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Without benefit of same, permit to assem- ble would be denied. The EDC also wanted amendments in each vessel's insurance for liability. Out of the question, said the owners, leaving just one course of action—proceed without the assistance of the city. The Sixth Borough As a day on the water, in the open, for a party, for the races, for strutting and play- ing, no day could have been more perfect on the Narrows than Sunday, September 3. As tugboats of all sizes, types, and vin- tages convened off the coast of St. George, a pushboat, the Kristy Ann Rein- aur, came down from Erie Basin with Hughes' spacious barge on the bow. Brought to a halt on the water, it could almost pass for a new island in the Upper Bay. The spires of Manhattan, dollhouse- size across five miles of harbor, made a picturesque background. As mighty as the North River might be, the onetime course past the Intrepid at midtown was positive- ly claustrophobic compared to the airy sprawl of the Narrows. The portable island of the Kristy Ann Reinauer positioned itself in a way that could provide a spectacle from Pier 1, as well as from passing ferries. No special permit had been given for assembly, but the pier was still meant for public access. Meanwhile, the two-boat schedule of the Staten Island Ferry meant tourists could get an eyeful every fifteen minutes. And what an eyeful it was, of tugboat flash and dazzle. There were big new ones like K-Sea's Lincoln Sea, there were small old ones like Canal Corporation's Urger. The ex-Gotham, thought till last January to be doomed, arrived all red, white, and blue as the Dorothy Elizabeth. The Vivian Roehrig, the Liberty Service, the Special- ist, all came out to strut and dash and throw their weight around. McAllister sent two tugboats, K-Sea sent three, Rein- auer sent three. Honoring the event's first play on Stat- en Island waters, the majestic, classic fire- boat Fire Fighter led the parade to the starting line. Stationed with Marine 9 at the Navy pier, the 1938-built, million-dol- lar fireboat added much to the drama of the procession (and the dramatics, as a few tugs seemed determined to play tag with the fireboat's streams). It turned-out that there was a tanker in the anchorage after all. "The Coast Guard was enormously cooperative," said Capt. Roberts. "We said, 'what if we shorten the race course to keep away from the tanker?' and they said that was fine." With the Coast Guard's tug Wire shad- owing the race, the course looked even bigger and frothier than the official list of entries suggested. While there's an official record of who finished first (K-Sea's Lin- coln Sea, by quite a few lengths), there seems to be confusion over what fol- lowed. "We were swamped by a big wave," said Capt. Roberts, "so had to rely on the scorekeeping of others." They placed K-Sea's Viking ninth, and we know it ain't so. That was the official Marine- News camera boat, from which we saw at least nine boats behind as we crossed the line. No one seems upset about lapses in scorekeeping. The main thing is that the show went on. The Staten Island borough government and the city's EDC may have been hamstrung by their own regulations and bureaucratic roadblocks, but that's okay. The tug industry gets things done for work and for play, in no time at all, it seems. Why not? Isn't that what the indus- try does for a living? Perhaps with anoth- er year to work on it, city agencies will be able to organize what it took the industry six weeks to design, plan, and accomplish —and, when it was all over, to send its support to the recovering Gulf. A Tale of Tugs of Three Cities, III: The Water in Waterford Falls Mainly on … Florida Joe, otherwise known as Joe Russelo in his role with New York State Marine Highway Transportation Co. which runs the canaler Margot out of Troy, made a mistake at the Waterford Tugboat Roundup for 2005. During the head-to-head pushing matches among the tugs, on the third day of the three-day event, Florida Joe decided to have some fun. It's not a mistake to have fun at the Waterford Tugboat Roundup -- fun is practically its middle name -- and squirt- ing other tugboats with a hose is certainly fun. The mistake was squirting the Gowanus Bay, an ex-Army tug making its debut at Waterford. The Gowanus Bay is owned by the developer who bought the Cornell building in Kingston, but not even squirting a developer would be a mistake at Waterford. The mistake was squirting a tugboat that had aboard a) a fire monitor, and b) the owner of a fireboat. And Huntley Gill, one of the owners of the Harvey, was manning the monitor that day. Florida Joe put up a good fight, and as far as we know never conceded defeat. But he never stood a chance. The water battle in Waterford was the climax of three days of tugboat enthusiasm on the weekend following the Labor Day weekend. No government agencies required special insurance -- indeed, the Waterford government is one of the organizers of the festivities -- with the result that an estimated 25,000 people showed-up to wander and browse along the first several hundred feet of the Erie Canal, snooping in the vendors' stalls, and crawling up one side of various tugboats and down the other. There were sixteen tugboats in all, including the Coast Guard's Wire which had kept watch at the New York Tug Races, and the Urger, the only boat to attend all three of this season's tugboat games. Along with the Margot, three more classic canalers with retracting houses were on exhibit— Capt. Trueman's Frances Turecamo, the Chancellor (now under restoration at Waterford), and the Cheyenne. The latter had been acquired by Donjon Marine, along with the assets of Empire Harbor Marine, fol- lowing the death of Bart Brake at the beginning of the year. In memory of Capt. Brake, much admired both upstate and downstate, his home-made pushboat, the Herbert Brake, was named Tug of the Year by the Waterford judges. A larger-than-usual number of private boats attended, forming an event so large that it extended, for the first time, past the first lock of the Waterford Flight. Just as commercial activity appears to be increas- ing on the Canal, so does recreation. The Erie-Champlain Canal Boating Company was a new one to us, renting European- style passenger boats to small groups, to cruise around as they will. We wonder what would have happened if 25,000 peo- ple showed-up for the New York Tugboat Races? Perhaps Big Apple officials would fall over themselves officiating and pos- ing, as they do for "ethnic" street festivals and the like. Perhaps there'll be a different score in 2006 — stay tuned, sports fans. 30 • MarineNews • December 2005 TUGBOATS DECEMBER MN2005 4(25-32).qxd 12/5/2005 4:39 PM Page 30
