Coast Guard cutter Sycamore, a seagoing buoy tender based in Newport, RI, arrived on the North River on Thursday from her homeport to assist with icebreaking operations up north and perhaps with repositioning of buoys displaced by ice. Sycamore, was last here in 2024, but we saw the similar vessel Oak here last winter. Sycamore and Oak look similar to our local Bayonne-based coastal buoy tender Katherine Walker but are more than twice as heavy and 50 feet longer.

After spending Thursday night anchored off Yonkers, Sycamore travelled upriver as far as Kingston before turning back to spend Friday night at Poughkeepsie. As of Saturday morning, she is on her way back downriver towards West Point. Meanwhile, after a busy first few weeks of January, Katherine Walker appears to off line for past two weeks. The 140-foot icebreaker Penobscot Bay is working south of Albany, while the 65-footer Hawser remains busy in NY Harbor.