New York Citys' 6th Borough

For this post I borrow the style of Will Van Dorp. I have enjoyed his blog, http://tugster.wordpress.com for quite some time.

Way back in school grade school, we were all told of the New York boroughs. The teacher: New York City is made up of five boroughs: the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. But that is not the entire story. Far from it. Did you know there is a 6th borough? Yes, there is a 6th borough. It consists of the waterways surrounding those 5 land based boroughs & supports them via marine traffic.

 With the Brooklyn Bridge in the background, daily traffic moves through the borough.

 Tug and barge, the transfer truck of these waters. Who could it be?

 Not that tough guy from television, it's Mister T doing the pulling.

 Coming along, others follow the same route as Mister T.

 Here we have one of the Bouchard tankers being pushed by Morton S. Bouchard Jr.

 Here's a well known vessel in the borough. Pegasus heads down river in fine style.

 These photos were taken while tied up at the Red Hook terminal. See the previous post for the vessel we're aboard. There will be more on our ship in upcoming posts.

  Tied alongside is Mary A. Whalen. Remembering back to the storm named Sandy, a vessel of similar size broke it's moorings and made headlines after washing ashore. Tugster covered that story very well. I'll probably submit this and a number of other photos to the marinetraffic.com site as I have done previously.  

 We're underway, leaving NYC in the fading sunlight.

 Ugale awaits her dock space.

 NS Lotus at anchor. One very large vessel, with a surprise on the other side.

 Fuel for the fuel carrier. That's Pati R. Moran taking honors as the push vessel.

We close as the sun sets beyond the Verrazano Narrows bridge & we leave the 6th borough.  

Next stop: St. Thomas, with a trip over to St. John.

New York City Views From Royal Princess

It's been some time since I made the last blog post, so call me lazy. Photos from our recent repositioning cruise gives me reason to get back into blog mode. In the next few entries, we'll take a different look at NYC, then on to St. Thomas / St. John, Antigua and Aruba and views of the ship.

 Above is the NYC skyline with Governors Island in the foreground.

Here's a slightly different view of the same. That's New Jersey waaay in the background.

 Governors Island in the foreground, Ellis Island in the background.

 The Red Hook Terminal with Brooklyn in the background. Not a lot of shipping commerce happening at the terminal today.

 Big boat or little boat, either is OK with me. Being aboard most any ship makes me happy.

 And just where am I taking all these photos from, you may ask? We're aboard the Royal Princess.

That not so busy Redhook Terminal I mentioned a few photos ago is actually loading human cargo onto Royal Princess.

 Compared to the tiny sailboat, Royal Princess is gargantuan.

 Secured alongside, but not for long. We have places to go.

 A parting view of the Manhattan skyline as the sun slowly sets.

And we close with the sunset on Lady Liberty.

We're not finished with New York just yet. In the next posting I borrow some style points from another blogger in the content arena.