Posts Tagged ‘Tugboat’
dreaming friend
Tugboat, baby, tugboat.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Recent endeavor found me riding north, and home to Astoria, on the NYC Ferry. The commuter boat passed by the Ruth M. Reinauer tug as it transited southwards beneath the Manhattan Bridge and down the East River. Ruth M. Reinauer is a relatively new tugboat by NY Harbor standards, where it’s not uncommon to spot tugs which have been in service since the Vietnam War, having been launched in 2009.
Rated at 4,720 horsepower, the Ruth M. is the first of a new class of Tug for Reinauer. Check out this page at tugboatinformation.com for all of her technical specs and so on.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Ruth M. Reinauer was towing an articulated fuel barge, which was fairly empty (an assumption based on how high it was riding in the water). As is often mentioned, whether a tug is pulling, pushing, or has barges riding “on the hip” it’s called “towing.”
That barge that the Ruth M. is towing was also built pretty recently, 2008 in fact, and it’s called the RTC 102. RTC 102 is a smidge over 413 feet long, has a capacity of 100,000 gross tons of liquid cargo, and weighs some 6,545 gross tons when unloaded.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Given the general heading which the Ruth M. Reinauer was on, and were I a betting narrator, I’d say that it was heading to the Kill Van Kull between Staten Island and Bayonne, New Jersey for a fill up. Might be going further afield, as Port Elizabeth Newark and the Arthur Kill are found beyond the KVK.
Petroleum enters NYC – mostly – by either pipeline, ship, or barge. The latter methodology involves towing fuel barges like the RTC 102 to a shoreline tank farm somewhere along the coast. The fuel is pumped from barge to shore whereupon it’s loaded into trucks for delivery to gas stations, or other end customers (heating oil etc.). That single barge is the equivalent of thirty eight heavy trucks which would otherwise need to cross through the City using arterial and local streets.
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Come on a tour!
With Atlas Obscura – Infrastructure Creek AT NIGHT! My favorite walking tour to conduct, and in a group limited to just twelve people! October 15th, 7-9 p.m.
Click here for more information and tickets!
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
calmed himself
What if every day was your day of Atonement?
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Sorry for being late today, my efforts of the last few weeks have caught up with me in terms of fatigue, and truth be told I’ve been up late the last couple of days binge watching the “Apocalypse” season of American Horror Story. Today is Yom Kippur, which means that my blogging will send me to hell, but I’ll just add that to my list of things to atone for at some future date.
That’s the DonJon tug Sarah Ann, having just left the Newtown Creek and towing a couple of barges of recyclable metals. The building with the four smokestacks in the background is the one you saw explode during Hurricane Sandy, and it’s a ConEd substation that steps down the high current electricity entering the City to the more usable frequencies delivered to homes and businesses here in the Shining City.
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Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
quintessential loathsomeness
Got to remember to click all the clickie things.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Last week, I headed over to the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant Nature Walk in Greenpoint to play around with the camera a bit. It’s a fairly controlled environment, the Nature Walk, and my desire was simply to set up the tripod and attach a certain filter to my lens in pursuance of doing long exposure daylight shots. The benefit of this particular filter, a ten stop neutral density model which is nearly as opaque as welding glass, is that it cuts the amount of light hitting the lens precipitously and allows you to leave the shutter open for long intervals. Problem with it is that you need to set up the camera in a few highly specific ways, which I normally follow a mental checklist to satisfy. If you miss a single one of those steps on the checklist, bad things happen to your images.
I spent about an hour shooting what I thought would be pretty neato keen images, but later discovered that I had skipped a critical step. Managed to get lucky with the shot above, everything else was tossed. Note to self: Don’t forget to turn off the image stabilizer on the lens when you’ve got the camera on the tripod.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Just as I was breaking down the rig and reinserting my gear into the bag for the walk back home, this tug showed up. I had already stowed the filter and cable release and all the other “chazzerie” but the camera was still up on the tripod. A few quick adjustments brought my settings back into accordance with “normal” shooting. Since these shots were at “normal” shooting speeds measured in fractions of a second, the image stabilizer issue didn’t screw me up.
That’s DonJon Towing’s Emily Ann, maneuvering two bucket barges into Newtown Creek and heading over to their clients at SimsMetal in Long Island City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
What went wrong with the tripod long exposure shots that I had intended to gather was leaving the lens image stabilizer on, as stated. What that means is this: an image stabilizer is a bit of technology which compensates for shaky hands and moving objects that can offer up to a couple of stops of exposure compensation by wiggling the lens elements around. You’ve got one in your phone camera, so it’s not an esoteric thing. Problem is that it doesn’t sense when you’re mounted on a tripod for an exposure of thirty seconds or more, so despite the camera being stock still, the lens elements are still wiggling. This wiggling introduces blur into the image, which screws the proverbial pooch.
Human error, huh? Human, all too human.
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Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
modern delving
I was on a boat yesterday!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Waterfront Alliance hosts an annual conference for shoreline focused people and whereas I couldn’t afford a ticket, my friend who works on the other side of the Newtown Creek Superfund table at ExxonMobil (who purchase a large parcel of tickets for this event) offered to include me on his guest list, so a humble narrator found himself in Manhattan and then on the water yesterday. That’s called disclosure, btw.
The affair is fairly swank, and there is a nice lunch served. For the morning session (there are multiple panels discussing this and that, and this year’s theme revolved around climate change and rising sea levels) the boat is at dock. Shortly after lunch, the boat leaves the dock and heads off into NY Harbor. This year, Kill Van Kull was the destination, which is a waterway that long time readers will remind you that a humble narrator is quite familiar with. Tugboat alley, I call it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The boat, which was the Hornblower Infinity if you’re curious, went all the way back to the junction of Kill Van Kull, Arthur Kill, and Newark Bay nearby Shooters Island on Staten Island’s northern shore.
In the shot above, those transfer cranes on the horizon are the ones at the NY Container Terminal, which is where the whole “containerization” concept now universally adopted for international trade was first unveiled.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On our way back to the pier in Manhattan where we started, a shift change must have happened at McAllister towing, as three of their tugs had just got underway and were leaving their Staten Island dock in formation.
In the distance is the Port Authority’s Bayonne Bridge.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
in argument
It’s not luck or preparation, just good timing with me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Returning to Astoria after a recent sojourn to the fabulous Newtown Creek, one elected to cross the waterway at a point some 1.3 miles from its intersection with the East River. Luckily, that’s where the City of Greater New York maintains that chunk of our collective property which they call the “John J. Byrne memorial bridge” or as it’s known more simply to everybody else – the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge.
As I was nearing the apogee of the span, descending traffic barrier signal arms accompanied by bells and flashing lights provided indication that this double bascule draw bridge was about to open up and allow a maritime passage. What fun!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Gazing through the security fencing, a humble narrator did spy a barge and tug plying the contaminant rich waters of the Newtown Creek. The barge was set up to act as a platform for a crane, by all appearances. Perhaps it was coming from the nearby Kosciuszcko Bridge project, but that’s just idle speculation.
It’s a big old creek, Newtown is, with lots and lots going on all the time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
With the bridge open and the always heavy flow of automotive and truck traffic halted, one took the opportunity to run around on the roadway without the fear of getting squished. You can just see the top of that crane moving alongside the Brooklyn side roadway bascule, above.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The NYC DOT bridge tender was definitely keeping an eye on me, to which I say “fair enough.” Imagine the sight of one such as myself, darting to and fro across the concrete roadway, hooting and hollering in my revel, camera waving about and filthy black raincoat whipping in the breeze.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Then the joy came to an end, as all joy must. A return to the ultra mundane occurred as the bridge returned to its resting state. One set his feet solidly to work and strode defiantly into Blissville, eyes fixed on the north, where Astoria eternally awaits.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
March!
That’s the Long island Expressway there, incidentally, at Borden Avenue and Van Dam. I love this point of view on it.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
Buy a book!
“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.
Events!
Slideshow and book signing, April 23rd, 6-8 p.m.
Join Newtown Creek Alliance at 520 Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn for a slideshow, talk, and book signing and see what the incredible landscape of Newtown Creek looks like when the sun goes down with Mitch Waxman. The event is free, but space is limited. Please RSVP here. Light refreshments served.
The Third Annual, All Day, 100% Toxic, Newtown Creekathon. April 28th.
The Creekathon will start at Hunter’s Point South in LIC, and end at the Kingsland Wildflowers rooftop in Greenpoint. It will swing through the neighborhoods of LIC, Blissville, Maspeth, Ridgewood, East Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Greenpoint, visiting the numerous bridges that traverse the Creek. While we encourage folks to join us for the full adventure, attendees are welcome to join and depart as they wish. A full route map and logistics are forthcoming.This is an all day event. Your guides on this 12+ mile trek will be Mitch Waxman and Will Elkins of the Newtown Creek Alliance, and some of their amazing friends will likely show up along the way.
The Newtown Pentacle 