2020 Calendar April and May

I did not forget in the beginning of April about the 2020 calendar enhancement;  there were just too any things going on! So today I both catch up, and get ahead.  And according to my accounting robot, today I post for the 4,500th time.  Champagne is spilling all over my editor’s floor, but he’s not sharing.

YM World came in last April as Anthem of the Seas was departing.  If one keeps records with the goal of tracking change, few industries have changed as profoundly as the cruise industry has in the past year, and all that in the past two months.

Truly YM World, an ULCV,is huge.  But earlier this week, MSC Anna sailed under the Golden Gate, over 100′ longer, almost 40′ wider, giving her a total teu capacity of over 19k, compared with around 14k here.  That 5000 teu difference equals the total capacity of an average container ship serving the sixth boro 10 years ago.

 

The May calendar page features James D Moran nosing up against a pink magenta wall.

Here she comes in to meet off the starboard side.

Then she matches speed

and comes alongside to drop off the docking pilot.

All photos, WVD.

 

 

Random Ships 72

This Stella Polaris . . . a very common vessel name for obvious navigation reasons, is less than 400′ and about 20 years old.  The curious building off the bow is the Boldt Castle Power House and Clock Tower . . .  or BCPHCT.

Algoma Conveyor, SLSWmax, was still under construction a year ago in Jiangsu, China.

Narie is another recent Chinese built cargo ship

in the Great Lakes, I’ve read, for the first season, although other Polsteam boats have worked there for some years.

The oldest Great Lakes port in the US is Oswego, and it sees lakers like the Japan-built cement ship NACC Argonaut fairly frequently.

With the right vessel, one can travel from the Great Lakes directly to NYC, of course, and when we did, we ran into Disney Magic, Italian built, Bahamian flagged, and Spain overhauled.

Making this likely the most diverse “random ships” post ever, here’s P61, an Irish patrol vessel named for Samuel Beckett. Unless I’m mistaken, this “writers” class comprises the largest vessels in the Irish Naval Service. Here’s a photo of Beckett leaving town yesterday taken by frequent commenter Phil Gilson.

Cembay is another Japan built cement carrier, 1997, shuttling between the US and Port Daniel QC. 

And finally . . .  YM World is, as of this posting, steaming toward Savannah, after shifting boxes here in Bayonne.

All photos here by Will Van Dorp within the past 30 days.

Mixed Craft 2

Here’s the previous post of this focus.  I had others ready to go at one point, but  . ..  ships sail, horses leave barns, and ideas slip away.  Yesterday I spent one hour on the Upper Bay and concluded that it’s a diverse place, starting with this water rising up and obscuring whatever lay beyond it.  Of course, I knew what it was, but I recall the first time I saw such a misting–in the Gulf off Kuwait–and my brain could not process what my eyes were sending it.

Regular and irregular cargoes juxtaposed, boxes and rocks.

Framing a shot puts together what is actually quite far apart.

I’ve done a number of posts on winter fishing, but fall fishing must be super right now, with some fisherman torn between landing that next fish and

 

staying out of the path of YM World and all those tugs assisting it into Global terminal.

 

I know foreshortening plays a role in giving a sense of crowding, but there IS undeniably some crowding going on here.  The ship DID sound a warning at one point.

And that mist in the top photo . . . it came from Firefighter II.

All photos by Will Van Dorp, who still has lots of photos from the trip from Montreal.

 

 

Tale of the Tape 5

When I saw Anthem of the Seas departing the Narrows as I waited for “da world” the other day, I was aware of a possible shot . . .  juxtaposing a large cruise ship with an ULCV.  Is there a ULCV/ULCC-type abbreviation for cruise ships . . .  eg, ULPV?  But I digress.  Imagine for now how that juxtaposition would look…

Earlier the same week, I’d seen QM2 at the Brooklyn Passenger vessel . . .  so let’s throw the tapes at that.  I recall reading the QM2 funnel was designed to accommodate the NYC market, more precisely, the fit under the VZ Bridge.

I know it’s a different vantage point again, but here was YM World entering the Narrows.

And here are World and Anthem, and it surprised me how much more air draft on Anthem this shows.

So here are the lengths:  World  1200′  Anthem 1139′ and QM2  1132′

Beams  World  167′  Anthem  162′  and QM2  135′

And for air draft, I know World‘s as it came in, but for the two passenger vessels, I’ll estimate air draft from “height minus deep draft,” using published numbers.  You naval architects may take issue with that, as may others of you with specific expertise I lack.

Anthem  208′  (Is that possible?)   QM2  199′  and World  177′

I’d expected the air draft of YM World to be greater.

So here’s a question I don’t know the answer to:  how many crew work on World?  Total crew on Anthem is listed as 760 and on QM2 is 1253, for 4905 and 2695 passengers, respectively.

Here are more numbers.

 

World Comes to NYC’s Sixth Boro

Quick post today . . . with a followup tomorrow.  I became somewhat obsessed with the name of this ULCV;  I’d expected it to arrive a day earlier and it anchored a dozen leagues out, so you can understand my obsession when my brain told me I was waiting in vain for the “world.”  For now, this may be among the largest box boats to arrive in the harbor . . .  1200′  x 167′  x 47′  with an air draft of 177′, if my ears caught the numbers correctly.

Maybe you can participate in my tangent, though.  Here’s how.  Given the name of this vessel,  what comes to mind?   What song titles?  And,  if you worked for YM and needed to come up with a name for a sister vessel, what would you suggest?  I don’t believe there is a sister vessel.  And I believe this is YM World’s first visit to the sixth boro.  If there’s any humor in this post, I intend it to be on me and on the crazy places my brain goes when I consider the (YM) World to be arriving in NYC . . . because hasn’t it always….

Some of my thoughts, in no particular order, would be these:  stop the world I wanna get off, world on a string, I’m sitting on top of the world . . .  .  As to a sister ship, I come up with “other world” and then this one being worldly and the sister being otherworldly . . .

 

Anyhow, as I said earlier, more of this actual vessel tomorrow.  By the way, she’s currently at Global Terminal in Bayonne, arriving here Saturday (4/27) as its first port call after departing singapore on 4/1.

All photos and reactions by Will Van Dorp.

Here’s a repository of song titles--most of which I don’y know–with “world” in the title.  And book titles . . . around the world in 80 days has [comic] possibilities.  This “world” song comes with its own NYC images in its music video. For many years I was a fan of what record stores (what are they??!) classified as “world music, stuff like this . . . or this.

And hat’s off to the fine machines and skilled crews who guide these behemoths into and out of ports as if the feats were just play.