Great North River Tugboat Race and Skills Competition 2018

Still at work with a few more deadlines before the September rush is over, but I just took a break to caption my VERY EXTENSIVE Flickr album from the 26th running of the Great North River Tugboat Race and Skills Competition. As I probably say here way too often (except that it's not really possible to say it too often), Another Great Day On The Water! Yeah, it was so cold and drizzly that I was driven to buy a whole apple pie with absolutely no intention of sharing it afterwards, but still just so much fun.

Order of the album - Setup, Post Parade, Race, Bow-to-Bow Pushing, Line Tossing, and spinach eating. Sorry no pictures of the tattoo contest, there were some nice ones but it and the awards ceremony were both held in the classroom in the boathouse and I was way back at the back and couldn't see.

Thank you Working Harbor Committee!

Click here to visit the album. Enjoy!

A Weekend At The Races - Yonkers Mayor's Cup/3rd Leg Glickman Cup Saturday 9/8/18, TUGS ON SUNDAY 9/9/18!

Miller Tugs, Great North River Tugboat Race and Skills Competition 2011

Well, I have quite the weekend coming up here! September's one of my crazy months at work, so naturally I have the first two weekends of the month booked solid and haven't left myself any unwinding time at all - it's all going to be fun, though. This weekend especially.

On Saturday, I'm looking forward to catching up with friends from the Yonkers Paddling and Rowing Club and the Inwood Canoe Club as the YPRC hosts the 3rd and final stage of this year's Joe Glickman Cup, which, in Yonkers, is run in conjunction with the Yonkers Mayor's Cup. The Glickman Cup is named in honor of much-missed Sebago clubmate, adventure sport author, husband, father, and all-around good guy Joe Glickman, who we lost to pancreatic cancer in 2015. Sebago dominated these races in 2016 and 2017 but this year the point spread is pretty close. I may end up representing Sebago in the women's races, as I did at Inwood. I did get points for Sebago that day by simply putting my butt in a boat and not wandering off the course; Yonkers does have more strong women paddlers who didn't come to Inwood, so on their home turf it might be a different story. We'll see. I had hoped to get in some practice time in the weeks since but then I invited TQ to move in with me and he took me up on it and priorities had to change.

I did just discover that there's a 200 yard swim and there's supposedly one slot left - that would be fun, I'll be DFL in that, too, but the website says "COMPLETING the swim portion of the mayors cup is WINNING", and I have been doing some swimming this year, so hey, I'm game!

So that'll be Saturday, and then on Sunday, it's the 26th Annual Great North River Tugboat Race and Skills Contest. HOORAY! Folks who've been reading this blog for a while know I love this event, so much that last year I actually started volunteering.  It's usually on Labor Day weekend, so if you're in the metropolitan area and always miss it because you do other things for Labor Day, this is your lucky year! Events will be going on at Pier 84 on the West Side from 10:30 am to 3 pm; first there's a post parade by Pier 84, then the tugs proceed to the starting line at 70th street and then come charging down the river to the finish line at Pier 84.

After the race, the tugs pair off for bow to bow pushing contests, while individual tugs vie for the fastest time in the line-throwing contest (a very tricky throw at a bollard with a fence immediately behind it - hard but can be done!). Eventually all of the tugs tie up to the pier and the crews come ashore for the Popeye spinach-eating contest (children first, then the grown-ups), a tattoo contest, and finally, the awards ceremony. You can get a ticket on a Circle Line boat for a great on-water view of the race and the pushing contests, or you can join us at the pier any time during the day, for free! Click here to buy tickets and/or download a flyer with all the details. Oh, and hey, any fans of The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge? Check out this year's raffle! Raffle tickets can be purchased online; need not be present to win.  

Growler crew attempts the line toss, 2012

Time for the Tugs!

Here we are again, Aloha Friday before Labor Day weekend, and here in NYC, Labor Day Weekend means IT'S TIME FOR THE TUGS! That's right, once again this Sunday a whole thundering herd of the harbor's heavy horses come out to play, going head to head in the 21st Annual Great North River Tugboat Race and Competition. Tons of fun and admission is free (although for $25 you ride the spectator boat, that's a very reasonably-priced ticket for a great way to see the race, although you miss out a bit on the on-shore stuff). The trouble er excitement kicks off with the Post Parade at 10 a.m. and as usual, the event is centered around Pier 84, North River, at the Hudson River end of 44th Street. For full information, visit WorkingHarbor.com.


Sadly, so sadly, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it this year (in fact if I don't get my rear in gear today I'm going to be working on Sunday, bah...) but here are some of my favorite shots from last year.

Oh, and that winning line toss above? They made it look easy but with the bollard that close to the fence, that took a whole lot of skill - as I recall about 80% of the throws missed!  

For more from last year, click on the "Great North River Tugboat Race" tag below - I'm not sure whether I had more fun at the race itself, or writing things up (especially the Post Parade post where I went completely bonkers - in a good way though, I think - looking up the vital stats of every single boat in the race)!

Line-throwing and bow-to-bow pushing contest photos. Great North River Tugboat Race & Contest Part...um, I lost track

Oops. I was being overly optimistic when I said I was going to write a post about paddling tonight. That happens sometimes in September - I just got going on another one of those time-sensitive things and all the sudden, oops, nine PM. And I knew I had worked myself cross-eyed when I was approaching the Victoria's Secret store and was trying to read the word that's written over the latest buxom-beauty photos in the windows and my first take was "bulbous". Well, they are, sort of, or at least parts of them are. But that's not exactly a word that I would think of as making people rush in off the street to buy foundation garments. Bit of a head-scratcher there.

Also a pretty good hint that I'd worked about an hour longer than was going to be conducive to writing a nice post about my first wonderful, lovely, fabulous solo paddle in I can't remember how long.

Oh right -- "fabulous". That was actually the word, it was just my tired eyes playing funny word-association games that made me see "bulbous".

 Anyways, sorry about the tease, but in the meantime, here are some more tugboat photos. I really am close to done now!  I'm going to put the last two on-water contests up here now, but I'm going to switch the order to  put my favorite photos first. The line-throwing contest was actually part of why I didn't go on the spectator boat - you miss most of this if you're on the spectator boat, and if you can get a good spot (which I did), this is tons of fun to take photos of! So here we go again -

Grrrr! Go Go Growler!

Susan Miller (I think)

Freddie K Miller 

Catherine C. Miller - we (the audience) were all cracking up at this guy with his old-school cig-in-the-corner-of-the-mouth routine.  If he'd made it you would've heard the howl of glee in Staten Island! 

He didn't, though, and since the Catherine C. Miller was the last in the lineup, a couple of other people tried. This guy made a highly credible attempt, and then unfortunately the boat swiveled around a little too far and the big post on the bow was blocking my view when the kid in the yellow lifejacket gave it a shot. I don't know if it would've been strictly regulation, but I bet that if the kid had made it, the Working Harbor Committee would've awarded him 3rd place. 

BTW, if you watched the videos, you may have heard the chants of "Cut The Fence! Cut The Fence!", and a friend also left a comment about it - the organizers did say that this was the worst year ever as far as failed attempts, but it would actually make for a more hotly-contested contest - I bet you'd get a lot more wild throws like this one (Vulcan III, I think they were first and their thrower really went for a long shot - the target bollard is over by the American flag!). Unlikely to happen, of course, but it would be fun.

And now, backing up a bit for the bow-to-bow pushing - actually this contest was where being on the spectator boat was great, I got a few good shots with the zoomier of my 2 lenses (not one of those gigantic bird scopes, but I've been very happy with it for shooting ships & boats & stuff), but I think Vlad and Johnna got better shots, and then of course Tugster was actually on a tug - but here are my best efforts!

Buchanan vs. Buchanan

Quantico Creek vs. Little Toot (as Vlad & Johnna mentioned, some of the matchups aren't exactly even!)

Quantico Creek vs. Maurania III - Tugster actually has a picture of this match (a little more even, right) from on board the Maurania III. 

And this was what Vlad & Johnna referred to as "Miller melee" - I couldn't make out exactly what was going on out there in that tugboat scrum, but apparently the Miller tugs all started a free-for all! Oh, btw, in my Post Parade post, I'd been wondering if there was a relationship between the Debora Miller (from Miller Marine Services in Port Jefferson, NY) and the rest of the Miller tugs (from Miller's Launch on Staten Island) - well, Capt. Doswell from the Working Harbor Committee (and he and Jean are also old friends from my years at Pier 63 Maritime) answered that, the owners of the two Miller companies are brothers, so I guess the boats are cousins.

And guess what? That's it for the on-water section of the 20th Annual Great North River Tugboat Race and Contest!

Line Heaving Contest - Video Clips

Well, I may actually do a real post tonight (got out for my first solo paddle in ages yesterday, it was lovely, and it was also a bit surprising to me how many of my J-Bay paddler friends busted loose and went solo yesterday - nice day for it, though) but here's a little fun on my lunch break - yep, more tugboats!

I switched to videos for part of the line-heaving contest & was very happy to capture the 1st and 2nd place heavers (almost said tossers but I think that's an insult some places). There was no 3rd place because there were actually only 2 who snagged the bollard at all. I'd uploaded the 2 succesful throws to YouTube a couple of days after the race; last night I added Meagan Ann's first try because it was such a perfect demonstration of how the fence behind the bollard was causing issues. The Working Harbor folks said this year was unusual, though - it's definitely a tricky setup but they've been using the same bollard for the last few years & they've never seen so many misses!

Here was the 2nd place winner, Buchanan 12. The square bow that renders them less competitive in the race turns into a competitive advantage here, I think, plus they'd already watched a number of other tugs try and fail, and the captain wisely chose a very slow approach. He puts his thrower right where he needs to be & then holds position until the job is done. No record-breaker, sure (in fact it's 1:30 in the video when the thrower really starts organizing himself for the throw) but good enough for second place this year!

And then, of course, the Meagan Ann came back for her 2nd run (each tug gets 2). I believe that proper innertubes parlance for this would be "FTW". For The Win. I mean, like, totally. I had almost switched back to photo mode for this run but there was suddenly this sense among the crowd that maybe this was going to be the winning run (I heard more than one person saying things like "He's gonna get it this time", and they'd come so close in their first try) and I decided to stick with video, and I was glad I did, this was just beautifully done.

MMMM SPINACH!

Click on any picture to see these faces properly.

Popeye Spinach-Eating Contest at the Labor Day weekend Tugboat Race & Contest. Yep, back to that now! This was the childrens' division. Then things got UGLY.

Great North River Tugboat Race Part 4 - The Race (and gratuitous Duke)

As usual, click on any picture to see a larger version.

And off they go...

And here they come again! Chaaaaaarge!

This picture has focus issues but I'm putting it in anyways 'cause this was an interesting moment of drama in the proceedings. The race was well underway when all of us spectators on Pier 84 heard a police siren approaching from the south. At first I thought it was from the West Side Highway but then I started thinking "No, that sounds like it's coming up the river". A second later, this cigarette boat came screaming into view from behind the Circle Line pier. Now, I don't know if the people in the motorboat had actually thought that with a super studly speedboat like theirs, it would be fun to play Miami Vice, or if maybe they just couldn't hear the sirens or didn't realize the sirens were for them - whichever it was, when they finally spotted the wall of foam and steel that was charging down the river towards them they instantly rethought things...yikes! turn arooooound! Run away! Run awaaaay! 

Here's the Lincoln Sea crossing the finish line (marked by the Drifter, the bargelike boat with the crane & the large American flag (positioned in line with the slightly taller building with the 2 spires & the flag on the shore). Johnna and Vlad were on the Circle Line boat the stern of which  you can see just behind the tug - their pictures of the Lincoln Sea in the post I linked to earlier today are just spectacular.

Here comes the rest of the field

Meaghan Ann surprises everyone by passing the Weddell Sea to taking second place overall, and by a decicisive margin. This was a notable feat because several of the boats that she beat had a LOT more horsepower than she does - in fact the tugs are broken down into classes by size - Class A is the behemoths like the Lincoln Sea; Class B is the next one down, still VERY big boats but the expected results would be for the overall 1st, 2nd and 3rd to be taken by the Class A's.

In fact, the feat was so unusual that the race committee took the unusual measure of having the captain of the Meaghan Ann join the captain of the winner, Lincoln Sea, in holding up the first-place overall trophy during the awards ceremony.

Back to the finish line - here are the Weddell Sea, the Maurania III and the Quantico Creek battling it out for 3rd, 4th and 5th, respectively. These are all Division A boats.

Here comes the 2nd place winner in Division B, the Freddie K. Miller, followed by the Buchanan 12 (the last of the Division A boats - the push boats with their square bows may not be built for speed, but the design worked nicely for the line-tossing - that's the next post though!) and Little Toot, first of the C class tugs to cross the line.

Deborah Miller (white) and Gage Paul Thornton, Division B 3rd & 4th, respectively 

R to Left - Susan Miller, Buchanan 1, Thornton Bros., Vulcan & Pegasus

Susan Miller, Growler and Vulcan II at the finish

Hooray for the Pegasus!

Lt. Michael P. Murphy, Shawn Miller

And last but not least, at least in the amount of fun being had by the people on board, give it up for DA BRONX!!! Wooooo! 

And that was it for the 20th Annual Running of the Great North River Tugboat Race.

For full results (and links to a bunch of other websites with excellent pictures - I think we've all been cross-linking but there's a nice list there now) - Click here to visit WorkingHarbor.com .

And I'll be carrying on as a tugboat blog for a couple more days too -- yet to come: Bow to bow pushing, line tossing, spinach eating, tattoos and Duke. No, wait, I can't wait for Duke. He's too cute. Here you go. Gratuitous Duke.