Rains continued to soak the New York area as the work week kicked off Monday and River traffic was light, with someCoast Guard icebreaking assets seen heading north. Marilyn George, a tug newly acquired by Poling-Cutler this year according to tugboatinformation.com, was seen heading up river with a cargo for the first time.

Reinauer’s Kristy Ann remained a puzzler. The company’s articulated tug-barge combinations (ATBs) normally behave in a fairly predictable manner, loading oil product cargos at the refinery and pipeline terminals along the Arthur Kill or in Bayonne and then heading up the Hudson or out along Long Island Sound to make deliveries. Occasionally a loaded barge will come down from Albany, probably carrying ethanol, and head for a fuel depot in New England. They will then sometimes return with their barges empty and wait at anchor on the North River until it is time to load a new cargo.

Kristy Ann’s movements this past week, however, have been difficult to explain. The ATB arrived Thursday with what appeared to be a loaded barge and proceeded to anchor for several days off 72nd Street, unusual because loaded barges typically head directly to their destinations, and it is typically tugs with unloaded barges which we see anchor. On Saturday, Kristy Ann returned to the Arthur Kill, and then came back to the River Sunday with the barge looking unloaded, presumably having discharged cargo in Linden, again unusual since this is where oil product cargos typically originate. Monday saw her weigh anchor and leave town, heading for the Philadelphia area. There is of course likely a very simple commercial, mechanical, or logistical reason for this atypical movement, but for those of us watching from ashore, it counts as an unsolved mystery.