Time lapse video, NYC's East River.
Lou Vest of the Houston Ship Pilots did a few time lapse videos of transits in the Houston Ship Channel. I was inspired to try my hand at the game with the East River Transit since shouldn’t be said that a New York boatman can’t run in such fast company..
NY TUGMASTER'S WEBLOG 
I think that these time lapse videos would make great teaching aids for ship-handling classes especially when docking or undocking. Keep up the good work
I hope you plan to do more of these and agree they could evolve into great teaching aids. I’m interested to know more about the camera you used, mounting it and the footage time.
I started with a built-in web cam that came installed on my new laptop (HP G60). I then went and bought myself a simple standalone web cam, a Logitech Quickcam. The whole idea came about mainly because my laptop’s web cam came with a software package that allows time lapse photography. The inspiration came from watching a video I found from a Houston ship pilot who did something similar with a much more expensive setup….I basically set the laptop/camera up on a pile of books and set the time-lapse function to snap every second for the duration of the trip. The processing is being done using Windows Moviemaker (came with the laptop).
A wicked simple setup.
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Scientists at UConn have been maintaining instruments in the western Sound for the last 5 years to understand hypoxia. Some instruments measure the current speed and direction. We wondered if the tug industry might be interested in real-time measurements to the south of execution rocks (at this location http://lisicos.uconn.edu/gmapEXRX.html).
To make them available we created a web site that is formatted for cell phones but you can also see it on a regular
computer at
http://lisicos.uconn.edu/adcp_m/adcpPlot4.php
It shows the speed of the current near the surface for the last 12 hours. Positive is ebbing (eastward into the Sound).
I would appreciate comments on whether you think this is, or could be, valuable. Suggestions for improvements can be sent to oceans@mstc.uconn.edu and are very welcome.
Jim
Jim, I think the value of this information would be apparent when you’re dealing with a pollution incident. This kind of information would be a great aid in predicting where and how soon a slick, sheen, or (you name it) will arrive at a certain point in the Sound. Wasn’t there a study back in the late eighties/ early nineties someone released a few thousand rubber ducks to track flow in New York Harbor and it’s surrounding tributaries?
As far as being a navigation aid, it would be one more thing we could look at, but operationally not a big impact. There’s really not enough flow to be an issue until you reach Throgs Neck.