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In my view, the sixth boro sees the regular traffic, the less regular, the new ones (new hulls or just new names) and then there are the exotics, vessels that might ever call here only once. Vos Star is certainly an exotic, even though it had been working off SE Long Island for the past month. I knew it was in Elizabethport and hoped I would be able to see it when it departed, and I did!
VOS expands to Vroon Offshore Services, and Vos Star is designed and equipped for a number of offshore services, in this case, assocated with offshore windfarm support.
The joy of shooting these photos as a vessel travels west to east is that you get lighted image as it approaches and then dramatically backlit photo as it recedes. This was daybreak yesterday. Had it departed an hour earlier, I’d have no photos to show.
The 2016 Fujian-built vessel is 223′ x 49′ and homeported in SW Netherlands.
I’m not sure what its next job is, but AIS showed its next stop as East Dunkirk . . . Belgium France.
Safe travels.
All photos, WVD.
I knew it was not a container ship, not a tanker or bulker, fishing boat, lift boat, experiment, military vessel, a megayacht. Despite the vertical structure, it’s not a sailboat, although it’s a wind boat.
That makes it exotic. For what it’s worth, I document as many of these vessels as possible because they are new to this port. Wind has never been harvested here, the industry is in its infancy, and no one knows how it will grow. When installation and maintenance vessels come on line, these vessels and this type of vessel may never return. I think their presence needs recording, and that’s what I do inasmuch as I can.
Actually I’ve been waiting for the 1985 Geoquip Seehorn to come in, and intermittent drizzle and BQE traffic be damned, I was going to get the shots.
Geoquip Marine describes themselves as a company engaged in “geotechnical data acquisition.”
She recently added a GMR602 drill rig, to work in depths over 1100 feet.
I’d love to know something about the contents of those containers: materials, instrumentation, spares, and who knows what else.
She arrived in our waters about six weeks ago from Amsterdam NL. Click here to see her in a different livery.
Her previous names are Omalius and Normand Draupne. As of posting today, Seehorn is back at work at the
Empire Wind site.
All photos, WVD.
I’m always thrilled to see these specialized vessels in the sixth boro. I’d seen Regulus before, but see how her deck machinery back in November 2019 was different than it is now. Versatility is key.
That red T identifies her as a Tidewater boat, a PSV (platform supply vessel), one of hundreds of speciality vessels operated around the world. The link in the previous sentence provides lot of information about the company, its history back to the mid-1950s, and its boats. Most Tidewater boats have a two-word name, the second being “Tide”, eg., Desoto Tide or Ebb Tide, which launched the company in 1956. See a photo of Ebb Tide here.
The fact that Regulus does not indicates she came from the Gulfmark fleet, which Tidewater absorbed.
I’m out of my depth here, but I’d wager there’s a “moon pool” directly beneath the red tower, an opening in the hull though which subsea equipment can safely be lowered or retrieved. Scroll through this link to see a great photo through the moon pool and into the deeps.
The A-frame on the stern can also be used to lower/retrieve instrumentation, here inside the yellow frame.
If you didn’t notice in the links above, the dimensions here are 272′ x 58′ and powered by a total of 10250 hp.
As is true of many of the “exotics” in this blog, the impending wind farm construction explains their presence here.
As of sunrise this morning, the Jones Act Regulus has headed back to sea.
All photos, WVD.
The Deep Helder post could have been an exotic post, but I’ll wait to do that until it comes into the sixth boro, which it just may one of these days.
But Hammerfest as port of registry . . . this may very well be the first time I see that registry on a vessel in the port. No, “hammerfest” is not a party for carpenters or dulcimer players.
Here was the frontal view from Owl’s Head at sunrise yesterday morning. Note the horizontal frame extending off the starboard side?
Here’s a closer look. The white lettering on the side spells out REACH SUBSEA. More on this contract here.
I’m guessing that cable runs to sensors/transponders of some sort or maybe an ROV. Maybe a reader knows more about this.
Stril Explorer has been along the Ambrose Channel (not in) and along the shore of Bay Ridge to Sunset Park for over 24 hours now.
Note the “asterisk” icons running back from the bow . . . she has three “thrusters,” unless I need to call them “positioning systems,” providing station holding capacity rated at DP class 2. She’s propelled by 4 x Cat 3516 run through 2 x Schottel drives. All the specs on this 251′ x 53′ 2010-built vessel can be read here.
She’s operated by MMT, a Swedish company founded by Ola Oskarsson.
If you follow her track between the VZ and the Sunset Park piers, you’ll see a half dozen curving but parallel and equidistant lines.
As wind farm construction phrase approaches, we’re likely to see many more “exotic” vessels.
All photos, WVD.
Unrelated: The 16000 teu, biggest ship yet on the East Coast US CMA CGM Marco Polo will arrive in the sixth boro at some time on May 20. However, I won’t be here. I’ll be far inland on higher elevations. If anyone gets good photos and wants the (dubious) fortune and fame of having photos posted on tugster, please get in touch. I’ll have some access to WIFI, so there may also be gaps in my posting, no DP class 2 position holding for me.
The photo below shows Neptune, a survey vessel doing wind farm related work. It was first posted here in late July 2019.
As of Monday morning, this vessel has been anchored in Gravesend for over 24 hours. Previously she was Neptune with that wilder paint job. EGS loosely expands to “earth sciences & surveying” and a little bit of Latin will get you to ventus as wind, a fitting name for this heavily equipped and much renamed vessel that started out as an ice class fishing trawler way back in 1977. From what I can tell, she fished until 2008. Now she’s contributing to the most thorough surveying of the New York Bight and surrounding waters to the east that has ever been done. I’d love to see some of the bathymetric images she and other exotics have generated in the past few years.
Fleetmate RV Ridley Scott sailed into the sixth boro a bit less than a year ago.
All photos, WVD.
What’s this?
I’m just trying to figure this out. My best guess is that suspended from a 20-ton capacity A-frame is a set of underwater hands, a sampling device, a seafloor-drill, all tallied 14 tons of instruments and tools in a seafloor frame.
I can’t tell you the division of labor between the equipment lowered/raised through an approximately 10′ x 10′ moon pool by the 90′ derrick and the seafloor drill. My guess is the the seafloor drill can function at great depth. Note the Panamanian registry.
All those portlights . . . relate to the 50+ crew the vessel can accommodate.
The helideck . . . 62′ diameter, can accommodate helicopters of the Bell 412 type, i.e., up to about 3.5 tons.
If you didn’t click on the equipment and specifications link earlier, my source for all I pretend to know here, you can click here now. Since she was anchored in Gravesend Bay yesterday, the tide pushing her stern toward shore, I managed to get my first photos of her stern. I have seen the vessel, working to amass wind farm bottom terrain data, several times since January 2018. With the green light to transform South Brooklyn Marine Terminal into a dedicated wind farm construction hub, I suspect some interesting and exotic vessels will be transiting the Narrows in the next few years.
All photos and attempted interpretation, WVD.
Maybe a reader out there can explain how this equipment really works and what super-detailed examples of bathymetric chart of the New York Bight look like.
Wind farm surveys have brought a number of unusual vessels to resupply periodically in areas of the sixth boro. Ocean Endeavour is a science ship that fits into this set that I’m calling exotics.
Saturday I caught Ocean Endeavour taking her crew of scientists and technicians back out to sea, to their survey work.
Her sheer made me think she was once a whaling harpoon vessel; the shape of bow and stern made me think she might have been a cable ship.
But in fact, she started life in the British navy as an auxilliary vessel specializing
in moorings and salvage, with such duties as laying and maintenance of underwater targets, navigation marks, moorings and raising sunken vessels. Click on the next two photos for their sources. USNS operates similarly tasked vessels, Grasp and Grapple.
From launch in 1986 until 2001, it was RMAS Salmaster (A186).
She’s been working in the New York Bight and as far east as the Vineyard Sound for at least the past six months.
Her sister Gardline vessel is Ocean Researcher.
All photos, WVD, who was happy to finally lay eyes on her.
As she leaves for the North Sea port of Hull, finally . .
I caught Ocean Researcher. She’s spent much of the summer and fall until now doing survey work in advance of wind farm leasing and development in the New York Bight.
Seeing the vessel confirmed that she’s not a new vessel . . . built in Devon, SW England, in 1985.
Her original name was RRS Charles Darwin.
RRS expands to Royal Research Ship. The first vessel of that organization, built in 1901, was RRS Discovery, carrying among others Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackleton.
The Gardline Group operates several dozen vessels around the world.
After a final salute from the Statue,
Ocean Researcher heads across the big pond. Next stop Hull, East Yorkshire, England. ETA . . . Boxing Day. Bon voyage.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
For starters, yes I do feel I’ve dropped the ball and missed taking and publishing fotos of such sixth boro events as the final move of the Willis Avenue Bridge and City of Water Day. If anyone has fotos to share, I’d love to see them.
The North Country here means the St. Lawrence and beyond. The white-helmeted gent does seem to be leading and gentle giant on a leash, not even having to
tug as BBC Rio Grande (ex-Beluga Gravitation, 2008) traverses the Iroquois Lock. All the Wisconsin-built Staten Island ferries had to make their way through this lock. Anyone have a foto of a big orange ferry passing here? I previously wrote about these locks here and here.
It hardly seems possible their beam would squeeze through.
William Darrell ferries loads of improbable size across the international border between Cape Vincent and Wolfe Island, Ontario. 86 windmills now churn in the breezes near this northeast tip of Lake Ontario, not without controversy.
The “H” on the stack stands for Horne, the family that has operated this ferry since 1861. This particular vessel entered service in 1953.
Bowditch (ex-Hot Dog, 1954) works out of Clayton, NY; as do
Maple Grove (left) and the unidentified “landing craft/freight ship” on the right.
More upcountry workboats tomorrow. All fotos here by Will Van Dorp.
For now, some announcements:
Kudos to the ArtemisOceanRowing (scroll way down) crew who left New York in mid-June; they broke a 114-year-old record when they arrived at Isles of Scilly this weekend.
And finally, I’ve started a new blog called My Babylonian Captivity. Exactly 20 years ago today, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, the US entered the current era, and I became trapped and remained so for over four months. It’s a different kind of blog–all text– but I plan to chunk it out day by day or week by week until December. Please send the link along to folks who you think will enjoy it. It’s all nonfiction, the experience as filtered by me.
tugster: a waterblog 
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