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Gridlock alert
Activity on the River remains rather light as we start the week with clearing skies and hotter temperatures. The cruise terminal remains busy, however, with the Norwegian Getaway arriving and dredging operations continuing. The Lincoln Sea with her very large barge remains anchored off 72nd Street going on one week now, implying some special extended stay dispensation from the Coast Guard. Yachts also continue to occupy a number of anchorages. Meanwhile, on land, Manhattan welcomes back more and more office workers just as the UN kicks off its annual meetings, ensuring unpleasant driving conditions. The Coast Guard Cutter Beluga came up the River from its Sandy Hook base and tied up at a mooring south of the Bridge, perhaps a security detail laid on for the UN meetings.
A dredging scow and attendant tug waiting to get to work Monday morning 
The Douglas J looks big enough to devour his smaller companion maneuvering the scow 
The dredgers at work Monday late afternoon 
Norwegian Getaway arriving. The ship is actually half of mile south of the piers in the photo and will shortly make a hard right to dock at Pier 88 USCGC Beluga coming upriver from Sandy Hook, probably for UN week security 
The Lincoln Sea and her large barge with morning mist obscuring the cliff tops of North Bergen 
Haugland’s Evening Mist heading for the company’s Tomkins Cove facility and passing the much larger Lincoln Sea ATB 
A 64 meter long super yacht anchored off 72nd Street after arriving from Newport. -
Weekend update and a somber anniversary
The weekend passed with pleasant but hot weather on Friday and Saturday followed by rain without thunder on Sunday. Commercial activity picked up Sunday evening but was otherwise light. The cruise terminal was busy though, with Carnival Magic in on Friday, three boats visiting Saturday and a final Royal Norwegian boat here on Sunday, with dredging activity going on all the while in between. The 9/11 anniversary on Sunday brought some police traffic heading for the ceremonies downtown.
A stone hopper being brought back north empty on Friday 
An American Petroleum tug pushing a tanker barge north towards Albany 
Kirby’s Lincoln Sea was anchored off 79th Street for the weekend 
Buchanan12 passed the Lincoln Sea with a load of crushed dolomite heading for Jersey City 
Things got tight as a Norwegian cruuse ship left Pier 88 as B12 was moving south, and dredge scows looked on 
The DEP’s Rockaway was servicing the North River plant Sunday 
A Port Authority Police boat headed south Sunday, perhaps for 9/11 ceremonies 
North Hudson’s marine unit was exercising its water canons, perhaps rehearsing for the ceremonies 
A Yonkers police boat passed Dyckman Street Marina on its way, presumably also an attendant at commemorations downtown 
Dann Marine brought an empty cement barge north for refilling at the Lafarge plant upstate Sunday morning 
Sunday evening, colleagues were bringing a loaded cement barge in the opposite direction, passing Buchanan12 on two whistles in the fading light 
A C130 flying south down the river Sunday morning This unusual yacht was anchored off Englewood Cliffs, perhaps a fishing vessel retrofitted for yacht duty 
This ketch was anchored north of the North River sewage plant 
A more conventional super yacht was anchored of Englewood Marina, with the marina’s large flag flying at half staff ©2024 Daniel Katzive Uncategorized -
Dredge baby, dredge
In perhaps another sign that summer is drawing to a close and the heavy August flow of cruise ships into New York is set to abate, the dredgers were back at work at Pier 88 Thursday.
The slip between Pier 88 and Pier 90 gets its bottom scrapped 
DonJon’s Atlantic Enterprise was part of the dredging team A smaller cruise ship did arrive Thursday morning, however. With Pier 88 out of action, the Seven Seas Navigator tied up on the north side of Pier 90. The Navigator was built inside the hull of a former Soviet navy ship and launched in 1991. She returned to New York after a three month circuit running through Nova Scotia, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland, the Nordic region, and then finishing up in Spain and Portugal before heading back to New York. Tomorrow she heads for Montreal.
Seven Seas Navigator arrives with a Moran tug preparing to assist her to her berth. 
A well-teathered window washer clears the view from the bridge 
A Coast Guard 65’ small harbor tug on the river in the morning Lastly, it would not do to ignore the passing of Queen Elizabeth II today, and in memoriam once again share a picture of the old Cunard QE2 leaving Pier 88 back in the mid-1980s with help from Margaret Moran
Photo by Daniel Katzive -
Brooklyn Break
A day away from the North River and visiting Brooklyn provided a bit of a different perspective on activity in New York Harbor. While parks and recreation have also come to dominate much of the Brooklyn waterfront, there are still pockets of commercial and industrial activity, much more so than we see along the Hudson now.
The Brooklyn Navy Yard is no longer building boats, but there remains an active boat yard with drydocks which seems to get some significant business.
The front gate of the G.M.D shipyard at the Brooklyn Navy Yard 
Current customers include the DEP’s Port Richmond tanker 
And Kirby’s Cape Canaveral. Note the visible connector bars in the bow for connecting to her barge. 
An interesting looking dredging barge was also docked at the shipyard 
Outside the shipyard, but still in the Navy Yard, the tug John William delivered a gravel barge to the Vulcan Materials Company dock where the product was placed in the correct pile 
Norfolk’s John William headed south after the delivery, under the Manhattan Bridge 
Later James was seen exiting Erie Basin and heading into the Upper Bay 
Further north in the Navy Yard, Lehigh Cement mixes imported cement powder on a stationary barge 
FDNY also has a maintenance facility and the headquarters of the Marine Unit at the Navy Yard South of the Navy Yard, the waterfront is occupied by Con Ed facilities and then the Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Port Authority Docks south of the park look to be mainly used as trucking depots, though some tanker barges and at least one tug are tied up there.
The Vanes’ Brothers Schuylkill and tanker barges with the Battery Tunnel vents in the background Things get more interesting in Red Hook, where an active container terminal is operating, as well as a cruise ship terminal. The AS Pauline, a Liberian-flagged modest sized 2526 TEU feedermax container ship was unloading Wednesday. She arrived from Costa Rica and Panama this week and was on her way to Philadelphia by evening. We visited the excellent stewards of the historic Mary Whalen tanker based there, a floating museum which serves as a cultural center for the neighborhood and a rallying point for maintaining maritime industrial capacity on the waterfront.
The Mary Whalen at her home in Red Hook 
The AS Pauline unloading at Red Hook Terminal, as seen from the deck of the Mary Whalen 
Near the Mary Whalen resides another preserved vessel, the ex-Lehigh Railroad tug Cornell As you move south through the Red Hook area, the true scale of New York Harbor becomes visible in a way we never see from the North River.
ATB’s at anchor in the Upper Bay, with the Celebrity Cruises’ Mein Schiff 1 docked in Bayonne in the background Timothy L. Reinauer was running light on the way out from Erie Basin, with the Bayonne container port visible in the background and Port Elizabeth in the far distance on the left. -
Back to work, in the rain
The end of the long weekend and the first unofficial (non-astronomical) day of autumn brought soaking rains to the region. Morning found Dann Marine’s unusually designed pusher tug the Chesapeake Coast anchored in the River off 72nd Street with a tanker barge. This tug is seen on the River sometimes, but usually running light with no barge, and rarely, if ever, at anchor.
The unusually designed tug Chesapeake Coast in an usual spot The DEP’s Red Hook was back in action servicing the North River plant after several days in which the newer Hunts Point was doing the honors. Meanwhile, Hunts Point was off in Jamaica Bay Tuesday, ferrying sludge from the Rockaway plant to the 26th Ward plant for dewatering.
The DEP’s Red Hook passing an oak tree in Riverside Park South 
Centerline’s HMS Justice helped bunker the Norwegian Joy as arriving passengers waited for transportation in the morning 
By evening, Joy was passing Pier 86 and the Growler submarine on the way north to the Canadian Maritime Provinces This cormorant seemed more annoyed by the rain than you might expect -
Labor Day: Loaded and light
Labor Day was a day off for many of us on land, but tugboat crews were hard at work, with tanker traffic fairly heavy. Evelyn Cutler began the morning anchored off Edgewater after seemingly loading a barge at Bayonne’s IMTT overnight. Tugs with loaded barges normally do not anchor in the River, but perhaps the holiday meant a delay at the delivery point. Later in the morning, Evelyn left the River and anchored in the Upper Bay, to be replaced by Reinauer’s Haggerty Girls and Kirby’s Lincoln Sea.
Evelyn Cutler at anchor off Edgewater with a loaded barge… 
And later heading for the Upper Bay Janice Ann Reinauer, one of the newer (if not newest) ATBs of the Reinauer fleet, came down from Albany with her barge looking fully loaded and signaling Providence. This is the third time this summer we have seen this atypical counter-flow of loaded tankers coming south from Albany instead of moving north with cargos loaded in New Jersey. All three ATBs have been Reinauer, and this is most likely ethanol moving to Albany by train and then on to New England by barge. Janice Ann passed the anchored Haggerty Girls on the way down, and the photo below provides a good illustration of the different profiles of two similar barges, one loaded and the other light.
Janice Ann Reinauer with a loaded barge passing the anchored Haggerty Girls with a light barge. Not long after, the Girls left the River and headed south Kirby’s Lincoln Sea arrived on the River with its enormous barge empty and dropped anchor. At 474 feet, Kirby’s barge is over 60 feet longer than those of the Reinauer ATBs seen earlier. I have not seen Lincoln on the River before, though she is based in NY Harbor, and this ATB may be a bit long for River work. In any event, she seems to have spent most of the summer working in Florida and the Gulf and was arriving today from Cape Canaveral.
Lincoln Sea with her large barge maneuvering to pass the anchored Haggerty Girls before dropping anchor herself further north; Photo credit M. Katzive 
Pinuccia returned from Sunday’s trip to Newburgh with a light barge and anchored in the Upper Bay 
And Kimberly Poling was also pushing an empty down from Albany 
One of NYPD’s large launches passing the Port Imperial ferry terminal 
Beach day: Geese, ducks, and grackles enjoy low tide in Riverside Park -
Uncommon visitors
Labor Day weekend Sunday saw many New Yorkers out of town, but on the River some less-frequent visitors were in evidence. The tugboat Hercules, normally based in Florida, came south from Verplanck with a former landing craft now known as West Bay, heading for Florida. A bit of research on the navsource.org website tells us this 1976 vintage landing craft was formally known as Bushmaster and was retired by the Army in 2003. She subsequently found work for the North Carolina Department of Environmental and Natural Resources maintaining oyster beds. A photo on the site shows a rustier version of the boat in 2017 somewhere on the Hudson, presumably Verplanck, but gives no information on what she was doing up there. Interestingly, the small tug in that photo, the Madeleine Marie, also traversed the North River today, moving a deck barge with construction equipment down to the Liberty Marina in Jersey City. It can’t be a coincidence, although the destinations of the Hercules and Madeleine were different.
Hercules’ wheel house pokes out above the West Bay landing craft with a fresh coat of paint being moved down to Florida 
Friends from Verplanck on Madeleine Marie push a work barge south Meanwhile, the Captain Brian A. McCallister, named for a company patriarch who passed away earlier this summer, is based in New York Harbor, but this traction tug spends most of its time assisting big container ships and bulkers docking in the Port. Today, though, they were on the River with a crowd on deck wearing matching t-shirts. They came up to 72nd Street and did some donuts in the River, showing off their variable pitch z-drive propellers before heading off. This was presumably a company outing of some kind.
The Brian D. McCallister on a rare North River foray with a crowd aboard 
Wagenborg boats are frequent fixtures on the river, delivering wood pulp from Sweden for paper mills to the Port of Albany, but the company has a huge fleet and we never see the same vessel twice. This was the Finnborg. 
DEP tanker Hunts Point was servicing the North River plant again, instead of the more usual Red Hook tanker 
The cruise ship terminal remains as busy as ever, with new Norwegian ships in nearly daily, keeping the Centerline bunkering tugs hard at work 
Pinuccia was hard at work as well, pushing a cargo bound for Newburgh past the Dyckman Marina and the Palisades 
After an early passenger arrival by launch, the Neninka weighed anchor and headed for warmer climes, signaling West Palm Beach in perhaps another sign that summer is drawing to a close. You can see water pouring out of the anchor well in the photo. 
Canoers were back on the river in the morning, passing the still-anchored Neninka and undeterred by Saturday’s pinning under Pier i 
Storms rolled through in the afternoon, obscuring the Cuomo Bridge from Spuyten Duyvil -
Catching up
The final days of August and first days of September brought a bit of a lull in activity, both on land and on the River. Most of the commercial traffic has been moving stone rather than fuels, though the cruise terminal has been quite busy, which is good for Centerline Logistics’ bunkering business.
Centerline’s HMS Justice, presumably named for a Royal Navy rescue tug which served at D-day, kept a bunkering barge in place by Norwegian Joy on Thursday as a port worker walked past 
Another Centerline tug maneuvers a bunkering barge for Norwegian Getaway Saturday morning 
Getaway got away later in the day, heading back to Bermuda 
Evening Mist brought a load of stone south on Thursday 
As did a Stasinos Marine tug 
And the Sarah D on Friday Hays’s Joker brought a high sided hopper down from Coeymans on Saturday 
Evelyn Cutler anchored off Edgewater Saturday 
Kimberly Poling brought an empty barge down from Albany to load a new cargo in Bayonne, passing Buchanan12 bringing empty hoppers back north on one whistle 
A Reinauer ATB overtook Stasinos’s John Joseph pushing empty hoppers up to Haverstraw on two whistles Saturday 
The DEP’s Hunts Point, one of three newer tankers, was servicing the North River plant on Saturday On Saturday morning, an outrigged-canoe got wedged in the pilings of Pier i by the ebb tide. A rower from one of the other canoes swam over to join them, but it took about 40 minutes of hard work to get free. A launch from their club appeared to arrive on the scene but only after they were off.
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Midweek roundup
Tuesday and Wednesday brought moderate temperatures, and building westerly winds which made for great sailing up and down the river by Wednesday afternoon. Activity in the city and on the River was subdued in the run up to Labor Day weekend. A pair of Reinauer tugs and the Patrice McCalister were at anchor on the River Tuesday, and they were replaced by the Cape Henry, which came back to River after refueling at the Kirby dock on Staten Island and then spending some time in the Upper Bay. The super-yacht Neninka was back at anchor off 72nd Street after returning from Greenport, NY on the North Fork.
A pair of Reinauer ATBs at anchor Tuesday morning 
The self-propelled lift boat Legs III passed the anchored Patrice McCallister Tuesday morning on the way to North Yonkers Cape Henry at anchor off 110th Street Wednesday afternoon 
Evening Mist brought crushed rock down from a quarry in Catskill NY 
Kristin Poling had a light barge on the hip heading for Raritan Bay anchorage 
Normandy was running light with business to attend to in Yonkers 
Bar stools ready for cocktail hour on the boat deck of the Neninka 
A Centerline tug prepared to remove a bunkering barge from Carnival Magic 
A Moran tug stood by on the south side of Pier 88, dwarfed by the skyline and waiting to assist the Magic when it headed back to Bermuda after 5pm ©2024 Daniel Katzive Uncategorized -
Holiday week
The last week of August and unofficial end of summer brought typical hot temperatures and limited commercial traffic. Several tanker barges which had been idled in the North River over the weekend headed out, but not to pick up new cargos, instead anchoring elsewhere in the harbor. Patrice McCalister remained on the River off Edgewater, and she was joined by Reinauer’s Josephine who returned from upstate with a light barge.
Timothy Reinauer prepared to depart for Gravesend Bay anchorage, while Patrice remained anchored off Edgewater with her barge on the hip Kristin Poling was moving product, heading north and passing the departing Timothy on one whistle with the towers of Journal Square in the background 
Josephine, nearly 40 years younger than the 1979 vintage Timothy, arrived with a light barge and anchored off 89th Street 
Jordan Rose left her Yonkers anchorage and headed for the Upper Bay 
DonJon was moving paper for recycling out to Staten Island from Pier 99 
The Army Corp’s Gelberman was making the rounds 
Centerline Logistics tugs brought a bunkering barge to refuel Norwegian Getaway after her early Monday arrival 
By late afternoon, crewmen were waiting on a platform to drop lines while final passengers arrived 
And she headed for Bermuda before sundown, dwarfing a Waterway ferry 
Cormorants were on patrol
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 
