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Tuesday Tanker
MH Future, a small 20,000 deadweight ton Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, came up the North River early Tuesday heading for the Buckeye Terminal in Albany. Future was arriving from a terminal on the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec City and had been at a terminal near Gibraltar prior to that. She may be bringing a Spanish or Canadian refined oil product for delivery or could be picking up an ethanol cargo there for export back to Canada.
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Business trip
Donjon Marine’s low-slung J. Arnold Witte came up the North River on a hazy Wednesday morning last week, passing Edgewater and signaling an AIS destination of Erie, PA. This is not a common destination for commercial vessels heading up the Hudson, but J. Arnold was built at Donjon’s affiliated shipyard there in 2021 and travelled back there last September to pick up a new barge, stopping by the Tugboat Roundup in Waterford NY on the way. J. Arnold is designed for creek and canal work but clearances on western sections of the Erie Canal are too low even for her as I understand it and on that previous trip she made a right at the Oswego Canal near Syracuse and completed the trip via Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Land-based AIS coverage is spotty on the canals but I believe they may be crossing the Oneida Lake portion of the canal network as of Tuesday morning.
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Summer travel
Coast Guard small harbor tug Bollard, a 65-foot ice breaking cutter based in New Haven, was docked at Coast Guard Station Montauk over the weekend. Bollard is similar to, though a few years younger than, Bayonne-based cutters Line and Hawser and Saugerties-based Wire, all three of which we see on the North River periodically, but Bollard’s patrol area is Long Island sound and its estuaries I believe.
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Picking up
Miss Ila, a 1962-vintage 2,400 HP tug belonging to Sterling Equipment Company of Quincy, Mass and Staten Island and not seen before by me, came up the North River on July 30 with a deck barge. Photos of her return voyage taken the next day by Hudson River photographer Glenn Raymo suggest she picked up some equipment up there. As of Sunday morning, she is in Delaware Bay having departed Baltimore and cleared the C&D Canal overnight.
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Another pilot visit
Sandy Hook pilot boat Yankee came up the North River on the final day of July. The boat normally delivers and retrieves pilots beyond the Narrows from ships arriving and departing the harbor and doesn’t come up the river but on this day Yankee was heading for the North River Shipyard in Nyack where she dropped off AIS and presumably went in for service.
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Fireboat salute
The North River fireboat, Marine One’s Three Forty Three, headed for the lower end of the Upper Bay last week for a hose salute, perhaps for an arriving ship coming through the Narrows. Three Forty Three and her sister ship Staten Island-based Firefighter II are among the largest and most advanced fireboats in the world. Built with Federal Homeland Security grants in the wake of the September 11 attacks, the name Three Forty Three references the number of firefighters who died in the line of duty that day, though more have subsequently perished from related illnesses.
A few days later, one of Three Forty Three’s predecessors, the retired John J Harvey, now owned by a non-profit group and docked at North River Pier 66a, also headed for the Upper Bay with an excursion group. The boat was in service from 1931 until 1994, though she assisted pumping water in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks as well.
The Harvey fighting a barge fire in 1965 (family photo) -
Meanwhile, at the dam
Stasinos Marine tug Toula C, was back on the North River this week working at the Gateway Tunnel cofferdam off Pier 66. Toula C was first seen on the North River delivering a barge at the 69th Street Transfer bridge restoration project a few weeks ago and then a week later working on the Pier 94 soundstage construction. Stasinos’s Brinn Courtney was also working at the Gateway site this week along with the big 500-ton Weeks 533 crane as the cofferdam begins to leapfrog towards the Manhattan shoreline at the heliport. The project is reinforcing the riverbed here so that the tunnel can be bored safely underneath.
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Survey says!
The Army Corps of Engineers survey vessel Dobrin was on the North River quite a bit in late July. As the screen shot from MarineTraffic shows, they were doing survey work north of the GW Bridge. Dobrin was also spotted retrieving a hazard from the North River off Hudson Yards during that period.
Dobrin’s crew retrieving a hazard to navigation with Hudson Yards looming in the background. 
Survey pattern north of the bridge. Source: MarineTraffic -
Moving cement
A lot of cement was moving down the North River last week from the Amrize plant (formerly Lafarge) in the Town of Coeymans near Ravenna, some of it heading for out-of-town terminals. Dann Marine tug Sapphire Coast made two runs at least and we saw Pearl Coast as well. As of Monday morning, Sapphire appears to be unloading at the Sparrows Point terminal in Baltimore and Pearl is approaching Boston having departed Providence last night.
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Welcome back
The Greek-flagged cable laying vessel Ariadne is back on the North River for the first time in a while, after I believe spending most of this year working in the North Sea or Baltic. She is returning for the final construction stages of the Champlain Hudson Power Express, a cable which will bring much-needed hydro-generated electricity from Quebec to New York City beginning early next year. Based on USCG local notices, it seems like Ariadne will be working on the section north of Spuyten Duyvil into the Harlem River in August and moving North as we move into fall.
Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.
North River Notes 