Tag: USCG
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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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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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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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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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One foot out the door
A crewman had one foot out the door as a Coast Guard MH-65 helicopter flew up the North River about 200 feet over the water. The helo was flying up from its Atlantic City base, turned right over Spuyten Duyvil and flew back down to AC passing over Manhattan. They made a loop around the…
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Business trip
Coast Guard cutter Katherine Walker, the Keeper of the Harbor, was northbound on the North River Tuesday morning, with a red buoy on deck. Katherine travelled up to Hudson River Shoal Lighted Buoy A just south of Poughkeepsie which was reported extinguished in an LNM earlier this month. She spent a little over an hour…
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Jayhawk passing through
A Coast Guard MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter flew up the North River at 500 feet on the way from Elizabeth City North Carolina to Cape Cod Airbase in Falmouth, Mass on Monday. The Jayhawk made a right over Westchester County and continued up the Sound to its destination. Falmouth is the closest base to NY Harbor…
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Port security
A Coast Guard security team in a pair of 45-foot response boats with machine guns mounted provided an escort for the cruise ship Norwegian Breakaway as she dropped lines and departed from North River Pier 88 just before sundown on Monday. They accompanied Breakaway down to the Narrows and then returned to the Staten Island…
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Another black hull
The morning after the Coast Guard’s Penobscot Bay passed up the North River heading for ice breaking duty upriver, another black-hulled cutter came through. The buoy tender Katherine Walker, Keeper of the Harbor, headed north, perhaps to join ice breaking operations or to restore navigational marks knocked off station by ice flows, or both (or…
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Ready to break the ice
Ice has not reached the North River in New York City yet this year, but further north on the Hudson some icebreaking operations have already begun. On Monday, Penobscot Bay, one of two 140–foot ice breakers based in Bayonne was heading upriver, still wearing her Christmas wreath below the wheelhouse and holly strung along the…
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Ready to the break the ice
It’s still a bit early in the season for serious ice, but one of the Coast Guard’s two big Bayonne-based icebreakers, the Sturgeon Bay, was heading north on the North River on Thursday. Sturgeon Bay continued upriver to Kingston where she arrived by sundown. As usual, the 37-year old vessel was putting out a lot…
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A visitor from Sandy Hook
The Sandy Hook patrol boat, US Coast Guard Cutter Bonito, was visiting the North River this week. After traveling as far as Tappan Zee Thursday, the cutter spent a very cold moonlit night at the Coast Guard mooring off Edgewater and then did some maneuvering on the river off of Weehawken Friday morning before returning…
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Just visiting
The Ruth M. Reinauer/RTC 102 ATB, a 4,000 HP tug paired with a 413-foot barge, came up the North River on Tuesday from the Upper Bay and dropped anchor off Guttenberg. While there, FDNY Marine 1’s small boat and a Coast Guard 45-foot response boat passed by heading to check something out upriver and then…
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Patrol boats on patrol
Coast Guard 87-foot cutter Bonito, the Sandy Hook patrol boat, came up the North River on Tuesday and travelled as far as the Tappan Zee before circling back and staying overnight on the Coast Guard mooring south of the GW Bridge. Bonito left the next day and headed for Manhasset Bay on Long Island Sound,…
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Local Patrol
Numerous Coast Guard and NYPD vessels were enforcing a full closure of the East River as world leaders gathered Tuesday at the UN, including local response boats, some of Bayonne’s black-hulled cutters, and the 154-foot fast response cutter William Chadwick down from Boston. Things were quieter on the North River, but the Sandy Hook patrol…
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A helping hand from security forces
Security gets tight in New York City ahead of UN Week in September. While most of the action is on the East Side and on the East River, the North River also gets its share of attention. On Friday afternoon, a pair of Coast Guard grey hulled RHIB type boats and 33-foot grey Coast Guard…
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Salute
The 9/11 memorial events were underway downtown as Coast Guard icebreaker Penobscot Bay came up the North River as far as Pier 99 with her fire monitors running, passing the Lincoln Tunnel vents and a Donjon Marine crew working on seasonal dredging at the cruise terminal. In addition to providing a visual salute, Cutter 107…
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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…
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Have that removed
Coast Guard Cutter Katherine Walker, the Keeper of NY Harbor, came down the North River Thursday, returning to her Bayonne base with Hudson River lighted buoys 3, 11, and 13 on deck. A Coast Guard notice says the three buoys, one of which normally marks the west side of the main channel off Riverdale and…
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The fleet is back, but no flat top
The Fleet Week parade of ships was a somewhat more subdued affair this year relative to the recent past, perhaps a reflection of a navy that has been very busy offshore. There was no flattop LHD this year, but we did get Amphibious Transport Dock USS New York and Landing Ship Dock USS Oak Hill.…
North River Notes 