Anthem of the Seas Returns to Port

After battling a storm in the Atlantic, Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas arrived back at Cape Liberty Cruise Terminal at about 8:30pm this evening.

Royal Caribbean reports that of more than 6,000 people on board, there were only four minor injuries.

Passengers were cheering on their balconies as the cruise ship docked.

As for visual damage to the vessel -- it seems one of the antenna domes is missing.

And one lifeboat's doors are boarded up with plywood.

Royal Caribbean states that most of the superficial damage has already been repaired, and Anthem will sail again on her next scheduled voyage, departing in three days.

ACL's Atlantic Star Arrives U.S.

The 'Atlantic Star' is the worlds largest Roll-On Roll-Off (RORO)/Container ship.

On January 9th, she arrived the U.S. on her inaugural voyage sailing under the Verrazano Bridge into New York Harbor.

Built in China in 2015, this is the first of five G4 ships commissioned by Atlantic Container Line (ACL).

With an overall length of 971 feet, she's rated at 3,800TEU + 28,900 sqm RORO + 1,300 vehicles with a crew of 16.

She will move cargo between Europe and North America with port calls in Hamburg, Goteburg, Antwerp, Liverpool, Halifax, New York, Baltimore and Norfolk.

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After clearing the Bayonne Bridge she docked next to ACL's G3 'Atlantic Concert' in Port Newark.

Autumn kiteing in Atlantic Highlands

The beach at Sandy Hook Bay Catamaran Club is lined with kites and spectators, as the 2015 Foil Race & WOO Big Air Contest is happening this weekend.

Green Hat Kiteboarding put on the event calling all kiteboarders and foilboard riders from the tristate area to get together, and compete. While the foil race course was set up in deeper water about a half mile from shore, the WOO Big Air competition could be watched right off the beach. How high do they jump? On Saturday Denis Televnyy took 1st Place at 33.3 feet. Rudy Willemson claimed 2nd at 31.4 feet with 5.3 seconds airtime, closely followed by John Keenan who matched the height but landed 0.2 seconds sooner.

All height and airtime data are recorded by WOO clip-on sensors, attached to each board.

New York Media Boat stopped by for some photos:



New FDNY fireboat: WILLIAM M. FEEHAN

A massive water salute erupted in New York Harbor, as the newest FDNY fireboat arrived just after 3pm today. She is named after Firefighter William M. Feehan who died in the 9/11 attacks. The name plates with red letters crafted from I-beam steel collected at ground zero are displayed on each side of the wheelhouse. 

Her 66-foot aluminum hull houses three C-18 Caterpillar engines for propulsion, delivering 1150HP each. Another 450HP Caterpillar C-9 engine drives the water pumps, and for additional pumping power, one of the main C-18 engines can be assigned to the main water canon. She delivers up to 7,000 gallons of seawater per minute and foam and purple-K additives are also on board if needed.

Her crew of five firemen consists of a pilot, an engineer, an officer and two deckhands -- safely housed inside the positive-pressure CBRNE (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosives) filtration system equipped bridge.

The $4.7-million medium-sized fast-response boat built by MetalCraft Marine in Kingston, Canada will be stationed at MARINE 6 in the East River, at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.


Tugboat Glamour Shots at the Great North River Race

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would call a tugboat beautiful.

In a harbor full of tall-masted schooners on sunset cruises, custom-built sailboats, and sleek mega-yachts, tugboats are almost invisible, blending into the black and gunmetal gray backgrounds of industrial ports or the barges they tow. The tires that ring their hulls as fenders are reminiscent of mucky Hudson tidal flats where these rubbery doughnuts often come to rest. And it seems a wonder that any vessel with its bow seemingly cut off — like push-boat tugs — can even move water at all.

But when you finally get up close to these workhorses of the harbor, it’s easy to gain an appreciation for their individuality.

Maybe that’s easier when you’re observing them with Will Van Dorp, who runs the blog tugster (see the New York Times profile here) and knows most of the tugboats in the Great North River Tugboat Race by name.

“There’s Patricia,” he says, pointing to a light-gray, three-deck push-boat at the far end of a crowded field of some 20 tugs. Van Dorp has blogged about Patricia before. The first time was when he saw her out the window of a MetroNorth train and recognized her as a new kid on the block.

Almost all of the race entrants have been tagged on tugster at some point, usually observed from one of Van Dorp’s key vistas like the north end of Staten Island, where tugs thread huge barges through the Kill Van Kull.

As we weave through the race field for photos, I start to understand the appeal of tug-spotting.

The Robert E. McAllister is a big red fire engine with its high bow and long tail. The Eric R. Thornton is a hunter-green rain boot. Buchanan 12 is a three-tiered white layer cake with blue and red icing.

The tugs are also windows into how industrial the Port of New York still is. They move barges carrying gravel, salt, crude oil, grain, metals, and dozens of other commodities. Many of them bear the names of companies that started in New York Harbor in the late 19th century — Moran and McAllister, for instance — that in some cases still employ several generations of family members.

Horns blast to signal the race start, and the tugs nose up to the invisible line jutting west off of Pier I. When the countdown ends, they rev into gear and push south with the tide down the river. They throw a foamy white bow wake that completes the workhorse analogy, giving them the wispy white hooves of clydesdales.

Van Dorp is shooting away, and the tugs are flexing for the camera. Some of them look as if they’ve just downed a can of spinach (yes, there was a spinach-eating contest on the pier as part of the festivities) and their rippling muscles are going to send bolts and steel panels flying into the water.

In the tugster post that immediately follows the race, each boat that makes it into a photo is named and tagged, so its participation is on its permanent tugster record. Van Dorp hasn’t expressly called any of the tugs beautiful today — but then again, he doesn’t have to. A blog brimming with tugboat glamour shots says it all.

America's Got Talent

“A James Bond style boat chase in New York Harbor” is what an America’s Got Talent producer wanted to film as a way to introduce one of their contestants. Damone Rippy from Texas was to compete with his flyboard in front of judges Heidi Klum, Mel B, Howard Stern, and Howie Mandel.

We set up three boats for the TV show — A ‘good guy’ boat for Damone and a bunch of bikini-clad girls, a ‘bad guy’ boat for the villain chasing them, and a camera boat for the crew.

The three-hour shoot was edited into a 10-second high-action intro.

Check out Captain Ken ducking out of the shot while operating the throttle, Damone and the girls rehearsing scenes at the dock, and the cameraman framing up a shot:

Harbor School drills Man Over Board

Students of the New York Harbor School performed MOB, Fire, and Abandon-Ship drills as part of their Safety at Sea class. The USCG Aids to Navigation Team joint in the evolutions and practiced medical evacuations between vessels. Handheld flares and floating smoke signals were deployed in the ‘Bayridge Flats’, as part of the exercise.

Trans-atlantic row: Ocean Valour 2015

The crowd cheered as Tom Rainey and Lawrence Walter walked  down the ramp and onto the dock at North Cove Marina in downtown Manhattan. They started their 3,800 mile row across the North Atlantic  at 10:30 ET this morning (May 3rd), course set for the United Kingdom. They are attempting to break the 119 year old record set by Norwegians in 1896 who completed the journey in 55 days and 13 hours.

Rainey is rowing in honor of his father who died from a brain tumor. He wants to raise awareness and $370,000 for the Brain Tumor Charity and the Brain Tumor Society.

His mother blessed their 23-foot custom row boat ‘Yves’ by pouring a bottle of champagne over the bow.

Sixty crews have attempted this route since, yet only twenty-three have reached the shores on the other side of the Atlantic.
You can follow their progress at www.oceanvalour.co.uk

New York Media Boat escorted the team from Battery Park to The Narrows and we wish them a safe passage and great adventure!

Bomb Threat at Statue of Liberty

Visitors were evacuated shortly after 11am due to security concerns on Liberty Island. Statue Cruises sent their ships to move people off the island, as NYPD and U.S. Coast Guard vessels arrived and established a 1000-foot security zone around the island. The FDNY and other local fire departments staged their boats as well and the NYPD Bomb Squad was ferried to the Statue to investigate.

According to the National Park Service, a 911 caller had threatened to blow up the statue and K9 units detected an area of interest by the lockers said NYPD. A sweep of the island turned up negative and visitors will be able to return to the island on Saturday. The last time Liberty Island was closed to the public was after Hurricane Sandy caused major damage.

Swain swims Gowanus

Environmental activist Christoper Swain raised some major awareness this Earth Day by swimming in the toxic waters of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. He calls for an accelerated cleanup of the waterway, currently labeled a superfund site. Hundreds of people came out to see this stunt and anxiously awaited Swain, who is thought to be the first person in history to swim the entire length of the canal. Despite health officials’ recommendations and EPA advisories against coming into contact with the canal water, Swain donned his high-visibility drysuit, boots, gloves, and goggles and jumped in. The NYPD SCUBA Team was on standby, escorting him as he swam down the canal, under bridges lined with camera crews, photographers, and supporters cheering him on. He planned to swim the entire length of the canal, but approaching thunderstorms forced him to climb out early. He still made it some 8,000 feet and gave a press conference, dripping wet, in a Whole Foods parking lot.

Surveying the Five Gyres

Swirls of microplastics are undulating through five major ocean gyres — and the ‘Race For Water‘ plans to sail its MOD70 through each one of these.

These aren’t huge islands of trash. You don’t see bottles, fishing nets, and six-pack rings all bunched up and going for a ride around the Pacific. There’s not a big patch that turns up on satellite images, and you’re not likely to run into a lone mound of discarded tupperware on your Atlantic crossing, according to NOAA.

But there certainly are clumps of microplastics — tiny particles that are the breakdown product, through UV light and other environmental processes, of larger plastics — that get caught up in the inner circle of major ocean currents.

“Regardless of the exact size, mass, and location of these areas of concentration, man-made litter and debris do not belong in our oceans or waterways,” according to NOAA.

Race for Water says it will attempt to survey the island beaches caught up in the middle of these bands of pollution. These islands include Bermuda, Easter Island, Hawaii, and Tristan de Cunha — along with other remote islands that aren’t caught up in the trash-laden currents.

Drones are the main means of data collection. The images of island beaches they yield will be handed over to researchers at Duke University and Oregon State University for analysis.

There should also be plenty of observational data, too, as the six-member crew — all of them sailors, not scientists — will sail the 70-foot trimaran through the five major gyres on a year-long journey from Bordeaux and back.

Here are some photos of their New York stopover. The vessel is currently docked at Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City.

Brooklyn Blaze

The FDNY battled the 7-Alarm warehouse fire in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn from land and water. Engines and ladder trucks made little progress with their 1,000-gallons-per-minute nozzles…

… as strong west winds gusting over 30 knots kept fueling the inferno.
FDNY Marine Units responded to attack the fire from the East River.

The 65-foot fireboat ‘Bravest’ and the 140-foot ‘Fire Fighter II’ stationed upwind.

‘Fire Fighter II’ pumps 18,000 gallons-per-minute from her bow monitor, blasting the west-side of the building…

…successfully knocking down the exterior wall and fire behind it.

The warehouse is said to contain paper records from courts and hospitals, stacked in boxes from floor to ceiling. Twitter posts tagged #williamsburgfire showed embers being picked up as far as 2.5 miles downwind.
As firefighters keep dousing the building, the structure is expected to smolder for at least another couple of days.

New York Media Boat was on-scene for most of the day capturing images and video of the blaze.

Harbor School adds Simulator

On Wednesday the New York Harbor School christened its new Bridge Simulator at the MAST Center on Governors Island.

Students now have the opportunity to hone their ship handling and navigation skills in the same high-tech virtual environment used by many professionals. The main TRANSAS bridge simulator system is set up in a separate room where five large flat-screen monitors line the walls providing a 160-degree view of the scenario. Four additional smaller stations are set up in an adjacent room, also complete with navigation charts, engine and rudder controls, and radar screens. All five stations are networked allowing, for example, a tanker, tugs and law enforcement vessels to simultaneously function within the same scenario.

Of course I had to try this out first-hand and selected a Coast Guard small boat, as it has similar handling parameters as the boats we operate here at New York Media Boat. Running north at 30 knots from Saint George towards lower Manhattan, the harbor looked strikingly familiar. The buoys, barges and skyline all appeared in perfect detail. I threw some hard turns for good measure and the boat reacted as expected. At times I forgot that I was standing on solid ground and even started feeling a bit nauseous, as we dialed the conditions up and encountered heavy seas heading for Buttermilk Channel.

What an excellent teaching tool to add to the already impressive curriculum Captain Aaron Singh and his team have put together for their students.

The $300,000 system was donated by the American Bureau of Shipping.

Quantum of the Seas

At 11 times the size of a full-grown blue whale, Royal Caribbean’s ‘Quantum of the Seas‘ sailed into New York Harbor for the first time this morning, completing her maiden trans-Atlantic voyage.

Once past the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, the ‘North Star‘ glass capsule was raised on her top deck, providing passengers with a 360-degree view extending to the same height as the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

Complete with robotic bartenders, bumper cars, a FlowRider surf and RipCord iFlyskydiving simulator, she also features 375 interior staterooms with virtual balconies, projecting real-time views of the ocean. Wifi and RFID luggage tags allow guests to track their bags right from a smartphone.

At 1,141 feet long, ‘Quantum of the Seas’ is now the largest cruise-ship on the Hudson River, a status previously held by Norwegian Cruise Line’s 1,068-foot ‘Norwegian Breakaway‘.

Her homeport is the Cape Liberty Cruise Port in Bayonne, New Jersey and she’ll be christened there later this week.

Expanding the Fleet

If anyone embodies the spirit of adventure, it’s Roald Amundsen. The Norwegian explorer was the first person to reach both the South and North Poles, and he made the first transit of the Northwest Passage.

That’s why we’ve named the latest addition to the New York Media Boat fleet in his honor. We’re happy to welcome the 7-meter NAVY RIB Amundsen to the family!

Two great captains, Ken Cholak and Eric Rosen, will be at the helm for many of Amundsen’s New York City adventures. It may not be the uncharted Arctic or Antarctic (though last winter’s iced-over Hudson was feeling quite polar), but we hope everyone who comes aboard experiences the thrill of discovery in their own way.

Rider of the Storm

As the Nor’easter stalled offshore, slamming the Tri-State area with rain and 30+ knots of wind, Dariusz Garko launched his kite.

He’d been waiting for these conditions to kiteboard straight through New York Harbor and under the Verrazano Bridge on a course set for Coney Island — an unprecedented session.

Garko, a professional high-performance athlete, became a ‘Nobile Kiteboarding Ambassador‘ earlier this year. He launches right from his backyard, which slopes into New York Harbor.

For this downwind run, Garko chose a 2015 T5 7.5-meter kite and grabbed his NHP 134-cm board.

Staying clear of barges, ferries, and cargo ships, he shredded past the Statue of Liberty, skipping over the choppy Hudson at a solid 20 knots, occasionally throwing some huge aerial maneuvers for tug boat captains and commuters riding the Staten Island Ferry to enjoy.

We decided to chase him with New York Media Boat to document some of the action, and put our new OUTEX camera housings to the test.

Bill Clinton: Props for Pearls

Former President Bill Clinton visited the New York Harbor School on Governors Island to get a closer look at the school’s oyster hatchery.

Each year the Billion Oyster Project grows over 10 million bivalves in the brackish waters around Manhattan, teaching students to collect scientific data, hands-on restoration, and stewardship. The project was founded by the New York Harbor School and is a Clinton Global Initiative commitment to action.

Clinton was greeted by the students and Captain Aaron Singh while boarding the school’s ‘Privateer’ vessel docked at Pier25 in Tribeca.

The NYPD Harbor Unit provided security as the ‘Privateer’ ferried the 42nd President of the United States past One World Trade Center and around The Battery to Governors Island.

Great North River Race

The tugs raced and pushed on the Hudson, and the crews had spinach eating, tattoo and line throwing contests.
Besides the regular harbor tugs, the ship that brought the biggest guns to the show was the US ARMY LT-803 Major General Anthony Wayne.

She took second in the race, but sure dominated the nose-to-nose pushing competition with her twin 11-foot diameter screws.

The Chief Warrant Officer closely monitored gauges in the engine room…

… as the skipper accepted our nose-to-nose challenge.

For additional write-ups of this event — and cool stuff in general — check these awesome blogs!
– Tugster 1 & Tugster 2
– WindAgainstCurrent

Rescue at South Street Seaport

On our 2pm Adventure Sightseeing Tour we were just off South Street Seaport when we spotted three people in the water near Pier 15. Although we had passengers on board, we felt compelled to assist. When we arrived, two men were in the water trying to keep an unconscious victim afloat. Apparently, he had been handling lines for a large vessel when a line snapped, knocking him into the water.

We threw a life-ring and float-line to the guys struggling to keep the victim’s face above the water, pulled them alongside our boat, and hailed the NYPD boat stationed below the Brooklyn Bridge. Other bystanders threw life-rings and lifejackets in the water to place beneath the victim.

The NYPD Scuba Unit arrived within moments and immediately deployed rescue swimmers, who pulled the victim onto New York Media Boat to assess injuries and administer oxygen. EMS and FDNY brought a backboard, stokes basket and stretcher and helped transfer him ashore and into a waiting ambulance. The whole response happened very quickly and was handled adeptly, with the victim ending up at Bellevue Hospital. He’s reported to be in stable condition.

We’re very thankful to our passengers for their patience while we assisted in this emergency, and as always impressed by the NYPD’s response and professionalism. They’re on the scene within minutes, even in the wee hours of the coldest days of the year — like this past New Year’s Eve, when a young guy drove his car into the chilly waters of the Morris Canal, or when a tugboat sank off the Long Island coast.