Retro Sixth Boro (and Beyond) 31

I took this photo in Waterford eastern terminus of the Erie Canal on November 1, 2010, and the canal had not yet closed.  I had just returned from part of a transit, and we had met lots of boats.  Although we had been bound for the Great Lakes, most, like the intriguing Baidarka, was bound for sea.  As of this writing, Baidarka is back on the Canadian Pacific coast.

A week later, in the sixth boro, docked in front of USNS Sisler, it’s the “love it or hate it” Sea Raven, now turned into new steel.

Sea Bear was engaged in the deepening of the sixth boro, and here a crew on the sheerleg was repositioning the anchor.

Lots of dredges including GLDD New York were involved.  More later.  Captain D, currently in the sixth boro on other duties, was dredge tender.

Then, as now Atlantic Salvor, was active.   I particularly like this shot with the 0730 “golden hour” light.  A very different set of buildings then largely defined the Manhattan skyline.

Wanderbird swooped through the harbor on their way south.

Padre Island and Terrapin Island were regulars recontouring the sixth boro bed.

Beaufort Sea, 1971, is no more. 

The brilliant colored Little Bear, built 1952, became a DonJon vessel, but I’ve not seen her since the Disch auction.

Susan Witte . . . I can’t tell you anything about her either.

Back then I would spend my Thanksgivings in Philly, and the high point of that holiday was not the excellent food and drink and company, but rather seeing the big barge for the first time.

Pilot towed in La Princesa, here assisted up the Delaware by Grace and Valentine Moran.   Pilot has been sold Panamanian, and La Princesa–577′ x 105′–I’ve neither seen nor heard from.  I believe Valentine is still active, but I don’t know about Grace.

All photos, WVD, who looks at these and wonders how a decade has so quickly passed.

 

Port of Gloucester 1

Way too many years ago I made a trip back to Gloucester, as posted about here.  So I went back this weekend, had long talks with a few people, but of course that means I didn’t see all the people I would have liked to.  And although putting up these photos seems like walking on a concrete slab before it’s set, here I go, premature or not.

It’s the old 1952 Blue Ocean alongside some newer yachts.  This is the transition in Gloucester.

Here’s looking south toward Rocky Neck.  From left, it’s lobster boat Blivy Fish, Fort Point, and Disch’s old Dredge No. 200.   Click here for a post I did in 2009 showing the No. 200 in the KVK.  After the company owner died, the Disch equipment was auctioned off to the four winds.  One of Disch’s small tugs is on the Lake Erie now.  Fort Point used to be Patrick J. Hunt.

Waiting to go back in soon are Irish Piper and UB88, whose story you can find here on the GMG site.  More on GMG a little later.

F. H. Lane used to paint this scene.  Near the left, you see Our Lady of the Good Voyage, but lower,  more left I see a pinky stern and some interesting vessels made to the prominent dock.  Adventure‘s returned from Boothbay, where I saw both the black-hulled schooner and the pinky here.  More on these tomorrow.

Here’s the reciprocal shot, showing the bow of Adventure, which has a 90th year gala coming up in less than a month,  and a closer-up of the old motor life boat.  Anyone tell anything about her?  I know someone who probably can. Here’s another set of rebuilds.

This mystery life boat looks quite original.

Here’s Wanderbird with a schooner tied alongside.  Unicorn?  If so, did she ever sell?  Is Wanderbird for sale?  Also there, Lisa Ann III and Full Moon.  Overkill‘s in there too.

This beauty aint telling, nothing.

Here’s some info on Ardelle.

And here’s the home base for many things in Gloucester, including lobsters and community.  Cheers, Joey C. and GMG . . . Good Morning Gloucester.

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Back in 1987, I took a leave from work (nearby in Newburyport) one morning to see a large Soviet factory ship that had finally been granted permission for shore leave in Gloucester after working offshore for months.  Here’s an article about that time.  Does anyone have photos to share of that?  I recall the chill I got seeing the hammer and sickle on the stack as she was tied up behind Gortons. I didn’t carry a camera much back then.

Yachts a Million

A Nordhavn 62 . . .  ??  exiting the Erie Canal last weekend.  Professional delivery crew?

It was interesting that something they saw on the bulkhead in Waterford prompted them to do a 180 and try to squeeze onto the bulkhead.  Was it thoughts of dining on sausage and onions washed down with a Keegan Ale?  Port of registry here–Port Colbourne–marks the southern point of the Welland Canal.

At 73′ Sea Fox pulled into Morris Canal recently.

Sutton Island lies just south of Acadia National Park.

Two-Can is a repurposed North Sea fishing trawler . . . at near 90′ and built in Urk in 1968.

I took the photo below of Wanderbird in May 2013, and I don’t know if it’s still for sale, but when I visited Belfast recently there was another

and newer Wanderbird in the yard.  I wonder what the story is, and where the black-hulled version now floats.

Top Hat  . . . with its own Mount Desert origins . . .  I’m not sure how much it’d cost,  but it looks like a million dollars.

 

 

And bringing this back to the sixth boro . . . Jamaica Bay, an unlikely name it seems, came in the Narrows on Friday.

This 200′ yacht was built in Rendsburg along the Kiel Canal in 2010.

 

Closing shot . . .  Makulu heading for the sound via the East River this week.  In the late 90s and early 00s this ketch sailed around the world at least three times as an educational project.  It appears now she’s for sale or sold.  ??

All photos by Will Van Dorp.

Road Fotos 29

Quick update on National Maritime Day from Belfast, Maine.  What got me here was this vessel, today a platform for tours between here and the Arctic mostly.  Wanderbird started this stage of her life after fishing for 30 years, cod and herring.  The shoes in the foreground reflect its origins  . . . launched in 1963 as a beam trawler in Maassluis, Holland.

What enforces this sign is . . .

this.  David put the specs up on yesterday’s post.

The “towed” vehicle will be observed from here.

Also on hand are Maine Maritime Academy vessels.  Here’s tug Pentagoet, training vessel powered

by two sets of Detroit diesels.  Note this is one set, two blocks mounted together.

And the wheelhouse . . . shows TLC.

Another MMA vessel is Ted, as in

Ted Nusunginya, revealing its previous Alaska work and soon to be renamed for an MMA alum.  Vessel Ned is a classroom, a lab, in fact, for courses such as Navigation, Celestial Navigation . . . and more.

The pilot boat is

Florida built.

If you have a chance, you might fall in love with Belle fast.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Whatzit 9

I could have called this “other peoples fotos,” but these are also quite unusual.  Foto below comes many thanks to John Watson.  According to John, it anchored off Bay Ridge for less than 12 hours yesterday to bunker.   The last time this blog touched on livestock of the bovine sort was the post Cows in CATS.  What I know about the vessel follows at the end of this post.

Foto below comes thanks to Capt. Stig Samuelsson.  Take your guesses and locate the info below.  I cropped Stig’s foto slightly to obscure a giveaway.

Finally, I put in this foto that I took on Sunday:  this is a classy little cabin cruiser out of New Jersey.  I posted a foto of it last year as well . ..   I have no idea about the name or manufacturer, but my guess is that it was built within a 30ish mile radius of the sixth boro.

Answers:  John’s foto shows Shorthorn Express;  as of this writing, it’s headed up Delaware Bay, probably to Wilmington.  And it’ll load cows for Turkey.  Anyone get fotos along the way to Wilmington?  Shipspotting offers a dozen fotos, including several showing the vessel–scrapped 20 years ago–that previously bore this name.  What’s clear on those fotos is the elaborate ventilation system needed to keep the “shorthorns” happy during the passage.

Stig’s foto shows Harry, a tug built in 1887 as steam tug Stora Korsnäs 1.  According to Stig, Stora Korsnäs 1 was typical of tugs used to tow lumber along the coasts of northern Sweden.   She currently runs as a museum with a volunteer crew.  If you can’t read this, you can at least look at fotos.  It’s based halfway between Oslo and Goteborg and right across the water from the northern tip of Denmark.  Click here for a youtube of Harry underway.

Sad news:  Lady Jane MAY be not long for this world.

 Lady Jane is 1963-Belgium built North Sea trawler looking a lot like Wanderbird and Cape Race.  Tim Zim (whom I met when he visited the sixth boro a half year ago … see seventh foto here)  has been restoring her  for seven years, but recently hauled her and learned the hull was more corroded than he had thought.    He wants to give up . . . he says in the post.  But, I’m wondering if you could get a second opinion.   A friend who read Tim’s July 25, 2011 post recalled that LV-118 aka Lightship Overfalls was in worse condition and was brought back.   Details in that link about the “restoration miracle.”  Please drop Tim an email with encouragement and (even better) technical advice.

NamullikKen?

… is Inuktitut for … well, you can read it below.

I could have called this post Wanderbird 4.  Some of the time aboard I spent looking through this book by Nat Igloliorte.

It’s common knowledge that from the sixth boro . . . i.e., local waters commingling among the other five boros of NYC . . . even with a relatively small vessel, you can get to anywhere on the millions of miles of coastline on the planet.  And folks in boats and ships of all sizes have seen or intend to see multitudes of seascapes and landscapes on that coastline.

Here a certain blogger reads about gunkholes that lie in his future.

As Wanderbird left its sibling Cape Race, I wondered when the two vessels next would meet and raft up.

So did Pitsik.  Where are we going, he wondered in dog thoughts.

When . . . I wonder  . . .  will Captains Karen and Rick be lowering in warm seas and when among icebergs?

Thanks again to David Blitzer for his fisheye fotos here.  His show at 350 Bleeker Street (here) stays up until December 27.

ᑕᑯᓛᕆᕗᒍᒃ . . .   or   takulaarivuguk

Unrelated:  The concluding installment went up on my blog My Babylonian Captivity.

Wanderbird 3

(Doubleclick enlarges fotos.) With a favorable weather window,  tomorrow nightfall may find Wanderbird out the Narrows and at sea, bound for Puerto Rico.    But midday today, she was

anchored off Piermont, off the old Camp Shanks.  More Camp Shanks later.

Captain Rick Miles came calling ashore in the skiff.

At daybreak Paolo and Pitsik bade farewell to Atlantic Basin as

we left  the Basin–where Clipper City and Cape Race remained–and

steamed upriver past a very sleepy version of the so-called “city that never sleeps.”  This morning I had doubts about that moniker.  And with an icy blast coming out of the north, sleeping in would not be such a terrible option, but

for me, the ride up to Piermont–in a wheelhouse listening to yarns from Culebra to Greenland and  smelling soup savors wafted up from the galley–it was sweet.

Thanks to Captains Rick and Karen for the chance to steam upriver a few hours.  Here’s their site.

For folks who want numbers:  Wanderbird‘s Industrie engine generates 510 hp, consuming a gallon a mile while cruising at 500 rpm and spinning a 8″ shaft and a 62″ four-bladed prop.

A great picture book about the hundreds of very similar North Sea trawlers, check out Arie van der Veer’s Van Zijtrawler naar Hektrawler (From Side Trawler to Stern Trawler).  It has hundreds of fotos.  An English-language article with pics on this category of trawler can be seen here.

Check out this blog from Labrador for more info on the Canadian husky above named Pitsik (scroll to August 18, 2010) AND the schooner Issuma (scroll to August 10), currently on Lake Ontario and written about here last month.  Here’s another Issuma post.    For pics of Wanderbird in the Caribbean, check out these by David Blitzer, whom I met on the trip to Piermont.  See info on David’s show at 350 Bleeker Street here.

Fair winds, Wanderbird.

Wanderbird 2

9 a.m.  ... Wanderbird coming through the Gate?  (Remember… doubleclick enlarges.)

Well, I knew it wasn’t, given all that capacity up forward.

but a little over half an hour later, she wandered in.  Wanderbird was built for capacity, too, and from 1963 when the Jaczon family launched her, until 1990, she fished.  Here’s a link for another Jaczon beam trawler operating out of Scheveningen  (and you should hear me pronounce that town name in my best dialect).

The bridges making up this immediate  entry to the Gate are (farther and pink)  the Hell Gate Bridge and

the RFK.

Solomon Sea (ex-Brandon Roehrig) with its string of scows led

the way through.

The candy-striped stacks belong to Big Allis

over beyond Roosevelt Island in Ravenswood, Queens.

As I’m seeking to confirm, Wanderbird sips fuel . . . five gallons/hour!   Click here and here to see  youtube of  six-cylinder diesels by the same manufacturer, Industrie.

More on Wanderbird soon.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Wanderbird

Whatzit in this study?  Where is this library?  (Note:  Doubleclick enlarges most fotos.)

It depends.  Monday under a sky itching to rain the library was here as this vessel wandered

in through Hell Gate, and made her way between

Gracie Mansion and Astoria and then past

Roosevelt Island and Upper Bay-bound on the

East River, under the 59th Street Bridge with Padre Island and a mysterious black bird in pursuit.

Meet Tim Zim, master of Lady Jane, about 3000 miles from homeport  himself.  Tim, admiring the wheelhouse,  is guest aboard Wanderbird.

Until she “repositions” in the Caribbean, taking aforementioned blue macaw along, Wanderbird rests here, rafted up with Cape Race, a vessel of similar lines.  Coincidentally, all three North Sea trawlers–Wanderbird, Cape Race, and Lady Jane–launched in 1963 …. though in Netherlands, Canada, and Belgium, respectively.    Hmmm . . .  I know some very good folks launched in 1963 also, an auspicious year for launchings.

Also nearby,  for the time being,  are this Cunard vessel,

Clipper City, and Shearwater, all previous mentioned in this blog.

More on Wanderbird soon.  Do check this link for beauty shots AND historical fotos of Wanderbird.  I love the red sails.

All fotos by Will Van Dorp.

Unrelated but important:  Click here for the agenda for MWA‘s Waterfront Conference.  Lower Manhattan Tuesday, Nov 30 from 8 am until 7 pm.  More than 100 speakers in the following formats:   2 plenary sessions, 15 breakout sessions, and 2 boat tours.     Click here for background on the MWA.   See you there.