Thursday began cool and rainy but ended hot and rather steamy. There was a lot of interesting traffic on the river for the first time in a while. Most notable was the arrival of Dann Marine’s Ruby Coast pushing American Sugar Refining’s (ASR) brand new 450-foot long barge cleverly named “Knot Refined”. The Knot was launched in March by Senesco Marine in North Kingston, Rhode Island, and left Palm Beach on its maiden voyage about 10 days ago. According to ASR, the name was chosen by means of an employee contest.

ASR’s Domino plant in Yonkers has been receiving what seems like an unusually high volume of deliveries of late. In addition to the Knot, Dann Marine brought up a second barge later in the day on Thursday, a bulker loaded with Mexican sugar arrived just Sunday evening, and a number of barges have been seen heading up there in recent weeks. It is not obvious what supply side, demand side, logistical, technical or seasonal explanation there might be for this, but the plant seems to be running at high capacity right now.

Another notable vessel Thursday was the General Purpose oil/chemical products tanker the MTM Kobe, arriving from the Port of Quebec and signaling Albany as destination. Foreign flagged tankers are not common on the Hudson, with most oil products heading north on US flagged tug/barge combinations. Valero runs a refinery in Quebec and diesel supply has been tight in the northeast so perhaps this a cargo of imported oil products coming in.

The Kobe and Knot Refined were followed late in the day by a big bulker, the Tac Imola. The Imola seems to be heading up to Coeymans after having just been up in Albany last month, with no foreign ports visited in between, so presumably she is heading up there to pick up a cargo, perhaps scrap metal.

More familiar vessels were also on the river going about their usual business.