Moving Fuel 2

I last used this title over three years ago, and every day  since then, fuel has flowed through the harbor, as blood through healthy veins.  And it will keep on doing so by an impossibly wide array of vessels.  Below, yesterday afternoon the 1934-launched ship Kristin Poling pushes over 21,000 barrels of oil in the direction of the 1931-opened Bayonne Bridge.   Kristin‘s destination COULD lead it through the ice-choked waters up the Hudson, captured here less than a month back by Paul Strubeck.  Part of what the foto below says to me is the immense care and maintenance in keeping both these harbor icons in use.

Lucy Reinauer pushes the 2008-launched RTC 83 southbound on the Arthur Kill.  Lucy was launched from Jakobson’s in Oyster Bay in 1973 and since then has borne all the following names: Texaco Diesel Chief, Star Diesel Chief, Morania No 5, May McGuirl. I’d love to see a foto of her when first launched.

Lois Ann L. Moran (2009) pushes barge  Philadelphia out toward the Newark Bay portion of the sixth boro.  The destination of the fuel beyond that I can only guess at.

As an indication of changes in scale over the decades, load capacity of barge Philadelphia is 118,000 barrels, relative to Kristin Poling‘s  . . .21,000 and a bit.

Fuels moved through the harbor have a range of users:  Vane’s Doubleskin 301 moves in to fuel container vessel NYK Delphinus even before containers start moving off the ship.

Maneuvering 301 is not a Vane tug but Dann Marine’s East Coast.

All fotos in the past 48 hours by Will Van Dorp, who is convinced that millions of dollars will go to whomever figures out how to move food and retail goods through the sixth boro to the consumer as efficiently as all our fuels already are.  All fotos were taken from Arthur Kill Park in Elizabeth, NJ.

February Sleet 2

Bowsprite hears and transcribes memorable quotes from VHF chatter on the sixth boro;  I need to upgrade my radio before I get such plums.  So I’ll listen in using other sources.

That’s a very lonely Bohemia among all those barges.

“I prefer winter … when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”  Andrew Wyeth

From left to right:  Bluefin, Robert Bouchard, and Brandywine.

“Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do – or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so.”  Stanley Crawford

Miss Callie fishing over by Blue Sapphire.    “Winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it.”  Henry David Thoreau

McAllister Responder and Maurania III escort Nordatlantic into Global.  “Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.”    Nice observation from an unknown author

Buchanan 1 departs barges hanging on a mooring near a virtually invisible Bayonne.  “The color of winter is in the imagination.”  Terri Guillemets

HNSE 211 scrap barge, pushed by an bright blue but invisible Crow, heads for export in the hold of a salty bulker.  Over on the Brooklyn side, see the yellow crane of Cove Island.    “In a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer.”  Plutarch

OK . . . some humor on the way out:  “I was just thinking, if it is really religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheists in the wintertime.”  Will Rogers What Will Rogers conjures up is the realization that the mermaid parade 2011 is only about four months away.  Seems soon.  Mardi Gras is over 30 days away.  Seems far.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp, who enjoys winter as much as summer and all the dozens of other seasons we experience in the sixth boro.

Unrelated:  To see what happens in Essex, MA, when sleet or snow is flying, click here.    Hey, schooners await their appointment with launch.

Random Tugs 62

Thanks to Pat Folan of Pelican Passage . . . a new Cutler boat?  See another foto at the end of the post.

Also thanks to Pat, a new Vane Brothers boat . . . Quantico Creek.  See fotos of the launch of the 3000 hp tug here.

A fairly new Wilmington Towing vessel, Capt Harry, brother of Sonie.

Odin, seen here many times before

Marion C. Bouchard, 1979 built.

Bohemia, a 4200 hp Vane boat.

And thanks to east river, the tiniest ATB power unit towing barge Massachusetts . . .

Clearly not a tug, but I wonder if anyone can identify this self-described Black Pearl . . . .

Finally, as promised, another view of the first vessel:  Crystal Cutler, a 1600ish hp newbuild rcently arrived in the sixth boro.  Welcome!

For more of Pat’s great fotos, click here.  All others by Will Van Dorp.

See you at the MWA 2010 Waterfront Conference on Tuesday.    For details, click the icon on left side of page.

Random Tugs 61

Nicole Leigh Reinauer, light.  Launched 1999.

Bohemia.  Launched 2007

Miriam Moran (launched 1979) departs Hanjin Chittagong (launched 2007).

Wicomico (2005) passes Cap Stephens (2005).

Another shot of Miriam Moran and Chittagong

Christine McAllister (ex-William L. Colnon, 1975)

Beaufort Sea (ex-Corsair, 1971)

All fotos this week by Will Van Dorp, who’s been looking for any new local vessels in the sixth boro.  Anyone seen any?

Scale 4

Like the other five boros, the sixth boro is trafficked by creations large and small.  Two diverse large vessels are Cunard’s QM2 and MSRC’s New Jersey Responder, a key player in the case of any oil spill in the New York area.   The 210′ vessel, in spite of all its systems, might be dwarfed by the crisis.  Fifteen of these Oil Spill Responder Vessels are positioned around the US.  Check out “moondogofmaine” ‘s posting on these vessels compared with the European counterparts. 

Here Bohemia and Patuxent are dwarfed by a container vessel, wheras only

only moments later, something comes westbound on the KVK to magnify the Vane tug into something of the Gulliver-class.

I didn’t catch the name of the small gold tug before it disappeared behind a light Bouchard barge.

A final word on scale:  all are important.  For example, consider the power of a snowball v. the power of an avalanche.  Easy . . . the more powerful is the snowball if that triggers the avalanche.  Without the snowball, no avalanche would occur.

All fotos yesterday by Will Van Dorp.

Dock and Load

First a guessing game:  suppose I need a new tooth, a big cutter head tooth.  How much would one sharp, shiny fang cost me?  Or two . . .?   I might want to dress up like a cutter head vampire for Halloween.  Send you guesses.  Price info soon!

More Mystick fotos coming soon, but I can’t sit on this post any longer.  In fact as I think about my fangs, imagine using them to bite into …wegian Jewel‘s long white neck.  Sorry . . . I can’t go there.

Anyhow, Jewel docked and

assist vessel Maurania III seemed ready to depart as the long-necked

Jewel was secured.   (Note the Little Red Lighthouse at base of the GW Bridge. )  But

enter the fuel load  delivered by Doubleskin 303 and

Severn, which involved more assistance from

Maurania III.

Captain and

crew moved the bunker

into position so that

whenever loads debarked via gangplanks to make way for those who would embark, those

2376 embarkers would arrive at their destination.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Please send in your guesses on the teeth.

Random Tugs 58

Keeping with tradition:  here’s #57.  Remember, doubleclick enlarges.

Unidentified kayaks foreground, and middleground from left to right: Layla Rene, Sea Bear, dredge Florida; and background, King Dorian (misspell of durian?).

Unidentified crew boat heading away and Barbara C approaching.

Kimberly Turecamo westbound.

Elk River westbound.

Pati R Moran headed to an anchorage.

W. O. Decker passes W O tanker called Sharon Sea.

Sarah Ann and unnamed blue sailboat painted almost DonJon blue.

McAllister Girls pushing dirt.

More of the kayakers taking Lucy Reinauer‘s stern, making helmsman a smidgeon nervous, I reckon.

Falcon and Houma tandem effort.

Unnamed Moran tug leading Caribbean Princess.

Carnival Glory foreground and some unidentified tugs in the distance.

Sorry about all the unidentified vessels today.  Maybe someone can help.

Meanwhile, some stories from the NYTimes this morning:  disputed waters between China and Japan AND Seamen’s Institute leaves Manhattan for Newark.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

x

Dawn 2

From Howland Hook to the parking lot at my job takes about 10 minutes.  On a clear morning, a quick stop across from the port gives me ballast I need for whatever I might face at work.  What I wrote about dawn here a year and a half ago still holds.    The ship here is NYK Rigel, which I wrote about here last year.  It departed the sixth boro last night after the “tornado.” It spent about a day in Howland Hook after having left Qingdao, Ningbo, and Shanghai … in mid -August.  Today, those containers are starting to fan out across the eastern US via truck and rail.

The gantry operator has a fantastic vantage point but a schedule that prevents him from stopping to enjoy it.

I linger across the Kill and watch the light play first here, then there, on

countless surfaces.  Differing areas light up almost like the

sounds made by fingers crawling around the keyboard of a piano.

Even later in the day, reduced light is not a deprivation; darkened or even bleached out

light invokes magic.

Here’s a light post from last spring.

All fotos today by Will Van Dorp.

People on the Boro 10

From the distance created by space or by economic analyses, these are big colorful machines … or … assets.   And they are, but

look closer and you’ll see people at work high up and

in between and

in baskets and

sometimes re-appropriating these machines for fun.  People

earn their livings with

their skill at using these

machines, these

assets.  It’s about earning a living.

Hats off.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

In fotos 1 and 3, the numerous yellow cranes are mounted on two Seaboard Marine vessels:  Vega Nikolas (shuttling between Brooklyn and some big Caribbean islands ) and Westerkade (between Brooklyn and Colombia).  The barge there is Double Skin 34 pushed by Sassafras.  Foto 4 shows repairwork on Lombok Strait (shuttling between Central America and the US East Coast with fruit that might include banana, pineapple, cantaloupe, and plantains.  Other tugs shown are, in order:  Petersburg, Ocean King, Jennifer Turecamo, Odin, and Robert IV.

Random Tugs 52

Little more than  fotos and names today:  Joan Moran Turecamo with Bridgeport on a short wire (?) in the Buttermilk.  (Sorry about that!  Thanks for the catch, anonymous.)  Joan Turecamo last appeared here.

Elizabeth headed into KVK.

Brendan Turecamo over near Brooklyn Army Terminal.

Thomas D. Witte just north of Howland Hook.

Christine M. McAllister crossing the Upper Bay with bulk carrier Antwerpen in the distance.

Paul Andrew tailed through the Arthur Kill by  No 242 pushed by Morton Bouchard IV.

Sassafras heading for the Stapleton anchorage.

Gulf Dawn standing by at the Manhattan passenger terminal.

Gramma Lee T. Moran approaching Mariner’s Harbor.

Parting shot:  primer on Lee T.‘s stack?

All taken in the past 10 days or so by Will Van Dorp.

And for a shot of the new tug Independence easing into Gloucester harbor as filmed by the inimitable Capt. Joey of Good Morning Gloucester, click here.