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Late goslings
I always like to record the first goslings I see every spring on the North River. April 30 is later than I have seen them begin to appear in the past and this is the only family I’ve seen so far—perhaps the harsh winter or the bird flu took a toll or the windy spring is keeping them out of sight.
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Cleanup
DonJon tug Paul Andrew, with nameboards removed, ferried a scow loaded with debris cleared from the area around the 30th Street Heliport to a pier in Port Newark on Tuesday, part of the ongoing Gateway Project work.
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More bulk
The Panama-flagged bulk ship Amis Wisdom VI passed up the North River early Tuesday, bound for the Port of Coeymans. The ship was arriving from ports in the Mediterranean with unknown cargo, though more salt is a possibility.
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Fuel goes up, cement comes down
Cement passed fuel on the North River early Monday. Coral Coast had a cement transporter barge carrying product from the Ravenna, NY plant to a distribution terminal on College Point on Flushing Bay. Coral passed the B. Franklin Reinauer RTC 81 ATB loaded with an oil product cargo and heading for Albany (or perhaps Newburgh) on one whistle just off North Bergen.
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Standing by
DonJon tugs were standing by at the DSNY’s Pier 99 transfer station on Friday evening. In addition to the company’s regular working moving waste paper scows from here to the paper mill on the Arthur Kill, the company was also busy maneuvering barges at a worksite removing debris from the 30th Street Heliport as part of the Gateway Tunnel project this week.
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Coast to Coast
Ruby Coast ran light up the North River on Friday afternoon, returning from servicing on the KvK to rejoin a sugar barge left docked in Yonkers. Sapphire Coast followed a bit later to help sail the barge off the dock at the plant and then returned light to the harbor, passing Lackawanna terminal on the way just before sunset in the photo. Ruby headed for sea and Baltimore with the barge in tow just after dark (no photo).
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Getting salty
A lot of salt has been moving up the North River this month, headed for the Port of Coeymans to restore municipal supplies depleted during the harsh winter. Some has come on bulk ships heading upriver, and some has come by barge, lightered off a series of bulk ships that have arrived from Egypt and anchored in the Upper Bay. On Wednesday, CMT’s Mackenzie Rose came by with a cargo loaded in the bay, the second in less than a week. Thursday evening, Thomas Dann came through with a similar cargo just before sunset.
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Bloomsbury on the Hudson
The tanker CL Virginia Wolf came up the North River Tuesday, arriving from Dominican Republic and heading for the Global Terminal in Albany. Fuel cargos from the Caribbean have not been typical lately, though perhaps the product was loaded at earlier port calls in Northern Europe. At nearly 50,000 dead-weight tons and 600 feet in length, Virginia is large by Hudson River tanker standards. As for the name, I don’t know how a tanker owned by a Chinese conglomerate winds up named for an early 20th century English author. Perhaps there is a Bloomsbury fan back at head office or maybe it is simply a random pairing of a state name with an animal. As documented on Tugster (https://tugster.wordpress.com/2016/10/08/names-25-2/), there are foreign flag ships calling on New York named for Herman Hesse and Ernest Hemingway.
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Captain D lends a hand
Captain D, a 2,400 HP Norfolk Towing tug which I don’t think we’ve seen before on the North River, came by Wednesday morning running light returning from a trip up to the Yonkers sugar refinery. I believe they were helping a barge dock at the plant. The barge had likely been waiting at anchor for the foreign-flag bulker that had been unloading to clear, which it did Tuesday evening.
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See you on one
The Curtis Reinauer / RTC 80 ATB passed Captain Dann with light tank barge DS-43 on one whistle off Guttenberg in the early Tuesday haze. The Captain was returning from a run to an unknown terminal north of Kingston while Curtis was Albany-bound with a cargo.
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 