Boston Harbor

Brian MacLean was out on the harbor yesterday and snapped Boston Light.

Copyright Brian MacLean. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Patty Neal captured the view from State Street this morning.

A good Samaritan jumped into Boston Harbor near Long Wharf shortly after 11 this morning and helped keep somebody foundering in the water afloat until a State Police boat arrived and troopers pulled both out. Boston EMS treated the man at the scene and then transported him to Mass. General for further care, Boston Fire spokesman Steve MacDonald says.

The Herald reports he died not long after his arrival at the hospital and that police are investigating.

NorthEndWaterfront.com quotes President of the Friends of Christopher Columbus Park that the man may have been pushed by somebody he was brawling with.

Michael captured stillness on the Charlestown waterfront.

Copyright Michael. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

Leslie Jones took lots of photos of Boston things covered in ice, such as firetrucks, but especially fishing boats, such as this trawler in 1938.

Posted under this Creative Commons license.

It may look like a park and have people walk in it like it's a park, but the far end of Long Wharf isn't a park, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled today.

The ruling is a victory for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which wants to turn an open-air kiosk-like structure there into a restaurant.

A group of ten North End residents has fought the idea for years - and won a victory in Suffolk Superior Court, when a judge ruled that end of Long Wharf was a park on which a restaurant could not be built without a two-thirds vote of the state legislature, under a section of the state constitution that pertains to the preservation of parkland and open space.

But the state's highest court ruled today that intent is everything, and that the BRA took over the wharf in 1970 under its authority to revitalize the area and promote real-estate development - as part of an urban-renewal plan dating to 1964 - rather than to put a park in. Therefore, the court concluded, the area is not subject to the constitutional restriction, known as Article 97:

City and state officials formally broke ground today on a luxury-housing project along Marginal Street and Pier One.

The first of seven buildings in the $46-million Portside at Pier One project is a five-story apartment building with 176 units - 26 designated as "affordable" - along with ground-floor retail space. It's due to open next spring. Ultimately, the project will include a total of 550 apartments.

Construction began in 2006, then stalled along with the economy.

M/Y NamohThe owners of a yacht that rents for $99,500 a week are suing a Long Wharf marina over damage they say was caused by a sunken piling the marina should have done something about before the yacht hit it.

In the lawsuit, filed this week in US District Court in Boston, the owners of the M/Y Namoh say the crew of the 125-foot yacht with twin 2250-horsepower diesel engines was in the process of backing into a slip at the Boston Waterboat Marina on Aug. 30, 2011, when "its hull and propellers struck a submerged object within the slip's berth and its starboard engine immediately shutdown."

Bob Lawler reports the loud booms heard from Hyde Park to Uphams Corner to South Boston around 9:30 tonight were actually "a not so private fireworks show for a very big wedding" at the Boston Harbor Hotel.

Photos | Video.

Brian D'Amico reports somebody fell 20 feet down a shaft in a quartermaster building on Peddocks Island tonight. Efforts at CPR failed and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

NECN reports the guy boarded a Boston Harbor Cruises ship, then untied it from the dock. Police managed to capture the vessel before he made it to the high seas.

The tugboat Liberty suffered an engine fire off Georges Island shortly after 8 a.m. today - just as a man was falling off a fishing boat.

The Boston Fire Department promptly summoned its dive team, which promptly got stuck in traffic because it's not based on the water. However, the Coast Guard reports the fire was declared out before the BFD marine unit got out to the tugboat and that a passing boater picked up the person in the water.

UPDATE, 9 a.m.: Tug was able to get to East Boston under its own power, with an escort by the BFD marine unit. The Globe has more.

Associated Press catches up with Michael Richard Smith, the Maine man who's been living in a canoe and tent on Boston Harbor. He prefers to be called a "fellow citizen," rather than homeless.

More photos.

WHDH reports the Coast Guard is letting Boston Harbor Tent Guy keep his floating encampment - a canoe, raft and tent - although the Guard and the Boston Police harbor unit will keep an eye out for him.

Boston Reddit provides the blow-by-blow of today's standoff between the guy often seen canoeing down the Charles on his new tent-equipped float in the middle of the harbor and the crew of a machine-gun-equipped Coast Guard cutter and a State Police boat.

Yesterday, David Parsons photographed the sailboat that's been sitting on Carson Beach since Sandy blew it there.

Earlier:
The sailboat during the storm.

Copyright David Parsons. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.

The Boston Business Journal has the latest on the DeNormandie Wharf project.

Stephanie GiuntaEven though we were spared the worst of Sanday, the Boston Harbor Association says the storm was still a wake up call for a coastal city like ours.

Association President Vivien Li and UNH professor Paul Kirshen will lead a discussion on Nov. 27 on "the current science behind sea level rise, what we can expect over the next century, and what can be done to make Boston's waterfront and downtown more resilent to coastal flooding."

It starts at 5 p.m. in the offices of Bingham, 1 Federal St. downtown. It's free, but registration is required.

Chris Devers watched the sun go down from East Boston yesterday.

Posted under this Creative Commons license.

Stephanie Giunta practices being a TV reporter at the very end of Long Wharf early this afternoon.

The folks at the Fort Point Pier, meanwhile, watched as Fort Point Channel rose and then began to flow over the seawall (it's hard to tell, but that's Vivien Li of the Boston Harbor Association and Fort Point resident Anne Salemme on the right):

Fort Point Channel resurgent

Ahoy! Anybody home?

The Boston Police harbor unit plans special checks of the boats in which several dozen people may be living to make sure they're prepared for Sandy.

Police say fulltime harbor denizens are concentrated in marinas in Charlestown and East Boston. Yesterday afternoon, during a patrol with several members of the local media, a BPD boat pulled aside the Alice C., moored off Rowes Wharf, whose owner is one of the harbor's veteran residents. They hailed him twice. Nobody answered back, though, so they moved on.

Police urged people with sailboats moored in the harbor to make sure everything is battened down and mooring lines in good shape. One person who won't have to worry is John Henry - his behemoth yacht Iroquois is no longer berthed at Rowes Wharf - presumably it's sailed to safer (and no doubt warmer) waters.

The Boston Business Journal reports Boston Harbor Cruises wants to moor a barge near Piers Park and open it as a floating restaurant with 350 seats.

Noah Sachs forwards a link to these photos, taken by his friend Lars, who was out on the harbor today and took a series of shots as they got closer to that poor dead whale that's still just lying on the shore of a harbor island.

Photographynatalia took in the cliff diving off the ICA yesterday.

Jeff Tamagini watched the divers splash into Boston Harbor as well:

Passenger evacuation. Photo by Joshua Bottoni via Hingham Weather.

WCVB reports a Provincetown-bound ferry with 149 passengers aboard ran aground this morning near Nix's Mate, a tiny island with a lighthouse five miles from shore.

Joshua Bottoni, who was on the Provincetown III ferry, reported passengers were transferred to the Provincetown II ferry for the trip back to downtown. He also posted a photo of the Coast Guard coming to the rescue, and says the ship's rudders were stuck in a sandbar. There were no injuries, Brian D'Amico reports.

In colonial days, authorities would take the bodies of hanged pirates and then hang them again from a pole - or "gibbet" them - on the island as a warning to people thinking of careers as dread pirates. The most infamous was William Fly, who fixed the knot his hangman had tied in his noose.

More photos and account by Kevin Konikowski: