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Equipment move
Stasinos tug Toula C and the small tug Jessica Francis brought a crane barge down the North River on Saturday afternoon. They were heading back to the harbor after leaving the basin between Pier 90 and 92 where an additional temporary finger pier, Pier 91, composed of spud barges is being constructed to dock visiting tall ships next weekend. Jessica is back at Pier 91 as of Monday morning.
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Home away from home
A sail down to the Upper Bay Saturday found the GCS 230 barge stored on one of the moorings on the Greenville flats. We typically see GCS 230 tied up at North River Pier 98 during the winter months where it is used to hold backup fuel for Con Ed’s 59th Street steam plan, but that pier has been vacant since temperatures began warming this spring. GCS 230 was built locally, one of the last vessels to be constructed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
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Working the blue highway
Donjon Marine tug Brian Nicholas was standing by at the DSNY Pier 99 transfer station on Friday. Waste paper collected in Manhattan is brought by sanitation trucks to this pier. Paper is transferred to barges and towed to a recycling mill on the Staten Island shore of the Arthur Kill where it is repurposed into cardboard products. Paper is the one waste stream that is processed entirely within the Five Boroughs and moving the paper by barge keeps 100s of trucks a week off of our bridges and expressways.
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Just do it
Miller’s Launch tug Shawn Miller took on some promotional work on Thursday, towing a barge with an advertising banner up the North River as far as the GW bridge and back. The Hallo New Jersey billboard is paid for by Nike and highlights the German national football team’s switch to Nike from adidas according to an article in @sneakernews which I did not know was a thing. The player shown is Germany’s Jamal Musiala. Probably good paying and not too difficult work for Miller’s and Nike gets thousands of sets of eyes on their banner and now some free publicity from a maritime blog as well.
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Birds of a feather
More than one big ocean-going ATB came up the North River to anchor during Monday night’s storm. In addition to Kirby’s Sea Hawk/ATC 21 unit featured on Tuesday, we also had Moran’s Barney Turecamo/Georgia at anchorage up in Yonkers with the barge looking loaded. The 5,100 HP tug and 427-foot 110,000 barrel barge Moran unit is not as big as the Kirby pair but still on the large end of what we typically see on the Hudson. Barney passed the Sea Hawk on the way back to the harbor Tuesday afternoon. Both are back on the Kills as of Thursday morning.
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Getting scrap
The Marshall Islands flag bulk ship SSI Providence came up the North River on Tuesday morning, arriving from the UK in ballast. She was heading for the Sims Metal dock at the Port of Albany and will likely be loading scrap for export overseas.
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Big visitor
Tuesday morning found the big Kirby Sea Hawk / ATC 21 ATB emerging from the fog on the North River opposite Port Imperial. The unit had dropped anchor a bit south of the usual North River anchorage area after returning from Boston during the heavy rains late Monday. With an 8,000 HP tug and a 450-foot 120,000 barrel barge, this is on the large end for ATBs we see on the Hudson.
This unit does not travel to terminals upriver but rather seems to be moving product from New Jersey terminals to Boston lately though we have seen her using the anchorage area during at least one storm in the past.
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Reinauer parking
Monday morning finds a pair of Reinauer ATBs at anchor on the North River having stopped here on the way back from product deliveries in Albany. The Janice Ann / RTC 103 unit, a 4,400 HP tug paired with a 108,000 barrel barge, was off Guttenberg, while sitting at anchor about half a mile north was Josephine / RTC 83, a similarly powered tug paired with a smaller 85,000 barrel barge. After a beautiful weekend, heavy rain and thunderstorms are expected to move in this evening.
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After New Haven
Monday found Reinauer’s B. Franklin/RTC 81 ATB arriving at anchorage on the North River just as Centerline’s C.F. Campbell tug was leaving with the Flaco barge. The units passed each other off Pier i. The B. Franklin was arriving from a run out to New Haven and didn’t stay long—by late Monday she was loading a new cargo on the Arthur Kill and then heading for Quincy Mass via the outside route off the south shore of Long Island. CF had also been to New Haven that prior weekend, but has not left New York Harbor yet this week.
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Made in New York
Island Trader, an 800-HP tug owned by Stevens Towing of South Carolina, came down the North River heading for the Upper Bay with a deck barge loaded with a shrink-wrapped piece of heavy equipment. This is likely something manufactured by GE in Schenectady and transferred to a barge at the Port of Albany. From here it will likely be transferred to a ship for export or continue by barge to a port closer to an ultimate destination in the US.
Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.
North River Notes 