Saint Emilion was anchored in the North River Saturday. Saint Emilion is a regular on the New York Harbor to Albany route, but has been absent for several months, a period coinciding with her being hauled out for maintenance at a Bayonne boat yard (as well-documented in August by the Tugster blog). Otherwise, Saturday was notable in that tug and barge activity was somewhat atypical in a couple of instances, which it is tempting to attribute to the significant stresses now being experienced in the diesel market right now, though perhaps it is just a product of normal random variation.

Vane Brothers Patuxent came south with a loaded looking barge after anchoring Friday north of the Bridge. Anchoring with loaded barges is somewhat unusual, as was Patuxent’s subsequent route. The tug and barge headed south out of the harbor and were signaling Baltimore as their destination. Its not typical for oil products loaded in New York to move south.

Meanwhile, the visitor from the Gulf who anchored here Friday, Copper Mountain, left the River and headed for the Cadell repair dock on the North Shore of Staten Island. Another tug arrived though, with the Beatrice (the former Rhea Bouchard), anchoring off 72nd Street. Beatrice has been recently working in Philadelphia and has only recently reentred service under Centerline’s flag after the dissolution of the Bouchard fleet according to tugboatinformation.com.

Reinauer ATBs were on more typical missions Saturday, with the Haggerty Girls and the venerable Dace Reinauer, born the same year as me, bringing light barges south. But a smaller Reinauer boat, Jason Reinauer was bringing a loaded barge north on the hip as the sun set, which is also atypical in that Jason is not one of the big Reinauer ATBs we normally see on this route.