Category: Uncategorized
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Aids to navigation
Happy Lunar New Year from NOT the North River. Driving across country this week, I did not expect to encounter Coast Guard vessels, but in Little Rock on Tuesday I found the cutter Muskingum, a 75-foot buoy tender comprised of a towboat paired with a crane barge equipped with a spud in the bow. The…
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Winter resident
A red breasted merganser is among the birds wintering on the North River, seen by the A Dock of the 79th Street Boat Basin on Valentines Day Saturday. In spring he will head back to northern lakes and rivers, perhaps in Canada, for breeding.
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Back to work!
Thomas Dann and the deck barge CBC Savannah came down the North River on a slow bell Saturday, running on their regular route ferrying offshore wind components for the Sunrise Wind project assembled at the Port of Coeymans to their staging area in Rhode Island. Work on the project has resumed after a February 2…
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Returning to the front
Coast Guard icebreaker Penobscot Bay was on the North River heading back to the front Saturday morning, returning to icebreaking duties up north after a few days back at base in Bayonne. It has been a busy winter for this cutter, along with the other Bayonne-based 140-foot Sturgeon Bay and the smaller 65-footer Hawser. A…
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Flock of eagles
A group of six bald eagles gathered on a North River ice floe off 72nd Street Thursday morning to discuss important matters. Eagles like to follow the ice so we do tend to see them in the lower reaches of the estuary during the winter, but I’ve never seen a group of six together like…
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The last factory
Beltango, a 650-foot Panama-flagged bulk ship, arrived on the North River on Wednesday with a cargo of gypsum from Garrucha, Spain headed for the wallboard plant in Buchanan, NY. Also visible in the first photo is DonJon Marine’s J. Arnold Witte with a DSNY waste paper scow and Stasinos Marine’s Joanne Marie, currently providing ice…
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Pushing paper
The city sanitation department has been prioritizing snow removal and garbage collection but on Thursday DSNY was catching up on recycling, with a line of trucks waiting to discharge paper at the Pier 99 transfer station. Workers winched a loaded scow out of the shed, covering the bags of waste paper with netting as the…
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Help from out of town
Coast Guard cutter Sycamore, a seagoing buoy tender based in Newport, RI, arrived on the North River on Thursday from her homeport to assist with icebreaking operations up north and perhaps with repositioning of buoys displaced by ice. Sycamore, was last here in 2024, but we saw the similar vessel Oak here last winter. Sycamore…
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Teamwork at the fuel dock
Swapping tank barges at Con Ed’s Pier 98 fuel dock brought four tugs with four different liveries to the North River’s small stretch of working waterfront on Thursday. Vane’s Elk River and Dann Ocean’s Captain Dann stemmed mid-channel with the GCS 230 barge while Liz Vinik cleared out ice from the Pier 98 slip. Centerline’s…
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Rock Paper Scissors Ice
The Dutch flag cargo ship Trent Navigator came up the North River Tuesday, Albany-bound and arriving from Sweden with what is very likely a cargo of wood pulp destined for paper mills up north. Trent Navigator carries a Swedish-Finnish 1A ice class rating, designed for year-round operation in the Baltic Sea, and, with the Coast…
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Hazard to navigation
Army Corps of Engineers vessel Hayward collected a hazard to navigation from the icy North River on Monday, perhaps a piece of dock which broke up in the ice further north. For historical reasons which date back to the 19th Century, while the Coast Guard is responsible for keeping navigable waterways clear of ice, removing…
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Keeping the steam up
The Liz Vinik, a 3,000 HP Vinik Marine tug built in 1962 for Esso, was brought in to break up the ice around Con Ed’s North River Pier 98 fuel dock on Monday. Deckhands tied the tug’s bow up to the pier and the tug pivoted back and forth, churning up the ice with her…
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Breaking ice on the North River
The Coast Guard cutter Hawser was breaking ice between North River Pier 99 and Pier i early Monday morning as temperatures hovered around 11 farenheit. This section of the estuary generally remains navigable without human intervention, with the steady barge traffic and ebb and flow of the tide sufficient to keep the channel clear, but…
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Interstate commerce
Returning to New York City from warmer climes finds the harbor beset by the heaviest icing conditions seen in decades and new ways of operating on the North River already becoming routine. NY Waterway has contracted with Stasinos Marine to help keep their trans-Hudson routes operating and Sunday morning finds the 71-year-old tug Joanne Marie,…
North River Notes 