Save the tugboat Urger

Save the tugboat Urger
by Will Van Dorp (Tugster)

. . . illustrating what will be lost if present course is maintained.   If you don’t know what’s likely to happen imminently, Urgeris NOT to be reefed.  But, it’ll be beached at Thruway Lock 13 “living history” exit, with holes “punched” in the hull and that beaching will cost –I’m told–over $3 million.

Why should you care?

First,  listen to this engine, as I recorded it four years ago on a calm day above Amsterdam NY.  Click the thumbnail below left for the sound from inside the engine room and . . . right, from outside.  It’s like the steady panting of a racing horse.  Click here for a list of remaining Atlas-Imperial engines, although I don’t know how out-of-date this info may be.

  

Here’s that same engine as seen from below, starboard looking aft, and

here, the camera is looking aft along the port side.

Here’s the view port side looking down.

For whatever value it has, Urger is

one of about two dozen NY vessels on the National Register of Historic Places, has been on that list since November 29, 2001.    Click here for what that means in terms of significantly changing the historic floating structure.

Urger was built by Johnston Brothers Shipyard in Ferrysburg, Michigan, in 1901, originally as H. J. Dornbos, a fish tug.  My point . . . if she’s been around this long and is in this good shape, that’s prime reason to keep her that way.

Urger faced significant change before, back in the late 1980s, ending Canal maintenance duty in October 1987.  Then, Schuyler Meyer (1918–1997) stepped forward with a proposal to save her by making her the “ambassador vessel” of the NYS Canals that she did become.  During those ambassador years, scores of thousands of folks–especially school kids–saw her, walked on her, learned from her about NYS.  Read the whole article below if you have time, but signifiant info is concentrated in the rightmost column.   Look at the image he’s holding in the photo.

Urger is a flagship of NYS history, having made public appearances all over the confluent waterways of the state from Lockport (I don’t have photos of her in Buffalo) to

the famous culvert east of Medina to

Oswego, shown here at Lock O-8 with tug Syracuse to

the Upper Bay of New York City, and all the great little towns in between.   I lack the photos myself, but I know she’s been to the southernmost point of the Finger Lakes and upper reaches of Lake Champlain from this video clip.

So what can be done . . .  especially since, given the imminence of converting Urger to a “static display,” time is so short?

First, share this post with anyone you know who might care about Urger.  Seek out your loud, articulate, reasonable, and well-known advocates who know [connected] people and can speak out in the meetings, press, and blogs.  It’s summer, so key political and agency leaders might not be reading their mail, forwarding it to folks with less decision-making power.  Congressman Paul Tonko would like to hear from you. State legislators might be contacted in their home districts, where you can even walk into their local offices.   Talk to your local mayors, business leaders, and union officials.  I was born upstate but haven’t lived there since the 1960s.

North River 2 - Spring 2018

Blackwatch - 80th Anniversary Newport Bermuda Race

Designed for the Newport Bermuda Race - Scuttlebutt Sailing News

The Blackwatch logo is a creative symbol that represents a celebration of the 80th Bermuda Race anniversary for the Sparkman & Stephens yawl Black Watch and a nod to the boat’s original owner, Rudy Schaefer, member of the Brooklyn-based Schaefer brewing family. This week, the symbol will is emblazoned on crew shirts and commemorative stickers, and flies on a battle flag set on the 68-footer’s forestay.

As one of the oldest, yet still competitive boats in the race—she won her class in 2012—Black Watch hasn’t slowed down, and her syndicate of five owners are hoping that the steady, reaching breeze forecast will prove once again that this beautiful, heavy displacement boat is meant for this race. This is her 11th Bermuda Race.

“It’s hard to think about a better boat to do the race,” says John Melvin, a member of the ownership syndicate, who was a guest aboard Black Watch when the team won in 2012. “Her whole reason for being is to do this race. She’s such a sweet boat to sail with her heavy displacement and level of comfort. You can push a little more, and she’s always going to be a little different than the other boats.”

Few boats were designed specifically to win this race, and that was the design brief Schaefer gave to Sparkman & Stephens in December of 1937. By May of ’38, for a sum of $40,000, the Henry B. Nevins yard in City Island, New York, completed and launched her as Edlu II. That summer, she finished second in class to another big S&S yawl, Baruna.

John Melvin, a member of the ownership syndicate says that food is taken seriously:

Melvin says that food is a serious affair on Black Watch. Though the powerful hull is truly a racing boat, meals are actually what one would expected of a boat that has perfectly varnished mahogany combings and polished bronze winches. The Bermuda Race menu is the same each year: first night, filet mignon with cream spinach, then shrimp scampi, chicken marsala over rice pilaf with a prune and olive sauce, and chicken tetrazzini towards the end of the race.

“All served in dog bowls,” he adds, “just like most boats.”

June Days 六月的日子

前院

这张照片里能看见Marilyn站在前院

Marilyn 站在丁香花前面

这是Marilyn 的药草花园 

这张照片里能看见我的太太站在我的小船前面

这是今年河里的第一艘船

房子前面的杜鹃花开了

丁香花开了

房子后有草地
Marilyn 跟我们的狗詹姆斯站在一切

这张照片里能看见低潮时的“后河”

夕阳

夕阳时的房子

清晨阳光里的森林

从城市到北方

552 nm 24 hour record broken by Team Brunel - Volvo Ocean Race

The Dutch learned the need for speed early.  They lost out to the Brits in America and had to get past India to Indonesia.  Remember the Dutch East india Company?

Well they are at it again.  Team Brunel leads halfway across the Atlantic now - setting a 24 hour speed record of 552 nm with hours left to go.  But the number 3 boat is only 20 miles behind.

Go to the Team Brunel website for details and video.

Vim - a City Island -built 12 meter

VIM, a 12 meter, was designed by the great Olin J. Stephens, and  was built at the legendary yard of Henry B. Nevins on City Island Avenue.  She was built in 1939 for railroad magnate and three time America's Cup defender Harold S. Vanderbilt who owned her until 1951.  For the next twelve years she was owned by John Matthews - of Oyster Bay and the Matthews Stevedoring Company - for whom my grandfather Conk worked on the Brooklyn waterfront.  She was maintained by my grandfather's friend Sven Pedersen.  The Brooklyn waterfront of those days is remembered for Marlon Brando's On the Waterfront.  More recently Fordham historian James Fisher wrote on the Irish Waterfront - a biography of the priest on whom the Karl Malden character was based.  But I digress.

Vim was a close second to the newly built for Columbia in the 1957 America's Cup trials.  She was skippered by the owner's son Donald Matthews and co-helmsman Bus Mosbacher who later navigated Columbia the victorious defender.  A friend of John F. Kennedy, Mosbacher was named White House chief of protocol.

The boat's homeport is now Lavagna on the Italian riviera.
She is remembered on City Island by her namesake sandwich at the City Island Diner, and at the City Island Nautical Museum.

Hudson River Maritime Museum - Kingston

The boys liked the bells best. Nina thought everything was fun.