September brought a rare visitor to the North River, the Coast Guard 65-foot small harbor tug Cleat, who passed through on the way upstate on September 13 and coming the other direction on the way back to her base in New Haven on Monday this week.

Cleat spent the intervening 2 weeks up aground Saugerties and Kingston. The light icebreakers were built in the 1960s and are the smallest cutters in the Coast Guard’s fleet, all named for various items of tugboat hardware. Fifteen were built for service in the northeast but only 11 or fewer are still active.

We frequently see Bayonne-based Hawser who held down icebreaking operations around New York Harbor during this past harsh winter while the larger ice breakers were busy up north. Line is also based in Bayonne but has been out of service for some time, while Wire is based in Saugerties and will be moving to Kingston according to the latest news from the Coast Guard.

I believe Cleat may have formerly been based in Philadelphia but is now working out of New Haven, perhaps replacing Bollard who appears to have gone out of service shortly after I saw her in Montauk last summer.

There is an RFP out this summer for a replacement for these vessels, most of which are older than me. I have photographed 6 of these over the past few years, which I share in this post. Hope to collect the whole set before they retire, though they all look pretty much alike!