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I’m back and just in time for the last day of the year, which –as explained in previous years— in my Dutch tradition is a reflection day, a time to if not assess then at least recall some of the sights of the past 12 months. A photo-driven blog makes that simultaneously easy and hard; easy because there’s a photographic record and not easy because there’s such an extensive photographic record to sift though.
A word about this set of photos: these are some “seconds” that did not make the final cut for my 2023 tugster calendar. The actual calendars are still available if you’ve not ordered one; find the order info here. I’m ordering a bunch myself.
One windy day last January I caught a Pilot No 1–the old New York–doing drills under the VZ Bridge. Just recently I met one of the engineers on that boat, a person with epic stories about the sixth boro.
A warm day in February, I caught JRT Moran assisting QM2 into her Red Hook berth.
March I spent a delightful day on Douglas B. Mackie observing the water side of a Jersey shore beach replenishment project, thanks to the hard-working folks at GLDD.
April . . . I caught Jane McAllister heading out; correct if I’m wrong, but my sense is that soon afterward she made her way down to South America to join the expanding ranks of US-built tugs working on various projects on the south side of the Caribbean.
As a member of the Canal Society of NYS, I had the opportunity to see Urger up close and sun-warmed on the bank of the Oswego in Lysander NY.
A clutch of Centerline tugboats waited for their next assignment at the base just east of the Bayonne Bridge. Note the fully foliated trees beyond them along the KVK.
From the humid heat of western Louisiana and onto the Gulf of Mexico, Legs III–shown
here spudded up just east of SW Pass, afforded a memorable journey on its way up to the sixth boro. Thx, Seth.
Back in the boro, later in August, a Space X rocket recovery boat named Bob–for an astronaut– came through the sixth boro. More on Bob–the astronaut–here.
In September, I finally got to my first ever Gloucester schooner race, thanks to Rick Miles of Artemis, the sailboat and not the rocket.
Icebreaker Polar Circle was in the boro a few days in September as well. Now it’s up in Canada, one hopes doing what icebreakers are intended to do. US naval logistics vessel Cape Wrath is at the dock in Baltimore ready and waiting a logistics assignment.
Ticonderoga certainly and Apache possibly are beyond their time working and waiting. I believe Ticonderoga is at the scrappers in Brownsville.
Passing the UN building on the East River, veteran Mulberry is currently out of the army and working in the private sector. I’ve a request: for some time I’ve seen a tug marked as Scholarie working the waters west of the Cape Cod Canal; a photo suggested it might be called Schoharie. Anyone help out?
And finally, a photo taken just two days ago while passing through the sixth boro during what can hardly be called “cover of darkness” it’s Capt Joseph E. Pearce on its way to a shipyard on the mighty Rondout to pick up some custom fabrication for a Boston enterprise. Many thanks to the Stasinos brothers for the opportunity.
I’d be remiss in ending this post and this year without mentioning lost friends, preserving a memory of their importance to me personally . . . Bonnie of frogma–first ever to comment of this blog so many years ago and a companion in many adventures– and Mageb, whose so frequent comments here I already miss.
I plan to post tomorrow, although I may miss my high noon post time because I hope to post whatever best sunrise 2023 photos I can capture in the morning.
Happy, safe, and prosperous new year to you all. I’m posting early today because I want my readers who live much much farther east than the sixth boro to get these wishes before their new trip around the sun begins. Bonne annee! Gelukkig nieuwjaar!
Ten years and two days ago, I heard Urger had arrived in town and had rafted up to Pegasus, so
I had to come down in the late afternoon and shoot this, setting sun just post-Mahattanhenge notwithstanding. While there, I was asked to take close-up photos two days later of Urger at the Statue. “Sure,” I said, “as long as you provide a boat I could do that from.”
Upon a decade’s reflection, I regret we could not have arranged to get photos of Urger with more vessels in the sixth boro, especially with the larger tugboats of NYC 2012, to show difference of scale. You know what they say about hindsight . . . .
When I showed up at Pier 25 on July 14 at 0800, City of Water Day, the light was much more favorable.
Captain Wendy was cleaning up the wheelhouse, and
bosun “mean Mike” was atop the wheelhouse polishing the brass. Happy b’day, Mike!
Once the Atlas Imperial was warmed up and lines cast off, we headed over to the Statue, where
we figured out our position relative to the 111-year-old NYS Canal tugboat, and many photos were taken.
Then the intrepid crew and boat made their way over to Governors Island, where several thousand City of Water Day visitors
toured Urger, a sign I thought that the tug would go on forever, making history tangible, bidding downstaters to come upstate to that waterway that was Urger‘s home turf surf. It was a pleasant thought, and Urger did go on for the next five years. Now . . . she ‘s in Onondaga County hamlet of Lysander, waiting. My most recent (May 2022) Urger photos can be seen here.
All photos, WVD, who posted this montage together the next day.
Stay tuned . . . more July 2012 posts coming up soon.
The 2022 City of Water Day–July 16– website can be found here.
When this tow came off Oneida Lake headed west,
I wondered how many folks would interpret this incorrectly, that this was a tow and not a push.
Ditto . . . heading into lock E-23.
Of course, regular readers of this blog know precisely what is going on. After a long hiatus at the dry dock in Waterford, Urger has been pushed across the state to the dry dock in Lysander to be hauled out and mothballed, maybe and hopefully to be revived when the time is right, like a cicada or a future astronaut traveling light years in suspended animation . . . .
For more people than not in the “canal corridor” of New York State, Urger is without doubt that best known tugboat, the only one that thousands of New Yorkers have set foot on . . . .
Who is that unmasked fellow with a t-shirt that reads “tug boating is a contact sport”?
I have it on the best authority that exactly five years ago yesterday, he was in the Urger wheelhouse piloting the now nameless vessel through this very same lock, very much mechanically alive.
All photos yesterday, WVD, who offers this post as contribution to #URGERjourney.
Edna A has appeared on this blog by that name; it was also here as HR Hawk.
My goal was familiarization, not veni vidi vici, or exploration of the 2300+ miles of river crossing parts of seven states, beginning in SW Montana.
Barge traffic is possible there now because of the work of the USACE. More on that in a later post.
Here was my top-priority destination: the current northernmost aka upriver port. more on that later too.
The above port is 50 miles north of Omaha and on the Iowa side. So is Omaha connected to salt water . . . indeed.
There’s a story here and here. . . about a beaver and a business opportunity.
Now in the sixth boro, boats like the one above never worked, not so on the Missouri. If you’ve ever following the Missouri and see a sign about the “steamboat exhibit” at DeSoto National Wildlife Refuge, by all means, check it out.
250,000 artifacts including 1860s steam technology have been excavated, cleaned/preserved, and nicely displayed.
It turns out there’s another steamboat wreck exhibit in Kansas City, which I took no time to check out, but I will next trip. Of note, both Bertrand and Arabia were built along the Ohio river, far to the east.
As to the question of current commercial activity north of Kansas City . . . it’s there.
If you’ve never read River Horse, a boat trip from the sixth boro’s Elizabeth NJ to Astoria OR, check it out. I’m eager to re-read Moon’s account of his navigation of his boat through this geography. Recently, I re-read his account of transiting the Erie Canal and encountering tug Urger and its erstwhile captain Meyer.
By the way, Urger will be featured in tomorrow’s post.
All photos, observations, WVD, who is back east of the Mississippi and catching up.
It’s hard to believe, but I’ve not been to the Great North River Tugboat Race since 2014, but in normal times, September 5 would see the next race. But we’ve dispensed with the “normal times” concept for the time being.
In selecting the batch for this post, I wanted splash, froth, bubbles, and the effervescence the river can react with when tons of steel and thousands of horsepower push through the ever changing water. The next two photos are from that 2014 race.
It was overcast during the race, but an hour or so later, when pushing contests were happening and
the wakes flattened out and we sized up USAV MGen. Anthony Wayne, patches of blue appeared. I should leave you in suspense about how this push went. Let me put it this way; they left town not long after the push-off.
2013 was an equally overcast day, and again, not to identify every tugboat in that lineup, it appears that W. O. Decker has either jumped the gun or activated its jet drive and will soon rise up out of the Hudson on her hydrofoil assists. I’d guess the latter.
See what I told you . . . Decker has gone so far ahead that it’s already over the horizon.
Second lap maybe for Decker?
It’s starting to appear that in 2012, as in ’13 and ’14, it was overcast.
It was great to see Buchanan 12, usually burdened with a half dozen stone barges, disencumbered and frothing up the river. That’s the 1907 Pegasus back there too.
In 2011, I was able to get a photo of the racing craft along with sky spray by one of the fireboats present, likely 343. What’s remarkable comparing the photo above with the one below is the color of the water; hurricane Irene had dropped a lot of rain upstate and all the tributaries sent that into the Hudson with tribute in the form of silt.
Quantico Creek and Maurania III did an excellent job of stirring up the water.
But again, it was overcast and hazy over silty water.
However, in 2010, we had blue skies that really accentuated the DonJon boats like Cheyenne and
the harbor colossus, Atlantic Salvor.
In 2009, there were wispy clouds, allowing the “queen of the day” to be Ellen McAllister. But look who else showed up!!!!
Urger. Urger would EASILY have won the race, but she was doing what she does best . . . urging all the other boats and crews to be fleeter than she, holding herself back, allowed herself to be that day.
All photos and commentary, WVD. See you at the races in 2022.
I just happened to look at the August 2014 section of the archive, and this was the engine room at that time of the living, breathing tugboat Urger.
The top photo shows the Atlas-Imperial fore-to-aft along the portside, and below, it’s the opposite . . . starboard side aft-to-fore.
Below is that same view as above, except with a tighter frame on the top of the engine. On my YouTube channel here, are several videos of this engine running and Urger underway.
Below from early September 2015 are three NYS Canals boats, l to r, Tender #3, Gov. Cleveland, and Urger. . . . all old and in jeopardy.
At that same 2015 Tugboat Roundup that precipitated the photo above, notice the juxtaposition of old and new: passing in front of the 1914 Lehigh Valley 79 is
Solar Sal, which a month later would earn distinction as the first solar vessel to transit the canal from Buffalo to the Hudson with four tons of cargo, as a demonstration of its potential. Solar Sal‘s builder was David Borton, whose website has all the info on his designs for marine solar power.
A story I’d missed until looking something else up yesterday was David Borton’s 2021 adventure, sailing on solar in Alaskan waters.
And that brings this zig-zag post to another story linking the Canal and Alaska.
Last August Pilgrim made its way through New York State to the Great Lakes and eventually overwintered in Duluth. I took photos above and below on August 1, 2020.
Earlier this summer, Pilgrim was loaded on a gooseneck trailer
so that it could transit the continent
along the Interstates to the Salish Sea. As of last week they’d made Ketchikan, and their next stop will be Kodiak Island. Eventually they clear customs and their next stop will be Russia.
All photos except the last three, WVD. Pilgrim photos attributed to Sergey Sinelnik.
The Waterfront Museum in Lehigh Valley 79 is now home to a high-res livestream harbor cam aimed from Red Hook; check it out here.
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