9/11 on Pier 9B

It’s funny how life works sometimes. 7 years ago, two planes flew into the WorldTradeCenter, and 7 years ago I snuck into the Red Hook containerport to make photos of the burning buildings. 7 years later, I’m living on a retired oil tanker on the same pier from which I made a widely-published photo of the disaster (and Homeland Security funds have since built a new port fence that makes such sneaking-in impossible.)

I’ve been interviewed and awarded aplenty for my photojournalism work at ground zero; but up until now, I have refrained from writing anything about 9/11. What I’d like to do here is acknowledge the work of others who I think deserve appreciation.

First, starting with the personal: Many thanks and much credit should go to Debby Romano. She’d only steered a boat one time before 9/11. That was a few days before 9/11, when I was shooting Robert Buchet bagpiping on the tug Amy Moran at dawn for a long term National Geographic project. I told Debby to hold a course right off the tug’s beam and just outside the barge wake. She did it, and that ain’t easy in a 26’ runabout. I told her she was a natural.

When 9/11 happened, I called her boss Greg O’Connell, baron of Red Hook, and asked if Debby could get off work to join me on my boat going to the WorldTradeCenter. The BrooklynBridge was already closed, I had tried to bike over it after sneaking into the port. He said yes. Debby and I watched the 2nd tower go down from the water, and we got involved in getting one cop from shore to the Sandy Hook Pilots boat just off the Battery.

As I left her in North Cove and handed her my bag of exposed film in case I didn’t get out, I told her “When you dock, remember that boats keep moving after you decelerate more than cars do. Take that into account and also the wind; and so long as you approach the dock very slowly, you can’t damage anything, and good luck.”

With only that for experience and instructions, she got the boat home. She reported that, on the way to Red Hook, she passed a slew of tugboats steaming out of the Kill Van Kill -- some 20 of them roaring towards ground zero. More on them later.

I shot for several hours at ground zero, and went to go as I felt bad vibes (building 7 collapsed shortly thereafter). I spotted the tug Nancy Moran on the seawall and her engineer Gina Sikes, who I knew. Gina has since passed away, but still I’d like to thank Gina and that crew for their assistance in getting me out and for being friendly faces on a dark day.

I reached L&I Color lab in the photo district and had the weird good luck to have Kathy Ryan, photo editor of the New York Times Magazine, walk in as soon as my developed slides hit the light table. I needed the bag of unexposed film, the bag I’d left with Debby, and I’d like to thank Richard Dennis and other Red Hook friends who tried to get to Manhattan in my powerboat. The Coast Guard turned them back, so they gave the film to Joe Martin, a Red Hook townie who has since been pushed out of here by gentrification; and he biked over one of the bridges - after attempting several - to deliver the film.

As to the bigger picture, I’d like to acknowledge the tremendous role of the marine industry in 9/11. Their contribution on that day, and for the weeks and months thereafter, has not been duly registered, analyzed nor appreciated.

When Debby and I approached the Battery, thousands of citizens were crammed along the seawall. As I left ground zero on the tug Nancy Moran only 2 or 3 hours later, there were none; all evacuated by boat in what was a spontaneous, civilian-initiated operation. It began before the Coast Guard asked for it. Tugs, ferries, excursion boats, pilot boats, police and park police boats, historic vessels, dinner boats -- all sectors of the marine industry on all sorts and sizes of craft showed up and got people moving.

They sorted themselves out by size, the shallow draft vessels took people to locations with shallow waters. Boat crew sprayed bedsheets with destination signs; they got out torches and cut the (stupidly) designed fences of Battery Park City that had no removal sections nor cleats or bollards for boats to tie to.

Bedsheet destination on the front of this tug

Tugs and then barges brought fuel for fire trucks and generators, and fresh water. Boats brought food from the Jersey shore. I remember standing knee deep in rubble and water on West Street and Liberty within an hour of the second tower collapse, shortly after a firefighter shared their grim estimate “we’ve lost 340 men,” to see a college kid coming out of North Cove pushing a shopping cart with snack bars, Gatorade and water. Hats off to the boats that brought that all over.

Right after these firefighters learned how many had been killed

As the “rescue” period with its hope of survivors eroded into the “recovery” period with its goal of finding body parts, the marine industry soldiered on removing the rubble. Floating cranes unloaded trucks and loaded barges. Tugs took the loaded barges away. The larger steel pieces left from Pier 11 on the East River. The smaller stuff, which was really none too small, left from Pier 25 in Tribeca.

Mike Mazzei, videographer and diver who day-jobbed as a dockbuilder, put up a series of banners at Pier 25 documenting the tonnage and number of barge loads they removed. He shot the job and made a video.

M ike mazzei paid for this banner himself since the media and officials were not giving the marine bargeport any credit for their work

Still, most of the media drove past the pier to do stories from the pile, then the pit, from firehouses, from city hall, stories about steelworkers, medics, cops, shrinks, priests and even photographers. Much of that media continues to chime that the working waterfront is dead. (A special Broken Record Award goes to the New York Times for reiterating that old chestnut.) Is the working waterfront dead, or is the media just blind?

Other media ignored the significant maritime story even when they had it. National Geographic considered running my tugboat project, with it’s unpublished content about the 9/11 marine evacuation, on the first anniversary of the attacks.The Director of Photography decided not to “since we have two other water stories in the same issue.” So, rather than doing a water-themed issue, they put meerkats on the cover — I got many an angry call from tugboat captains on that one.They never published the tug work and held on to it so long it was un-publishable anywhere else. My apologies, fellas; but you can see why I left the media biz.

But back to ground zero: When the politicians got around to concocting a ceremony for the last piece of steel removed, they didn’t include a tug or barge in the choreography. They put a huge beam on a truck and slowly rolled it out of Manhattan.The Pier 25 rubble removal crew watched as the departure ceremony started north of them.

last column ceremony on 5/30/02. This column is now exhibited in the 9/11 museum at ground zero

Why is this all important?

Everyone should get their due.

We should understand what really happened.

We should be prepared for the next one.

We should understand where we live (an archipelago) and build to suit.

There’s been a whole lot of waterfront revitalization going on, leading to a rash of newfangled piers without cleats, piers too weak to dock a tug and barge, piers designed for pedestrians-only, silly piers whose planners want them designated “water dependant.”

We shouldn’t be doing that.

Not only because of disaster preparedness, but because the seam between water and land should be a porous membrane with people and things coming and going across it.Not only would that make the most useful (or what 2008 plannerspeak calls “green and sustainable”) waterfront, it would also make the most interesting and fun one.

And with that, I leave you all to your prayers and memories and your own rituals of thanks and acknowledgment. 9/11 was a public episode, but many of us have private ways of handling it. Today, this happened to be mine.

More on the maritime role in 9/11:

List of Boats involved in Manhattan evacuation on 9/11

Book “All Available Boats”

Interviews associated with South Street Seaport exhibit on the topic

Video Merchant Marine heroes of 9/11 by MARAD (US Maritime Administration)

Interviews with local tug crews on www.carolinasalguero.com see section “Maritime 9/11” under section WTC. Slow to load – it’s an old Flash site. (This site is temporarily down and version from Archive.org is here.)

MagRack3 video profile of Carolina Salguero. 2001 On the morning of September 11, 2001

Update: in 2011, I curated PortSide NewYork’s exhibit the Mariners’ Response to 9/11.

Paradise in 60 amps

________________________________________
From: Erica Reynolds
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2008 8:31 AM
To: Carolina Salguero
Subject: The boat trip

Hi, I hope the trip went well. I had to work yesterday so I couldn't make it. Any good news from the trip? Today I am looking at a painting job that I hope to start today. I will let you know what my schedule is like for this week. How's the view? and Lulu?

Dear Erica:

Sorry you missed it. The move was astounding. Our best yet. What joy aboard.

We had about 50 passengers, volunteers, bloggers, Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer who said "this is my paycheck," David Bianiciardi who did all the powerpoints and AV hook ups for us. Anthony Mancebo the AV fellow at the book reading sadly couldnt make it. The amazing caterer gals from Bar Tini and Roquette Catering, some kids, septegenarians, Hans Hansen, the son of the engineer Hans Hansen who worked with Karen's father Alf Dyrland. Karen remembers answering the phone to Hans' thick Norwegian accent asking for her father, another Norwegian. Hans and Karen had never met before. This ship does bring people together.

We had about 10 band members from the Hungry March Band, a last minute connection to Nydia Velazquez' office of all things. Dan Wiley is, I think, going out with one band member. They were fantastic, made the day. Brass band, the music reminded me of gypsy music from Balkans to Spain, both places I've spent lot of time. I loved them. High energy and as Karen put it, clothes like Pipi Longstocking. There was a gang dancing the wave on the bridge deck. I danced on the main deck. the rain held until 2 hours after everyone left. Channel 12 TV was here, so it's on the record.

The K-Sea tug was great - again. Really nice crew. That company has been so good to us. The boat arrived early, some came aboard to visit. The engineer on the tug was Robert Mowbray. He used to be engineer here. I've been corresponding with him, he has some parts for this engine.

It was a magical day. Everyone was grinning. As we were unloading a guy in coveralls appeared on the pier and said "my father used to work on this boat." I said "I'd love to talk to you but have to deal with the tug." Next time I turned around he was gone. The guys on the tug told me that was Scotty Gellatley. I've tried to reach the other side of his family often, to no avail. The Gellatleys had some massive falling out and one side got the tugs and the other the tankers – I think that's how it goes. I do love the Irish, I'm half myself, but, my god, the feuds.

In any case, he was like some sort of ghost, no idea how he was here nor where he went but it's another case of "everyone worked on the Mary Whalen." Maybe he was over at the Circle Line boats. I'll try and track him down.

Once the cheerful mob left, I sat for an hour the galley with John, Karen and a friend of theirs Richard DuBois (who doubles for Robert DeNiro of all things); He says he'll come scrape paint God bless him.

I let Lulu off once all the guests left. The pier has a large burm of ancient used sandblast grit gone wild with weeds and one small tree. A Lulu Serengeti, as someone said. She began to prowl right away. I'm sure she'll find lots of fun chasing rodents, it's more kitty freundlich than the cement pier over in Red Hook. I do still worry about the hawk. Ernie brought him up right away saying he'll be two years old right away. It feels like he's become some sort of GMD mascot. Murray Fisher of the Harbor School who visited 2 weekends ago claimed to be a bird of prey buff and said red tailed hawks don’t go for cats, but as Ernie put it in his ever to-the-point way "why not?" I'll call Audobon. The hawks aren't here right now. Maybe that will be our new reason for summer home for the Whalen "save Lulu from the Navy Yard hawks."

Loving birds that don’t eat Lulu, I raced to put up birdfeeders before the snow. So far not a one.

In any case, the view is mighty different. We are no longer alone. I can see a building or boat out of every porthole, actually usually lots of both. Moran fuel barges on other side of pier. Circle Line fleet across the water of this berth, tho dunno how many folks are around there. Those are the boats tied up in an acquisitions haggle. When Hornblower won the RFP for the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island ferry run, the Circle Line boats were supposed to be bought for the service. The price has been rising... I'm sure all the lawyers as sending love letters back n forth and here the fleet sits.

Ernie in his trailer is right at the head of the dock. A Coast Guard bought is coming in soon so the men in blue will be all over this place. Handsome nighttime view down the deck of the Williamsburg bridge and Schaefer Landing's curious light show.

I've so wanted to get here to make winter more bearable, I can see we will be sheltered from the worst of the winter winds and we will be basking in sun all day. This will raise the boat temp a good 10 degrees is my guess. Ernie has 400amps in the 220 power!!!!!!! I don’t know what it is in the 110 service yet, but it will be so much better then the trickle over in Red Hook. In short we will be able to run enough space heaters. You should be able to reduce your 4 layers of pants to 2. such progress.

and then WiFi. I see two networks right now without using Kyle's satellite dohickey. I can imagine there will be more networks after President's Day and folks come back to work.

So, as we long dreamed, here it all is, shore power, internet, sun and neighbors. Plus some dirt for Lulu. Paradise, til March 31 and our agreement expires. Then what, god only knows. Lots of calls to make to solve that one.

I can’t decide whether to go to the Russian Baths and soak my tired bones tonight or roast up a big dinner and invite the barge next and Ernie over for dinner. I'm feeling very nesty about this new home.

Heating the shovel so I can wax it and shovel off the deck. Why go to the gym when there's yards of snow to shovel?

613 Tons of Homelessness

This is reposted here thanks to the generosity of Richard Fleming, Red Hook wit extraordinaire, that is when is his wit is not in Rwanda, the Congo, Antartica and all the other challenging remote places he prefers to the purportedly untamed frontier of the Red Hook peninsula.

http://antarcticiana.blogspot.com/2008/02/613-tons-of-homelessness.html

2/20/2008

613 Tons of Homelessness

Some weeks ago I got an email from Carolina Salguero informing me that she was hoping to resurrect her once-excellent but lately dormant blog about efforts to refurbish the Mary Whalen, the 172 foot long rust-bucket of a tanker that she has adopted like a stray kitten. She mentioned that she would momentarily be moving the Mary Whalen from her most recent home in the Red Hook container port, to a new, but also temporary berth in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, that vast pocket of crumbling industry wedged between Williamsburg and Vinegar Hill. "Ooh," I said. "I'd love to come along on that journey."

Weeks passed, and when I did think of Carolina and the Mary Whalen I was forced to conclude that I had been forgotten. I was sure I had literally missed the boat. Then, last week, to the in-box came the message that the much-postponed towing of the Whalen to her new home was to happen on Sunday. What's more, in recognition and thanks for the many countless hours of voluntary toil that friends of the Mary Whalen had put in, scraping up buckets of rust chips, we were all invited to voyage on her decks as she traveled to her new home.

In my case this was a bit of a charade, since the sum total of my work aboard amounted to a couple of hours of painless schlepping, many months ago, on a warm and sunny day at the end of spring. After that morning I managed to let an entire summer and fall season of volunteer days slide by without another visit.

Last Sunday was a chilly one, but we try never to let an opportunity to get out onto the waters of New York harbor go unseized, so, bundled up and fortified with bagels, we trudged down Van Brunt street to the container port.
The tug Nathan Stewart, lashed tight to the Mary Whalen in the container port.

The irrepressible John Weaver prepares to hoist the gangway on deck. In every picture in which Weaver appears he wears this broad, warm grin, perhaps delighting in the fact that, even if only under tug power, the Mary Whalen is once again setting out to sea. In a moment of idle Googling, Weaver and his wife, the daughter of a long-serving captain of the Mary Whalen back in her days of active duty, discovered Carolina and her attempts to save the ship. Since then he has become deeply involved in the project.

Under way at last, lower Manhattan sliding by on the port side.

In a particularly inspired moment, Carolina contracted with a motley crew of musicians known as the Hungry March Band to provide a live soundtrack, as it were, for the move. As the ship prepared to get under way, the musicians got themselves ready to play, strapping on portable drums, lounging on the decks with trombones and firing sample volleys from trumpets. Most had never been on board before, and some had tremendous difficulty finding the ship, hidden away deep inside the vast container port. At the very last moment a Japanese player arrived, rushing up the gangplank just before it was hauled on to the deck and, half out of breath, whipped out his saxophone. Their music sounds like a military band gone to seed, or even to pot, or perhaps an impromptu jam session turned parade, and it lent a glorious aspect of triumph and conquest to our outing. It was cold out on the water, and the music kept our spirits up. I thought of the Russians on the eastern front, and how cheered they might have been to have the Hungry Marchers urging them on. They reminded me, too, of the weirdly joyful clash of instruments I once heard accompanying a funeral procession in rural Haiti, and when I asked one of the band what other sorts of gigs they play besides ship relocations she said "all kinds, really; recently we played a New Orleans style funeral on the Upper East Side."



Raise the Roof! As the wicked winds of winter came whistling in over the waves, many danced to stave off the chill, shaking their groove things to the funky brass band sounds of the Hungry March Band.

I counted at least six video cameras on board filming the historic event, from the palm-sized to the professional. It is starting to feel as though everyone is making a documentary about something. However, despite all the cameras, there were no working soundmen participating in this media frenzy, which may explain why I don't have any gigs at the moment. This dude, from Channel 12, was doing his own sound the hard way. I would have thought having to hold a hand mic for the interview you are filming would seriously limit your ability to choose and hold a nice frame. In the business, this is known as the "one-man band," or "one-man banding it," and we sound brethren frown on this sort of behavior, for obvious reasons. I'm going to complain to my union, if I can get anyone on the phone over there.

Carolina, wearing some sort of Uzbeki yak-herders hat, supervises the docking from her new front yard.

Home, sweet ghetto. The new digs in the Brooklyn Navy Yard seemed a bit on the decrepit side, after the immaculate stacks of containers and tidy blue warehouses of the container port. But it is only temporary. So far, the next stop is unknown, TBD. Do you have a home for the Mary Whalen? An underused two hundred feet of New York City waterfront is all that's needed. All suggestions are welcome. If you see something, say something!

Adieu Red Hook: The Mary Whalen at her new berth in the Navy Yard. I know this picture looks as if it had been taken from on board the tug as it heads back south, the day's work done, but that would only be possible if the Nathan Stewart had kindly offered us a lift back to the neighborhood, which they couldn't have, because their insurance and other policies wouldn't permit it. So, in short, I have no idea how this picture came into existence.

The Ballad of the Mary Whalen

This is reposted here thanks to the generosity of Richard Fleming, Red Hook wit extraordinaire, that is when is his wit is not in Rwanda, the Congo, Antartica and all the other challenging remote places he prefers to the purportedly untamed frontier of the Red Hook peninsula.

http://antarcticiana.blogspot.com/2007/05/ballad-of-mary-whalen.html

5/27/2007

The Ballad of the Mary Whalen

Aaah, is that the Big Apple I spy through my porthole? Delightful

Even before I abandoned rent-controlled Manhattan tenement life five years ago and up and moved to my very own little shack of a frame house in Red Hook, Brooklyn, the latter neighborhood had become a throbbing termite-mound of home renovation, new construction, face-lifting and just all-around progress, as they call it. On the waterfront, the original setting for the play that became the classic Brando vehicle of that name, Red Hook is on the front lines of the epic gentrification still sweeping New York City's neighborhoods, leaving only a few hidden corners of ground too barren for Starbucks. Gracias a Dios we don't have a Starbucks here yet, but the Ecuadorian bagel and caffeinated swill spot where methadone survivors buy their oversweetened coffees has been supplanted by baked, a delightful free-wireless-internet hipster emporium with glowing pine wood walls and puff-pastries filled with goat cheese and herbs, where one manages all too easily to be dinged seven dollars for a designer latte and a muffin.

In there the other morning I ran into my friend Carolina Salguero, one of the first people I met in the neighborhood and herself a gentrification victim who was asked last summer to move on, when her affordable apartment was caught in the rising rental tide. Now she lives in Oyster Bay, Long Island. She still has interests in the neighborhood, however, as the founder of PortSide New York, an NGO which "seeks to breathe life into the relationship between Red Hook’s landside community and the maritime sector—to the advantage of both." Last summer the organization aquired the defunct tanker Mary Whalen, and Carolina spent much of the fall and winter repairing and restoring it. Getting a 172 foot steel ship built back in 1938 into action again makes makes most of the gut renovations of houses around here seem about as daunting as, say, washing a car, and I've been eager to see the beast since she first told me about the project.



Carolina is big on getting people involved, so I wasn't surprised when the second sentence out of her mouth was a request for me to volunteer at "our first volunteer Sunday," an occasion she seemed almost to have invented on the very spur of the moment to take advantage of our bumping into one another. I mumbled something about the non-sustainable flooring I was trying to get laid down in my living room and then counter-attacked with the observation that she hadn't updated her previously fascinating blog about the Mary Whalen renovation since January. She then mumbled something about someone having suggested she really ought to write a book about it, as if that were an excuse. I took that as an implication that she felt that by blogging it she would be cutting the legs out from under some future publishable opus. Had I already drunk my latte I might have been quick enough to observe that nothing would make a better outline for a book than a completed boat-renovation blog, but it was early and I was still a little thin on the ground. You just might see me on Sunday, I said.

In fact I was the first volunteer to arrive, making me that much more certain that the "spring-cleaning" had been invented for my benefit alone. Fresh from my new floor, in sawdust-covered work pants and greasy suede gloves, I waited for Carolina by the guard-house at the entrance to the Red Hook container port; when I told the guard I didn't have photo-i.d. he said "what are you thinking? This is New York City." Nonetheless, if Carolina would vouch for me when she arrived he would let me in. I've been in the container port only twice before, once to film the behind-the-scenes of a big-budget commercial for a Brazilian shipping company, when we followed a camera crew following Claudia Schiffer walking in front of the Manhattan skyline, before delivering two or three quarter-of-a-million dollar syllables, and once on another shoot when we interviewed a guy who wasn't sure if he was an actor playing a goombah, or a real, actual goombah, standing in the doorway of a warehouse full of cacao pods that smelled like paradise. Carolina picked me up in her pickup truck and we whizzed around the deserted Sunday port, slaloming through stacks of containers until we got to the Mary Whalen's pier. There are acres upon acres of open waterfront space here with the greatest views of lower Manhattan imaginable, and now that this neighborhood has gone from being one big crack bodega to the home of the latest gourmet Fairway supermarket, the developers must be salivating and scheming and hoping the last remnants of New York City shipping would just load up and steam off into the sunset.

In the belly of the beast: eager volunteer and recent Red Hook arrival Jim Clark, proprietor of LOOK NORTH, an Inuit art gallery. That's right, Red Hook now not only has art galleries, it has Inuit art galleries!

The Mary Whalen began life in 1938 as a local gasoline tanker and was eventually converted to haul loads of diesel fuel throughout the harbor. The Captain's cabin still has original mahogany trim and the former oil storage holds will hopefully soon become a maritime museum but she's pretty humble. Which may be the point. We set to work offloading the winter trappings, mostly coal and firewood and the woodstoves that had made the ship bearable to work on over the winter. I coiled some vast ropes in piles on a shady corner of the steel deck, where the summer sun shouldn't batter their uv-sensitive strands. We moved some mattresses. We considered what to order for lunch.

At last another volunteer arrived, Jim Clark, an Alaskan fisherman who recently moved to Red Hook. We had barely been introduced before he clambered down a long ladder into one of the Mary Whalen's innumerable gunk-filled foredeck caverns, carrying a shop-vac and a submersible pump. Shortly waste-water began spurting out of a tube and running along the decks, but Jim himself was never seen again. I assisted Carolina by hauling buckets of rust-sludge out of another hatch. She did the dirty work, sweating below decks, shoveling pounds of what was literally the oxidized inner wall of the ship into white plastic buckets donated by yet another Red Hook fixture, Steve's Key Lime Pies. Once these buckets had held some ingredient of his delicious desserts; we filled them with vile metallic goo that smelled like foetid cheese, and lined them up along the starboard side for disposal. After a dozen buckets or so of this I stuck my head down into the overripe compartment and yelled to Carolina, some twenty feet below, that I had better be getting along; I needed to return to the ongoing flooring emergency back on Coffey St. It wasn't quite an Amish barn-raising, but it was a morning that offered up the hope that Red Hook's community spirit, its old-school neighborhoodyness, so exceptional in the heart of the city, may actually be surviving the real-estate feeding frenzy snapping at its shores.


Carolina even further down in the belly of the beast. The small intestine of the beast, as it were. Today's task: shoveling out countless buckets of rust-sludge

Eight of the countless buckets...

I warned Carolina not to wear this crisp white Armani henley for such a foul task, but she wouldn't listen

Labels: gentrification, mary whalen, renovation, shipping

Spudwell S1

Tuesday 1/30/07

I’m feeling in the groove here, like I’m living up to John’s knickname for me, “Tanker Princess.”

Ernie and I are getting along like a house afire. I’m feeling on top of this project.

I go down to check status of the forward spudwell. I never feel too welcome with this team, Roach always has a way of keeping his head down, no eye contact.I don’t have a sense of the other guy; but, I’ve always loved the cavernous, moody spaces of the cargo tanks and so this spudwork is great to photograph.

I’m loving photography again. The camera that Erica delivered yesterday, the latest little Elph, is astounding. Auto mode can expose images in low light and high contrast, it has a wide lens, a view finder even, and makes a 20 meg file!This little $400 cigarette pack is out performing my “pro” Nikon D1X that only makes a 19 meg file. No, Canon is not a sponsor.Hmmm…Hello, Canon?

Then I look down near the spudwell, I see that the Whalen’s gangway pin, a 4’ steel rod, threaded at one end with an eye at the other, has been used to lever the spud in place. The threads are mashed.

Something blasts out of me.“Yo pago, yo mando”(I pay, I give orders) and continue to dictate in Spanish that they will not use parts of the boat as tools, they’ll go off the boat for tools. I steam up the ladder “joder.”

Straight to Ernie “I have my first close-to-complaint.”Ernie is back in a few with the rod. He’s smirking. “I took care of it.” He waves the rod.“Yes, Ernie, the threads look better in daylight, yes, they can be recut.”I mutter about Roach’s attitude. Ernie tactfully points out, “you have to understand, it’s a macho thing… and his relationship to women is that they put bills in his underwear.” I laugh. Good joke about Roach's former job as a stripper, but maybe very wise.I move on.

I check in on the laborers cleaning out the crawl space underneath the forward engine room floor. Because the forepeak was not pumped out promptly, and the bulkhead failed, the water ran back into the next space; and as it wasn’t pumped out of THERE promptly, there are cakes of rust ice in the bottom of this compartment. Ernie doesn’t want to use heat to melt it as that will ruin the paint, so a team of Hispanics is hunkered in there smashing ice.

Diligent Freddy continues working round the hull, washing of steel. He’s always alone, up high on scaffolding or a high reach. Burning open the bow steel leads to lots of smoke and lots of looking from below and from within, looking to understand the structure, the damage and to devise a plan.

After lunch, I go back into cargo tank S1 to make nice with Roach. He says “this must be a special project, they never put me on work like this." I don't really know what to say, but at least we're talking. The day concludes without episode. We're all in the groove.

Looking for daylight

Monday 1/29/07

0715 I return to the Navy Yard from Oyster Bay to find a perilous cake of ice all over the place. No plows in operation here! Debby Romano is coming to borrow the pickup, and I warn her about my old tires.

0730 Boyfriend John Gladsky arrives in the Yellow Rose, his ex-Port Authority utility truck, with more steel plate. GMD has generously let us bring our own steel (squirreled away by John over the years) rather than make me buy it at new steel rates. China is gobbling up the world’s scrap steel supply, and prices for new steel ratchet up relentlessly.

1000 Erica Reynolds, PortSide wonder, is coming to tackle some office stuff. She was an amazing find at a Pratt Internship fair a year and a half ago. Her last job before art school was running a $2.5 million dollar Brooks Brothers store in Dallas. In addition, she has strong design skills, works as a contractor, and she can weld. A PortSide kinda gal! I pick her up at DUMBO’s York Street F stop. She laughs at me. “You look like a miner.” My face is covered in coal dust. I didn’t know.

Erica’s first task is to combine the various GMD estimates, from pre-haul out through discoveries of bad bottom steel, into one Excel document. Yup, we’re at max. I won’t be adding to the punch list. She’s also picked up a new digital camera and will set it up and give me pointers. The loaner camera has been overexposing and suffers from slow shutter. The photo record has been scanty as a result.

The spudwell pipe that will hold the spuds (internal pilings) is inserted in the forward deck hole, tomorrow they’ll trace where to cut through the bottom and let it down. There are some gaps where the spudwell meets the deck. Boyfriend John won’t be happy. He’s been coming almost daily to check in. I know it’s hard for him to let anyone else do steelwork, but sometimes I do wish he’d lighten up. I thought I was a perfectionist, but he’s intense.

Ernie comes in to report that the bottom steel under the forward engine room is not as bad as he expected. We go down together for a look see. The watertight compartment under that engine room floor was clearly not serviced for years. Rust mud must have sat at the lowest points and slowly oxidized the bottom and bulkhead (structural wall). It all gave way under the pressure of the ballast water put into the forepeak and the weight of the boat herself once she sat on the blocks.

GMD clearly expected the boat to be fragile or a mess because they put an awful lot of blocks under her. This spares any one section of the hull from carrying too much weight, but it also means blocks will have to be moved to get at the steel repair. We’ve been waiting three days for the dockmaster Bobby O’Connor to come by and approve block movement by the forepeak, and he finally does come, and does approve. Not a surprise, just news I was plenty ready to hear. I won’t know the full extent of the financial hit until we can see all the mess.

Ishmael begins cutting open bow steel, and I and go prowling for a hole I suspect exists. I had one of those jolt-me awake thoughts the other morning, a few days after we found the lower rub rail on the starboard side all wasted. “There must be a hole behind the wasted starboard rail!” Lying in bed, I remembered how one time last September, I came aboard after several days of rain to find two feet of water in cargo tank S4 (aftmost tank on starboard side). There had never been water there before; there were no holes cut in the deck above that tank as there were in S1 and P4 in anticipation of a spudwell hole. I pumped S4 but never saw water there again, and couldn’t figure out at the time how it got there. What occurs to me this week is that the week of rain lowered the boat just enough to put a hole under water, and we’d never seen daylight coming through the hole before because it must have been behind a hollow guard rail.

I enter tank S4 with Freddy looking for daylight. Nope, not behind the guard rail; but there it is higher and more astern, a small glint, too small to get a welding rod through. So small we can’t see it from outside even with a screw pushed through it. I descend into the tank again and insert a coiled pink Post-it because the pink shows up against the black hull. This works. A week after sandblasting, and we are still finding steel to repair, and yes holes this small are significant. Freddy and I check P4 for good measure. Nothing.

1630 I take Erica to the train. Next, the Red Hook post office to get a PO box. PortSide and I are in postal limbo. We left Beard Street because the landlord said he needed the apartment for his son (though we’ve just learned that he was using an old ploy; it’s not a relative with his name on the bell); but the tanker isn’t yet usable for sustained periods. We are camped out at my boyfriend’s in Oyster Bay--with a lot of stuff in storage. Time to get a PO box until we have full-time offices aboard the tanker and some pier address.

To return my pick up, Debby and I agree to rendezvous at Pedro’s in DUMBO, my new home away from home. How this hole in the wall, or hole in the ground (it’s below street level) has survived the gentrification of DUMBO I don’t know. Coffee is still 50 cents, and a hefty plate of pork, beans and rice at lunch is $5. Conveniently, it is a block away from the York Street F stop, so I decide to have all future visitors stop here for warmth and a coffee while I drive out of the Navy Yard to get them.

After dinner, I find trash from RR Framing, a barrel of wood slats, perfect kindling for the potbelly. I return to the Whalen for a night with plenty of heat but another criminally slow internet connection. Email is a snail; Blogger won’t upload. Will I ever get caught up on blog posts?

Leaking Mushrooms

Sunday 1/28/07

0430. I wake up for being too hot. Have my potbelly maintenance skills bounced back? Yes, but the cause for warmth is a freak jump in temperature-- I hear dripping. The upside of living aboard during a cold January is that all the deck leaks stop (and you can leave all the diary products on the table all day); now the deck leaks are back. I move my slippers from a new drip coming through a mushroom vent. I’ve decided all the mushroom air vents have to be pulled up and reseated. Most are leaking; best to get ‘em all before the last ones join in. I reposition all the drip buckets on the fidley deck and in the disaster cabin, formerly the Assistant Engineer’s cabin. This will become Erica’s and my office, but it has a long way to go. The Engineer’s cabin, just forward of that, is the soundest one on the boat.

The Whalen carried two engineers because she is a “bell boat.” There had to be an engineer on each watch because the engineers controlled the throttle while standing two or three levels below the captain in the wheelhouse. The Captain only controlled the helm (direction) and communicated speed and direction commands by ringing a bell or a jingle which prompted the engineer to move the levers on the telegraph. “Bells are direction, jingles are speed” says the crib sheet taped to the antique instrument panel. Speaking tubes allowed other commands to be bellowed up and down from engine room to wheelhouse.

The yard crew isn't working today. I'm hanging around for visitors. Two old friends show up for tanker tourism: Cate Cochran, producer for the CBC show Sunday Edition who taped oral history of Todd Shipyard for PortSide before IKEA closed on the property. She’s down from Toronto; and Elizabeth Zeschin a photographer who I assisted in the 1980s, in town from London for a shoot. Elizabeth was shooting Martha Stewart’s Gardening Book at the time, which gave me a solid grounding in how to fake naturalistic lighting--and real insight into how not to run a home. Cate and Elizabeth go gaga over the tanker, Elizabeth shooting more than visiting. Her esthetic seems to have morphed from her 1980’s obsession with Victoriana to industrial hulks. They race off after a short while, two more women who do too much, and I linger waiting for Bob Guskind, saavy blogger of the Gowanus Lounge.

After he’s had his fill of photographing and video-ing the Whalen, I’m free to head for boyfriend John’s, to rest up, enjoy running water and to try uploading more blog posts. Methinks it’s not just the slow connection on the tanker. Blogger’s interface is pokey, especially with photos. I arrive to find that little Lulu has cottoned to John during the 10 days since her eviction for the Whalen. She now cuddles up to him more than me. Little trollop.

A slow Saturday

Saturday 1/27/07

The crew has withered even more. Yesterday’s 9 degree day followed by a Friday night makes for a nearly abandoned yard on Saturday. Even Machine doesn’t show up. Ernie is here, and so is Freddy, forever burning steel bits off the hull, but hardly anyone else.

Brunch is brought by Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer, and his wife Elaina Ganim, an artist, archivist, text editor and fiction writer, their four legged sidekick Mila. With them are Mia Beurskens, a graphic designer who has been involved with PortSide, and her boyfriend.

Boyfriend John Gladsky, with his diesel mechanic Capt. Frank Persico, make a surprise appearance. We all have lunch in the galley. Frank runs a dive boat on the weekends and used to work on a tanker much like the Whalen and regales with tales.

Though Tim has spent lots of time on the Whalen, he’s wowed by her out of the water. Part of the jolt, I'm sure, comes from feeling that plans, talk, visioning are now becoming solid as the hull gets whipped into shape; but Tim also has an appreciation of steel fabrication. His artist father John worked as a welder in Maine shipyards before getting a position teaching art, sculpture, design and drawing at the Maine College of Art.

After the guests admire the Whalen hull and the granite dock, I propose we go see the caisson. Gladsky is not interested in the junket. “No, I’ve seen the caisson, I salvaged it once.” John’s line of work is heavy lift marine salvage. He picks up big things that sink, and workboats and harbor infrastructure sink more than one would imagine. John’s parting comment is to point out the muzzle of a buried cannon serving as a bollard. These cannons, Civil War surplus, dot this place -- reminders of how much history there is to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and how casually it has been treated.

There is such a meager yard crew to monitor that Ernie has time for tourism. He joins us visiting the caisson and the dock pumproom, a subterranean brick cylinder that houses the original 1851 pumps, now electrified. The dock is working on only one pump as one of the two tunnels is clogged. Ernie has plans to clean it out somehow.

Mia volunteers to select a font for the Whalen’s name. The last one was scrunched between fenders that took up a lot of space on the bow. Those are long gone, and Freddy has been washing off the remains of what held them in place, and the bow looks much cleaner. I’ve decided to return the bow paint job and name placement to what is likely the original position -- based on a photo of the S.T. Kiddoo, the Mary Whalen’s original name. Charlie Deroko tells me that "spirket plate" (“Amaze your friends and fool your enemies with that one”) is the name for the panel now repainted white. Spirket Plate?! I’ve never heard the term before and resolve to Google the word one night when I have nothing to do, should such a moment arise.

So… the work report being light this day, there’s more space for photos from the week.

Aft draft numbers are elongated so they read correctly when seen from above (from the dock or waterlevel) and looking down the concave shape of the after end of the boat.

Spent welding rod and blast grit in ice at the bottom of the dock.

9 degrees

Friday 1/26/07

I flip on the radio in the pickup. WNYC says it’s 9 degrees. Ugh. I think the crew would benefit from sugar and caffeine propulsion. I’ll pick up extra coffee and donuts. I call Ernie and ask how many guys are coming in. Eight he says, quite a drop from Mussel Men day. I pull in to the dock at 0730; it sounds abandoned. The cold affects sounds making them small and tinny. I give a coffee to Machine, to two Hispanic guys who look to be engaged in make-work near a bucket fire, and to Freddy the burner. Ernie is already too busy to stop for coffee. Does that guy ever get any rest?

The good news is that I can’t see my breath in my bunkroom. The oil-filled electric radiator kept the worst at bay once the potbelly went out. Note to file: I could have slept on board. The galley situation is otherwise. No dish washing today! As I pour, the water freezes to slush in its gallon container and freezes hard to the sink on impact.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. I had a metal fabricator make a new chimney section to replace a corroded one above the galley stove, a cast iron “pot burner” that runs on diesel and I’m told makes the galley roasty toasty. However, I was too busy to pick up the new chimney part before we dry-docked; and though we got it before the cold snap, it wasn’t made correctly and had to be returned. My hopes of diesel-baked cookies are dashed for now, along with any chance of easily heating dish- and hand-washing water. I’ve realized it’s not the cold that is the big hassle, it is the effect on water that is the big drag. I can’t pour water down the galley sink drain for fear of freezing it shut. The portasan (cheerfully promoting itself with “We’re #1 in removing #2) is OK except for night visits up a gangway at 20 degrees while wearing pajamas. I resort to a bucket aboard, with salt water to deter freezing.

The cold has cascading effects on all systems. I have two camping stoves that run on butane aerosol cans. All the cans seemed to peter out early until it occurred to me that they were de-pressurizing in the cold air of the galley. I now keep a few cans on my desk in my potbelly-warmed cabin and bring them to the galley for each use. My cabin is acquiring a mountain man décor as a growing number of things are stored there so they don’t freeze, harden up, or become uncomfortable if cold: all my clothes, computer, cameras, batteries and chargers, butane, water (potable and non-potable), the honey, hand lotion, and contact lens solutions (no necessary chemical action below certain temperatures I’ve learned).

My ears perk up when Ernie says there are guys working in the caisson, the floating door that caps one end of the dock. I head over and down a steep ladder. What a great place to work today! A cozy, riveted bubble out of the wind. I find two cheerful fellows turning bolts and chatting in a language I don’t recognize. Armando and Nonoy, mechanics, Philippinos, there to replace an 80 year-old pump in the 156 year-old caisson. Armando is a big fan of photography, and upon hearing that I used to work as a photojournalist, offers volunteer mechanical services on the Whalen. Thank you! We have quite a laundry list of mechanical things needing repair.

The caisson is really a boat, elliptically shaped like a double-ended canoe with rounded ends. Pipes through its core allow the dock to be flooded, a row of valves inside down the center, controls the flooding of the dock (takes 2-3 hours). Once the dock is flooded, the caisson is pumped out (takes 1 hour) by the large pump Armando and Nonoy are replacing. When empty, the caisson floats and is swung open. A vessel enters the dock, the caisson is swung closed, and pumped full again until it sinks in position. The 285 foot dock is pumped out (3-4 hours) by a cast iron monster housed in a subterranean brick room at the head of the dock.

It’s tough to repair the exterior shell plating of the caisson as the dock is in constant use (there is a severe shortage in port of repair facilities for workboats), so the crew plugs leaks at the sides with “the sausage” a long dangling tube of plastic filled with plastic and sand.

There is little visible progress on the Whalen today. The crew has shrunk with the cold; and most work is about planning the attack on the bottom. There is nothing major. Charlie Deroko’s survey of last January very accurately assessed the hull as essentially sound. The yard is eager to move on the steel work; there is a New York City fireboat waiting to come in right after the Whalen. However, the yard is also reluctant to move the blocks under the forepeak until Bobby the dockmaster can assess the load on the boat there. Now I hear he’s not available til Monday. Bow work stops; and the focus shifts to cutting the holes in the bottom for the two spudwells, the sleeves that will hold the spud (internal piling) that will allow the Whalen to “dock” in places without a dock. This brings a new man on the scene Roach, the fitter. He’ll be doing “the penetrations” which leads to some joking with Ernie due to Roach’s prior line of work as a male stripper.

Fitting the spudwells requires precise calculations. The ship should not ride on spuds at a diagonal, so we have to determine the future trim of the boat (the tilt from bow to stern) and then cut the perforations to match that trim. You can’t use a plumb bomb to place the bottom hole because the boat could be leaning one way or another. Turns out that her trim when setting on the blocks looks about right (which has her keel almost dead level.) This trim makes much of the ullage trunk (raised center deck over cargo tanks) almost flat and more easily walkable, and tips the boatdeck (deck above the galley and cabins) down enough so rainwater should run off better. However, putting the spudwells in for her current trim means that we’ll have to get her bow down once she’s back afloat. ow

I discussed changing the trim with Our Anonymous Engineer last year; but for lack of ship plans, we couldn’t calculate how much weight was needed. Thanks to this docking, we’ve learned that a forepeak full of water, plus the two cement blocks achieves this trim. I’ve got to measure those blocks so he can estimate the cement weight, the water weight he can calculate by forepeak volume.

However, if we refill the forepeak with water, we should protect those steel surfaces. That means blasting, painting, and installing zincs there. I’ll have to talk to Ernie and likely Joe Eckhardt, the chief estimator, and see if there is budget to at least blast and paint now. We can do the zincs ourselves. owH

The work in Dry Dock 1 peters out early; the cold is exhausting. There will be no night shift, and I’m looking forward to this first long, uninterrupted evening so I can catch up converting notes to blog posts. But first, I’ll stop by Gary Baum’s carpentry shop to get some kindling, look in on my 26’ powerboat in Red Hook, and then type away.

I’m bustling around the tanker tidying up, multitasking as ever. While talking to Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer, I decide to take the poo bucket up to the portasan. I have my cellphone wedged between ear and shoulder; and right after I think this is not such a good idea, the phone falls into the bucket. Shit! Literally. Another digital failure…for purely analog reasons. I have a flashback to a book I once saw near a bookstore cash register where they keep those little impulse-buy items: “Women who do too much.”

I wipe the phone off with 409 to sterilize it and race to the Verizon store to get the data off it before it crashes, the life is flickering out of it. I try getting it replaced for free (“this phone is really crap, it drops calls…) and maintain a straight face throughout. It has in fact been a crap phone during it’s 2 months in my hands, but I don’t succeed. A hour plus and $260 goes down the tubes at the Verizon store. The workday ends not with a bang but a wimper.

Sea Chests

Thursday, 1/25/07

I ended up sleeping on the boat after all. While I was having dinner, Ernie had called to say the painting was done. So fast? I raced back to the boat to check and found an abandoned yard and a black hull. Rather startling change after all the delays getting here and then getting sandblasted.

0915 Charlie Deroko returns for more steel inspection and discussion. We have extensive conversations with Ernie about the thickness (thinness really) of steel, it’s relationship to prior repair areas, ABS standards for plate replacement and develop and work plan. Charlie is popping by regularly as is job is more than finding problems, he recommends solutions. He’ll audio gauge areas under the stern around the main engine room where Freddy has washed off the remnants of the vintage zinc straps.

Freddy diligently picks his way around the boat cleaning off all unwanted protuberances, big ones like the of the external spudwell-- “the carbuncle” as I used to call it, and the little vestiges of prior attachments, fenders and the like. Machine is beetling about and attentive as ever and refills my water jugs. I’m using the non-potable yard hose supply for washing dishes and my increasingly chapped face and hands.

Up forward, some of the blocking will have to be removed to get at the areas that need replacing. GMD doesn’t want to do that until Bobby O’Connor the dockmaster can come over, so action doesn’t begin there immediately. Damn.

Charlie and Ernie and I go into the main engine room to find the sea chests that correspond to the through hull fittings -- which we only found after sandblasting. When I hired a diver Bob Davidson to check them before purchasing the Whalen last year, he surfaced and said “you better call the Department of Agriculture.” The growth on the bottom was so great, he couldn’t find a single opening.

Most of the through hulls allow water into the boat to cool machinery, though one connects to the fire hose. Each is covered with a “sea strainer,” grillwork that prevents plastic bags or organic matter being sucked into the system. The structure inboard directly connected to the hull is the “sea chest” and is built of very, very heavy pipe to prevent failure from corrosion; because if a sea chest fails, an engine room can flood rapidly and cause major damage (shutting down the engine) and possibly sink the whole boat. As the Whalen’s engine is dead (just for now, we hope), the sea chests will be sealed after inspection or “blanked off” with plates welded to the hull. If and when we find parts for her engine (hello, all ye retired engineers, please come help find parts!) the blanks can be removed to re-open the water system. Charlie discovers a released frame just aft of the high water valve where Ernie found thin-sounding steel the day after the priming. The primer had not held in a few penny-sized spots; that was the signal that something was wrong. Some banging with a chipping hammer revealed a weak spot the size of a watermelon.

I’ve saved the sea strainers as templates and as “souvenirs” I told the yard crew to some scoffing. I’ve already found a use for them, they resemble over-sized florist’s frogs, and I’ve made a flower arrangement with the plastic pointsettas’ from the dead Christmas wreath. I leave it on the picnic table expecting this will trigger some remark from Ernie. Since his shock at my pink hard hat on day one, I like to tease him with some girlie stuff now and again. There are NO women around her.

Charlie is very excited to hear that Artie Ellems, an old-timer, works here, albeit part time. Years ago, Artie turned Charlie’s drawings into new steel yards for the South Street Seaport’s Wavertree when the vessel was hauled at Caddell’s Dry Dock. With an “I’d love to see him,” Charlie takes off for the plate shop where Artie fabricates in steel and will be bending plate to replace the wasted parts of the Whalen’s rubrail. "Bushey Rail" as John calls the stuff produced by Ira Bushey & Sons in Red Hook, was bent plate not half a round pipe. This is more expensive at the outset but lasts longer. The crest on a half round would wear down pretty rapidly, not so the flat surface of the Whalen’s rails. Of the 40 feet that is wasted, only 8 of it needs to be fully replaced by new bent plate; the rest of it can just be capped by flat bar; the supporting sides are still so thick.

1620 It’s hard for me to leave, I sit in the pickup for some 20 minutes looking at the boat. I can’t take my eyes off her. She is so transformed already. I contemplate how to paint her topsides. The hull is now black again; what colors should the rest of her be painted? How will we celebrate her departure? Not champagne, this is not a christening… I decide that a huge bow with ribbon blowing down her sides while she is underway will be the festive way to catch some attention during her short ride home down the East River.

1645 I tear myself away to check on Geraldina, my 26’ powerboat, and the lonely lightbulb that is keeping her engine from freezing. I couldn’t winterize the engine right before Christmas as I discovered the flywheel was ruined. I’ve been so busy with the Whalen that powerboat Geraldina, the last souvenir of my father who passed away in 2000, is being neglected. Even with the cold blast that is bearing down on us, one little 100 watt bulb is keeping the engine compartment well above freezing. While at the Beard Street Pier, I stop to consider the demolition of the Revere Sugar Refinery. What a tragedy, what a lack of vision. The PortSide team is convinced that Thor Equities would have a more valuable property if they’d coupled historic buildings and industrial remnants with some very modern design. Instead it looks like they’ll level the place and be left with a generic plot – a loss to history, to Red Hook, and to them.

And then off to Debby Romano’s once again to avail myself of shower and washing machine. I am into a groove on the Whalen, but I do wish she had working plumbing.

Reinforcements Arrive

Wednesday, 1/24/07

0630 Charlie Deroko, no lie-a-bed he, calls with his punch list of steel to repair. He tells me he’s taken almost 300 audio gauge readings on the boat between last year and this. He knows the bottom.

0930 smoke emerges from a forward vent. This is interior paint smoldering from heat on the exterior of the hull. Freddy, a very conscientious burner, is removing the snaggletooth remains of bow fenders long gone. “Weldments” Ernie calls these steel chunks, which always reminds me of a potential Altoids slogan.

0940 Joe Smallarz, a supervisor in Dry Dock #6 shows up, eager to see the Whalen. He provides the name of someone who may have parts for the Whalen’s cannibalized engine. I continue to hope some retired engineer will show up and adopt parts-hunting as a project.

Joe Eckhardt, the chief estimator, arrives for a walk through of the proposed steel work. I love Joe. He’s been working this harbor a long time, knows his stuff, and is a taut, old school man of few words but I think an appreciation of this endeavor shines through. Joe even knows what those weird long wasted bands of steel near the stern are. “An old way of attaching zincs.” How old? “Forty years or more.” Amazing that they survived this long.

1100 I have a chat with Guillermo, a compact, formal Mexican knicknamed “Machine” because he never stops moving. All the other workers have taken off for lunch, but he’s still tidying up the dock. He’s proud of his progress picking up the place, and well he should be. The last shipyard tenant here, known by some in port as Eastern Testicle, left it a mess. Despite the dock’s landmark status, the last occupant blasted dents in the granite, welded fence to a gantry rail, broke the top of the gantry crane and more. Machine is clearly all about work. He has lived here 14 years, and lives in Sunset Park, but has never heard of the Mexican funfest in Red Hook where the Mexican baseball league, and Latin American soccer teams and food vendors make Bay Street hum on weekends.

1200 reinforcements arrive. Karen Dryland, whose father Alf Dyrland, was captain from the late 50’s to the late 70’s, and her husband John Weaver are coming to help clean up. Sooo welcome. The accommodations are a mess. The sandblast dust pushed its way into the boat, some of it shot up the galley sink pipes before I put saucepans over the drains. A weekend of slush has carried the larger grit through the cabins. Dried mud is everywhere. I’ve been too busy to finish washing dishes, a slow process that requires boiling water in the unheated galley, and a sink full of dishes sits covered in frozen suds. Karen will tackle the galley, and John will shopvac the cabins.

Despite the mess, I feel things coming together. I’ve bounced back. I was so exhausted the day we arrived. I’ve re-mastered my firebuilding skills and carved out some domesticity in a world of no plumbing or central heating. I now know how much steel work there is to do, and there’s money to cover it. I can breathe. And in that space I can reflect on how GMD is doing.

Things feel good. The senior staff like the boat, and seem to like the effort to save her. They are impressed with her condition “we’ve seen worse in working boats.” They are allowing us to penny pinch and bring in our own steel, and they’re willing to take the time to give me estimates as we go along so I can match work to funds. The Hispanic crew clearly likes my being able to discuss the work in Spanish. Ernie, the dock supervisor, is really on top of things and totally supportive, and a kicker to work with. And this historic dry dock is a grand, handsome place to be. It wows all the visitors. I appreciate all this tremendously, especially given the brush we had with another yard, a lower bidder, who didn’t do right by us in the end.

We lost five months waiting for them to book us. I agonized during the wait but am now hugely relieved that they’re not doing the work. Everything feels right here. Actually, in retrospect, the wait served us well, thanks to the generosity of the free berth and support at American Stevedoring. What felt like a hiatus then I now see was time to get more in tune with the boat, to pull off some large proposals, and to give some very popular tours of the tanker in the Red Hook Container Port during openhousenewyork weekend. Right now, I could wish for warmer weather, but otherwise wouldn’t change a thing here.

1330 smoke curls up through the fidley grating. Freddy must be burning off those weird long steel pieces. A firewatch is set up. Power cords and water hose snake through the fidley. Blowers blast air down the cowl vents to push the smoke out. More mess and racket.

Karen plugs on behind the closed galley door. She calls me in excitedly about an ashtray. “It’s Norsk tin! Maybe my father brought it… well, maybe not. There were lots of squareheads (Norwegians) aboard then.” Her father emigrated from Norway; she explains the patterns to me,. I’ve made it a rule to not discard things on the boat (except the girlie calendar in the kindling bucket) until I know what they are or might mean. I’d admired the ashtray but had no idea the provenance. Karen and John are great to have around-- not only because they are helpful and fun-- they have such personal associations with the boat and are eager to share them. Alf died in the late 90s, but they have all his papers and have begun pulling them out so PortSide can compile some history of the boat, her crew, and her service. John has been emailing me excerpts. I now recognize Alf’s foreign handwriting in some moldy logbooks I found hidden under the drawers of the captain’s bunk.

1500 Freddy knocks off the hotwork and the day crew begins to pull out.

1625 Karen and John leave and I rush to tidy up and leave. Painting will start tonight, and I’m keen to avoid that smell. Another night off the boat.

Soapstone Diary

Tuesday, 1/23/07

0550 The alarm goes off. I fire up the potbelly, starting it with pages from a girlie calendar Scott found last night. Could this work like a mariner’s carbon dating system? Will it pinpoint when the Whalen went out of service? The calendar is a 1993, folded open to August. Future research will tell.

0735 Steve Gronda, the chemist arrives, fully two hours before Ernie expected him. He is tailed by Ivan, in yellow hard hat, one of GMD’s safety officers. Steve’s job is to certify the boat for hotwork, meaning he’ll measure all the compartments for the presence of gas that could lead to fire or explosions during welding or burning. This process has to be done every time a boat moves or a compartment is sealed and re-opened. The local marine industry is a small world; Steve tested the Whalen last spring before I bought her. He is a precise man who moves rapidly through the compartments with little chatter, squeezing himself into the smallest spaces including the narrow fuel tank/coffer dam just forward of the house.

Upon entering the engine room, he commands “turn the light off! Yes, you have a leak.” He’s spotted daylight around a through-hull pipe high on the starboard side. With that my eyes scan the space, I spot a larger chunk of daylight on the port side. I never noticed them before, likely because lights were always on and, with the boat in the water, less daylight hit the hull at that point. Both openings are so high above the waterline, we won’t fix them in the shipyard. We’ll do that back in Red Hook on our own to cut costs.

We chat briefly in the galley, and he mutters, as he did last year, about the city rezoning the waterfront. The marine industry is squeezed for space.

0820 He’s done measuring all sixteen spaces and adjourns to his car to write up the report. All clear. We’re free to do hotwork except near the fuel tank/coffer dam that still carries fuel. Even the fuel tank under the galley, black with dessicated fuel and exhaling stale diesel when open, is OK for hotwork. After a slow weekend of waiting and pumping, things are moving along!

0900 Celia Cacace, the straight-talking mother hen of Carroll Gardens, calls to report that the Daily News has done a full page on our trip to the Navy Yard. I hope that helps us find more ex-crew for the Mary Whalen Alumni Association, volunteers, and please, some investors and donors.

Thanks to last night’s blasting, the state of the steel will be clear to see. Boyfriend and Steelmeister John Gladsky is back to study it, and surveyor Charlie Deroko arrives at 1100 to return to areas with suspected problems to audio gauge. Both scour the boat, me in tow asking questions and learning. Hours are spent staring up at the bottom and marking the hull with soapstone.

I knew John was serious about me when he gave me my first soapstone “keep this in your mouse pocket.” He wanted his woman to be able to assess steel, and sometimes this haulout feels like a long awaited chance for him to teach me his steelcraft. I’ve gone out with a number of men who thought they wanted a strong woman, but it wasn’t until John, a craggy old salt, that a found a fellow who really likes and accepts my workaholic tomboy self, “a tough chick and a marinized one,” as he often puts it. But back to the steel.

Boats are unlike houses; the ship’s skin has to be completely tight and perfect. A ship can be undermined by an aperture the diameter of a pencil. We scan all 172 feet of the Whalen looking for the smallest cracks and failures in the steel. Old welds are inspected to make sure they are holding. If they have little bubbles, like an Aero chocolate bar, that’s electrolytic damage that calls for re-welding.

John and I discuss two hollows on her starboard quarter (right back end) that look as if huge potatoes were pressed into the hull. That’s where she must have run up onto some rocks. A sharp V in one potato indicates a course running up on the rocks and then reversing to get off. Is this how her propeller became “the tulip?” Is this how the drive shaft was scored? No repairs were done here and the scrape marks are still sharp, so this is likely relatively recent damage.

The bow steel caves in around the vertical frames, pressure from pushing through ice I theorize. Near the starboard bow, John and I follow two parallel indentations. This is where she hit something steel-- clang, clang, clang -- with sharp edges, and she, or it, bounced down the hull a good 20 feet. A buoy? There is even the vestige of a zinc or two, after 16 years. Amazing! They should be replaced every 5 years.

We can see two forms of repairs “inserts” and “doublers” the former more expensive to do. A row of little nubbins perpendicular to a weld line shows where wedges held up a replacement piece of plate. Pockmocks mean it is older steel, smoother means newer. One can literally read the bottom and assemble a history of wear, damage, and replacement.

On the ride to the Navy Yard, former Mate Bill McGee told me that Eklof put a lot of steel on the bottom in one of her last haul outs, they almost didn’t do it, it was so much steel. That was maybe 1988. This saved her. We can see it all along the port side near the turn of the bilge, and along the keel. This is what gave Charlie such good audiogauge readings last year. He was wondering how the 1938 steel had wasted so little. Older steel is better quality he knew, but the answer was that the bottom was hardly 1938 steel. Rick Falcinelli, at K-SEA (the successor company to Eklof) used to be a Mate on the Whalen when she delivered fuel up the Gowanus Canal. He told me that they were aground most of the time there. The Whalen essentially dredged the Gowanus. No wonder the steel up forward and along the keel was worn thin!

We find some things that even steel wizards like Gladsky and Charlie can’t explain. What are those very wasted long steel straps near the stern? Why are there bolt-on zincs toward the stern and weldable zincs everywhere else?

Charlie, ever concerned with accuracy, takes a moment to correct one of my blog posts. No, K-Y was not being used when he took readings. “That will do in a pinch, but that’s not what I’m using.” I’d seen K-Y in the rented audiogauge kit last year, and thought it was the standard goop. Oops.

The race is on to study the bottom; uncoated steel rusts speedily and if rusted, won’t hold the paint. GMD paints and sandblast, at night, because the neighboring tenants in the Navy Yard don’t like their cars getting dirtied. It’s not the Navy Yard of old where it was all about shipbuilding. The primer smell will be powerful and wretched, and I don’t want to sleep in fumes. I decamp again to the apartment of our museum designer Tim Ventimiglia. There, the internet connection really works, and I’m able to upload a few blog posts. I bang away at the keyboard til after midnight.

The Day of Reckoning

Monday, 1/22/07

This morning I should get the verdict on lead paint, the issue that has weighed on me over the weekend.

1130 I spot water rushing into the dry dock. Ernie is on it. The “sausage,” the plastic sock full of plastic and sand that plugs a vertical gap between caisson and granite wall, has failed. A crew of Hispanic laborers will fiddle with this most of the day.

1140 Ernie tells me the lead guy will be late; he has problems with the testing gun. Will the lead suspense never end? Poof goes my hope for a morning verdict, and then an afternoon out of here to get some much needed stuff, a new digital happy snap camera, potable water, a trip to the bank. I ask Ernie to call me when he comes.

1240 Ernie says the lead guy came, he was in a rush due to the delay so they didn’t call me. The guy took nine shots, and the Whalen passed! “Seal up the hatches, Ernie says, “blasting starts in a few minutes.” After so much waiting, now a rush.

1250 I hear a different clomping on deck. I go investigate. Here’s a new team of small men, mummies really, their heads wrapped in t-shirts and cloths tied down with straps. One unplugs my shore power. I ask what’s going on. Silence. I ask again. I get an eruption in some Asian language. These must be the Koreans I heard were coming. They must really know what they are doing because after a few attempts I realize there won’t be much way to communicate with them in English.

1410 Sandblasting starts. Music to my ears.

1500 I’m talking to Our Anonymous Engineer about what we’ve learned about changing the trim of the ship (angle from bow to stern) thanks to the forepeak water and cement blocks on the foredeck. The cellphone battery dies. My digital universe remains a struggle.

1600 I call Jim at Smith & McCrorken in Red Hook. They’re major suppliers of marine zincs in this port. I got a nice price from them late last year for zincs and buying them direct will save me $750 over GMD’s price; however, someone building a dry dock has just called and got the last of their 22 pound bolt-on zincs. Bummer.

The zincs are necessary to protect the steel that is vulnerable to electrolytic action in salt water. Zinc is a softer metal than the steel of the hull, or the bronze of the propeller, and as a result is consumed first by the electrolytic action. I’d worried a lot about the hull since the Whalen has not been hauled since 1991, and there were likely no zincs left. We’ve decided to go with bolt-on zincs after talking to paint guru John Tretout of Amorica, rather than the more typical weldable zincs. That’s because today’s modern coatings could last up to 10 years on the Whalen as she won’t be underway very much (moving through the water increases electrolytic action). The zincs aren’t likely to last that long and would need replacing. Divers can go down and bolt zincs on and off, but the weldable ones can only be changed by hauling out the boat which costs thousands of dollars.

At dusk, photographer Stephan Falke arrives to shoot the sandblasting. Soon thereafter, friend and computer geek Scott Baker arrives. He informs me that the fluttering sound coming out of the laptop suggests the hard drive is about to crash. Another digital headache. I begin to like tending to steel issues more than this IT (Intermittent Technology) stuff.

I monitor the sandblasting crew for an hour or two. I want to make sure they keep the blast moving so they don’t make thin spots in the hull. They work on a gangway dangling off the gantry crane. The two blasters are in dark hoods and look through thick, dark metal framed rectangles much like welder’s goggles. One mummified worker holds the end of their gangway to spin them along the hull’s curves near the stern. Even 30 feet away, the backsplatter of grit is startling. I’m afraid for the camera lenses and don’t take many pictures. As night deepens and they reach the bow where one can get further from the ship, more photography is possible. The sand haze rising off the hull refracts the worklights in an eerie fog. At moments, the scene looks as it if were underwater. I watch the contours of the Whalen emerge as crusty rust and dangling and discolored paint disappear.

Stefan and Scott want rides out, and I head into Red Hook to Gary Baum’s and Amy Sisti’s for a shower. Indoor plumbing is my new favorite thing. I return to Dry Dock #1 with a coffee and cookies for Ernie who tells me “we’ll finish blasting tonight; I want to bang it out.” Normally a light sleeper, I don’t care about noise tonight. I’m bushed and the blasting is a happy reminder that we’re past the lead hurdle. They are working right under my cabin so I tuck into my bunk wearing engineer’s earmuffs.

Sometime after midnight I wake up, probably for the silence. The blasting is done. In the morning, we’ll finally really be able to see the condition of the hull.

Annoying Spaghetti

Sunday 1/21/07

0530 I wake up with a bad thought – it’s really cold… the forepeak water, did they pump it out? If not, I could have more valves crack like the one I patched with wood slivers…

0800 I arrive at DD#1 and find Charlie already there, I’m to be his scribe recording the audio gauge soundings. I tell him I want to get a fire going in the potbelly and check the forepeak and then I’ll be right along. Yup, there’s water in the forepeak.

0830 I call the very can-do Ernie, who has always said, “call me if you need anything, I can be here in 20 minutes,” to tell him the forepeak water has to go.

0900 Ernie arrives, a tad disgruntled and in new suede shoes. Oops; I shouldn’t have taken him at his word on a Sunday… We begin wrassling with pumps. The box on their power cord comes apart. He gets another. Next their pump won’t work; it can’t push through the frozen fire hose. My idea is to wet the hose to see if that will thaw it enough. I squeeze down the forepeak hatch, to protect Ernie’s shoes, and start soaking the hose. Pump no can do. Next, we try the pump I have aboard, a heavy bronze one with an air compressor hose attached. We lower it down, it won’t move. The impeller must be jammed with rust. By this time, there’s a snarl of pump hoses, ropes attached to pumps, and power cords dangling into the rusty wedge of the forepeak. An annoying spaghetti. It’s a two-man job -- one on deck, one in the hole – to get things out of there because everything fouls on its way up, on the ladder, the internal keel coolers, or steel bracketing. This is a bugger of a job, but the company is good. Ernie and I chat.

Ernie tells me two thought-provoking things, that the lead paint test IS still needed – “it’s procedure now;” and the dock is haunted, “footsteps sometimes follow me up the gangway at night”. If anywhere were to be haunted, the Brooklyn Navy Yard would be it. Thousands have died here: During the Revolution, the British kept prison ships that were really floating death chambers. Some 11,000 died in them, and their bodies were dumped overboard or in mass graves. Bones washed up on the beaches of Wallabout Bay well into the 19^th century and caused such distress that they were re-interred in what is now Fort Greene Park where a tower memorializes their suffering. The Mafioso Joey Bonanno reputedly made people disappear here in the 20s. My boyfriend John says the King of Samoa is buried under the dock, because slave labor was used to build the dock and the Samoans would not work without their king… Truth or rumor, I don’t know, and I hope to find time to call the Navy Yard archivist Daniella Romano to ask about the dark side.

Ernie offers to unfoul the bronze pump, and I go to assist Charlie who has, as is his way, methodically chugged on with the soundings even though he hasn’t had the right ladder, me as scribe, or friendly weather. I meet him at the bow, where frozen stalactites reveal more forepeak leaks. Good thing none of that steel gave way while the Whalen was afloat!

Hearing my report of forepeak pumping frustrations, Charlie takes a hammer and smashes a hole in the bottom near the icicles. I’m ready to smash more holes if the bottom steel needs replacing; because what’s become clear is that most of the forepeak water migrated aft to the next space, the pump room engine room, and has flooded over the deck (floor) that separates a watertight compartment and the engine room itself. The limberholes in that watertight space are clogged with rust-mud, so pumping will not be easy.

Ernie fixes the bronze pump and resumes his Sunday by 1125. As I consider the frustration that pulling the spaghetti alone will be, I spot a mustached fellow in very clean Carhartts on the pier, “Are you the K-Sea barge guy?” “Yes” is the echo back. I ask for help.

Tankerman Rick is willing, he’s got time to burn. He’s into his second winter of “standing by” here, another weirdness of the weird Navy Yard that is a world unto itself. The Navy Yard has a co-generation plant. It runs on LNG, but Rick says that if there’s a cold snap down south, the LNG spigot is turned off so the South gets heat. Since the Navy Yard doesn’t want to risk not finding a local fuel barge available if there’s an LGN problem, they keep this loaded barge sitting at the ready all winter. As last winter was a mild winter, they never needed its fuel, so the tankermen never came and went nor did anything besides stand watch on the boat at its isolated dock. He’s eager to talk, “I read two books a week and go for long walks” and wants a quick tour of the Whalen. He, like everyone else who’s seen the Whalen since she arrived, really admires the boat. For me, it’s been a great boost and validation to feel that appreciation by all the staff and visitors at GMD.

Rick and I start pumping the flooded forward engine room. The hose doesn’t reach the rail (edge) of the boat; but given how much he’s prowled around, he knows where there is some ratty PVC pipe. We lay that down on the deck so we can shoot the water past the spudwell hole in the deck, down the starboard side. He leaves to get tend his generator, and I help Charlie until visitors arrive. Boyfriend John Gladsky arrives with more kindling and enthusiasm. Nathan Kensiger comes to photograph. Then Tim Ventimiglia, our museum designer, arrives with Elaina Ganim, his wife, and their beagle Mila. Tim is utterly taken with the Whalen out of water. The grand sweep of her lines is more visible framed by the dock. It will be Tim’s job, among others, to come up with a plan for how to turn the eight cargo tanks, 2,800 square feet, into exhibition space and shape what those exhibits will be. I spend a little time with everyone, with the result that Charlie really gets the shaft and spends most of the day working alone.

Tim & Elaina invite me and John to dinner. We spend a lot of time discussing the revived lead paint issue. I decide to stay the night with them and blog. High time; transforming notes into blog posts has proved challenging after long work days. John heads back to Oyster Bay. The lead testing team is due between 8 and 12 on Monday, so tomorrow will define all that follows.

Toxic Tension

Saturday, 1/20/07

0720 the first call comes in. The industrial marine biz in this port hits the phones right after 0700, seven days a week. No sleeping in for this birthday girl. It’s John of Amorica, Paint. He’s returning my call about the lead paint issue. I tell him I’m thinking of calling the dockmaster from H&R who docked the Whalen in 1991 and asking him about what paint was used. I’m not liking losing a whole weekend of good weather waiting for the lead paint testers. H&R is long gone, but I know where the guy works now, a new dry dock outfit on Richmond Terrace, but I don’t know his name. With that John says “I’m sorry, I should have thought of that yesterday. When was her last haul out? 1991 at H&R? I would have done that job… I’ve done every boat around here for 20 years… they weren’t using lead paint then.”

I experience a flood of relief. I’ve had no time to organize a birthday party but the no-lead paint news is the best present I could receive. I call Ernie, yard supervisor of Dry Dock #1, right away. Ernie, ever on-duty and ever-amiable about it, says “great… Blasting will start tomorrow night.” Charlie Deroko calls soon thereafter and says he can start surveying tomorrow at 0730. The weekend WILL show some progress after all. I begin to unwind.

Birthday calls roll in throughout the morning. My boatbuilder uncle Ross Gannon is particularly interested in what’s going on. I tell him about “the tulip,” the wickedly deformed prop. He asks if that could explain how the drive shaft was damaged, could it have been a grounding that nailed them both? I realize I don’t yet have the story as to why the Whalen went out of service.

The fallout from the Exxon Valdez ultimately would have put her out of work. That accident lead to the OPA90 (the Oil Pollution Act of 1990) and one of it’s many mandates is that “single-skin” vessels would be phased out of the fuel-moving business and be replaced by boats with double hulls. The idea being that if they were hit, only the outer skin would breach and the inner skin would prevent an oil spill. That rule has retired many noble old tankers around here, whereupon they go to the scrap pile, get sunk as artificial reefs or get spirited away to Latin American where the rivers are many and the regulations few.

I argue with Outlook some more and try every form of workaround to get the laptop version to work or get the data from the desktop up into Earthlink’s cyberspace mailbox. No go. Clearly, I will work in splendid isolation while in Dry Dock #1.

I finish my first post and realize I’m too tuckered out to swing more. I reassess the Lulu plan. She was almost named Limpet for her proclivity to stick herself to me. It’s endearing when she plays parrot and sits on my shoulder while I’m typing; it’s a molestation when I’m trying to sleep and she’s wrapped around my head like a tight, fidgety hat. She hadn’t been bothering my sleep for weeks, but I realize that’s cuz she’s been stuck to John’s dog Sophie. Lulu is infatuated with Sophie. I need my sleep on the Whalen. I think Lulu may not make the trip back with me…