winter has been a season of the good light and my schedule not coinciding.  No matter . . . the subject just looks grayer than I’d like much of the time.

When this ULCV arrived the other day with Mary Turecamo as one of the assists, I was reminded of how high the deck is on these ships, and they’re getting ultra-larger and higher.  In this post, Mary’s upper house was way above deck level on the tanker. 

Will this nose be superseded by Marco‘s style of nose?

Janet D was sharp, but note how hazy the distant shore is.

HMS Liberty is appreciably closer than Barney Turecamo, and therefore is sharper, until 

Barney gets closer. 

Enjoy these others:  Jillian Irene, 

Horizon’s Edge (a newby in the boro?) and Regulus, 

Schuylkill, 

another shot of Liberty, 

Crystal Cutler and Patricia E. Poling, 

and finally Margaret. 

All photos, WVD.

Meeting Monaco Bridge

Miriam Moran looks to be alone, with a half dozen other units in the distance, but

she’s converging with a pack.

Minutes later, Kirby takes the stern of the ULCV, and

James D. emerges from the far side, where she landed a docking pilot.

Then, Miriam and Kimberly

like choreography

assume their positions and paths

 

 

and assist Monaco Bridge into the terminal.

All photos, WVD, who can’t get enough of this.

Turning the Bridge

She’s not pink or blue or green or new, but she’s an ULCV that I saw back out of Bayonne yesterday, and I can imagine all the communications and applications of power to make this happen.

JRT yanked eased under power stern wise, while Mary Turecamo 

and Jonathan C countered that movement just enough to maintain control.

Once far enough out of the docks area, the vectors shifted,

 

and, I’d wager, added bow thruster force to rotate to port,

revealing to me a fourth tugboat–Margaret–that’d been working the obscured side until now.  Seeing three tugs and 15,000 hp arrayed on the bow is a reminder of the days when many tugs would make docking a form of choreography.

 

It was yesterday’s sunny low humidity, but the colors rivaled foliage up in the valleys at peak!  And never have I seen so many figures up on a bridge wing!  I count at least five folks up there.

 

When Monaco Bridge has been pointed safely toward the VZ Bridge, the docking pilot–I presume–departs and

 

 

the ULCV heads for the next port . . . Norfolk in this case.

Using gCaptain’s figure of 48,000 bananas for one 20′ container, Monaco Bridge could carry over 667 million bananas .. . or two bananas for every person living in the country!

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who points out that ONE Ibis is currently at the Global Terminal.

More info on Monaco Bridge:  she was launched in 2018 by Imabari Shipyard in Japan. Her 11 cylinder engine generates 65,576 hp at 76 rpm.   See photo of the shipyard here.

Nathan G

Here’s a first timer in this livery and in an unusual location . . . on the wall at Battery Park, with the Colgate clock in the background.

Nathan G (1977) no doubt has docked here before, back as part of the McAllister fleet from 1989 until about two years ago.

With WTC1 background above and the Cass Gilbert-designed former Custom House (upper left below) and

the shrine of St. Elizabeth Anne Bayley Seton and adjacent James Watson House below . . .  to

her passing the stern of the massive Monaco Bridge, I’m trying hard to make up for the fact that this is the first appearance of Nathan G in this blog.  By the way, at 73′ loa, Nathan G long is less than half the beam of Monaco Bridge at widest . . . 167′!!

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who recently posted about Nathan G‘s fleet mate Sarah D.