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Heading for harbor
Miriam Moran passed Pier A and Wagner Park and exited the North River Wednesday evening after assisting the Bermuda-bound cruise ship Insignia leaving the dock at Pier 90 at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal. Pier A, built on masonry footings rather than wood pilings, dates back to the 1880s and is the oldest remaining pier on the North River.
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Working Westchester
Waterfronts in Westchester were working Wednesday. A pair of Moran tugs returned to the harbor in the morning after assisting a bulk ship loaded with Spanish gypsum docking at the wallboard plant in Buchanan, NY. In the first photo, Topaz Coast is also visible with a dry bulk barge, holding position off Edgewater and waiting to dock in Yonkers after arriving with a sugar cargo from Florida.
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Off station
Sandy Hook Pilots station boat number 2, the New Jersey, made an unusual trip up the North River and continued up as far as Haverstraw Bay on Monday. In summer months, this boat is usually stationed offshore around Ambrose Light as a base for pilots joining arriving ships and leaving departing ships. There is no obvious operational reason for a trip up the Hudson and transits upriver are handled by the Hudson River Pilots based in Yonkers so perhaps this was some kind of evaluation of the boat. After the move up north, New Jersey returned to the pilot base on Staten Island. Meanwhile, station boat number 1, the New York, which is normally a winter boat, was holding down the Ambrose Light post.
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Paper chase
Trito Navigator was inbound on the North River Thursday evening, heading for the Port of Albany. The small 8,137 deadweight ton bulk ship was arriving from Vallvik, Sweden with a cargo of wood pulp for paper mills up north.
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Entering canal service
The brand new New York State Canal Corp tug Thomas X Grasso arrived on the North River last week from her birthplace at Blount Boatworks in Rhode Island. According to Tugster’s Will Van Dorp, this is the first new build tug to enter service on the canals since the 1930s. Thomas wears New York State’s familiar blue and yellow colors. The tug entered the Erie Canal in Waterford and is currently sitting at a dock at the Canal Corp’s yard in that town.
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Pick up
The Antigua flagged heavy lift ship BBC Eagle came up the North River Friday morning, passing the Lincoln Tunnel vents and heading for the Port of Albany. I believe they will load some heavy GE equipment for export overseas.
©2024 Daniel Katzive Uncategorized -
Back stage passes
A visit to the Kill van Kull and Newark Bay Wednesday evening courtesy of Open House New York and the Port Authority can feel like getting back stage for a North River watcher. Much of the cargo we see moving up and down the river originates or terminates here, and many of the tugs who work the river reside here or come for servicing. There are also many vessels here which never come up the river, most notably the big container ships heading for Port Newark, Bayonne, and Elizabeth. The volume of activity down here makes the North River feel like a quiet stream— an effort to write a daily blog of activity on the KvK would quickly be overwhelmed by content. Below are some of the photos I was able to take before it got too dark.
The Robbin’s Reef lighthouse off Constable Hook in Bayonne is where weather in New York Harbor is usually measured. Katherine Walker, namesake of the local Coast Guard buoy tender, once tended this light. 
Most of the 60 privately owned petrochemical terminals which make New York Harbor the busiest refined products port in the country are located along the Arthur Kill, which we didn’t visit. But the Bayonne IMTT along the Kill van Kull is an exception, receiving cargos from foreign refiners and loading cargos on barges for delivery up the Hudson or elsewhere in the Northeast. The Noelle Cutler barge, a North River regular, was loading cargo at IMTT ahead of a trip up the North River the next morning. 
Evelyn Cutler waited across the Kill at a dock in Caddell’s shipyard for the Noelle barge to be loaded, near an out-of-service Staten Isalnd ferry. 
The Liberia flag tanker Laredo Emerald was leaving the IMTT with help from two Moran tractor tugs after discharging cargo and would next head for the Kinder Morgan terminal on the Arthur Kill 
Vane’s Elk River had the GCS 230 barge, one of the last vessels to be built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, also loading Number 4 oil. The barge was later brought over to Con Ed’s Pier 98 fuel dock on the North River where it is used to store back-up fuel for the nearby 59th Street Steam Plant, which usually burns natural gas. 
A Vane barge was also loading product at IMTT 
Stasinos tug David Wilson exited the KvK to attend to business at Port Liberty in Bayonne. 
The tanker Nord Vanquish was arriving at IMTT to discharge cargo which likely originated at a refinery in Portugal or Spain. Margaret Moran provided an escort 
Margaret was the first tug I ever photographed back in the mid-1980s (see Then and Now) and is still going strong. We only occasionally see her on the North River. 
Doris Moran was tied up on Nord Vanquish’s port side 
US flagged offshore supply ship Polaris was on the way to a wind job site off the Jersey Shore. 
The Brownsville/Petrochem Trader ATB is a massive unit with a 12,000 HP tug and a 521-foot barge. We never see ATB’s this big on the North River. I believe this unit mainly works in the Gulf, coming up to New York Harbor with cargo from there occasionally. 
Captain Brian McAllister had a stern line on the massive 14,000 TEU Evergreen container ship Taipei Triumph heading out for her next port call of Norfolk. 
Norfolk’s Paula Atwell brought a barge loaded with Waste Management containers containing municipal waste loaded in Brooklyn and heading for WM’s Elizabeth transfer station to be loaded on trucks. 
Iona McAllister was making the rounds 
Vane’s Potomac had a bunkering barge alongside an MSC container ship with a ZIM ship further up the pier at Port Newark 
Mary Turecamo was assisting the smaller America container ship departing for her next port call in Charelston 
A look into the Reinauer yard on the KVK found the barge RTC 81 which we often see on the North River with B. Franklin Reinauer. The big RTC 150 barge is 477 feet long and usually paired with Meredith Reinauer. We’ve only seen this unit on the North River once, and it only travelled up to the cruise terminal before turning back (see Big Unit). 
Carver Companies has a small base and dormitory barge on the KvK. Erin Elizabeth was visiting. 
And Daisy Mae was on her way there to tuck in for the night. 
The Mexican tall ship Cuauhtemoc, still without her top masts, is in a dry dock at the Caddell Yard two months after her allesion with the Brooklyn Bridge. 
Several other tugs were also in drydock, including the Kristin Poling seen recently on the North River. ©2024 Daniel Katzive Uncategorized -
Coming or going?
BBC Amethyst, an Antigua-flagged superstructure forward heavy lift cargo ship, came down the North River Monday evening. She was heading for sea and her next port of call in the Dominican Republic after calling at Port of Albany where she either delivered some project cargo from overseas or collected something heavy for export abroad. On the way down, she passed Evelyn Cutler and the Noelle Cutler barge, Albany-bound with a fuel cargo.
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Farewell to Florida?
A small Air Force jet flew a series of loops up the Hudson to Tappen Zee and back to the Battery while en route from Clarksburg WV to Stewart Airport in Newburgh on Monday. I believe this is a T-1a training jet based in Pensacola, though I read that these jets are no longer going to be based there with the final set to depart this month so perhaps this aircraft will not return to that base.
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Blue crab blues
Blue crabs live in the mud at the bottom of the North River. Fisherpeople on Pier i bring them up using traps baited with raw chicken, as was the case with this one caught last week. NYS DEC’s minimum size for a keeper is 4.5 inches and this one was thrown back. The NYS Dept of Health says it is ok for women over 50 and for men to eat six crabs a week (not the green stuff) but recommends women under 50 and children under 15 to avoid them.
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 