My Version of Pisco Grog

Posted on by November 10, 2015

piscoIn the latter part of the 19th and the early 20th century, windjammer sailors in the nitrate and guano trades to Peru and Chile drank significant quantities of pisco when they arrived on the west coast of South America. Pisco is a brandy named after a southern Peruvian port. No doubt, most sailors drank it straight. These days the favored drink is the pisco sour, which is claimed as the national drink of both Peru and Chile. On a recent trip to Peru, I downed more than a few pisco sours and enjoyed each one. The drink is fundamentally a blend of pisco, sugar, lemon or lime juice and ice. The Peruvian version, developed in the 1920s, is a touch fancier, with a blended egg white for frothiness and a dash of Angostura bitters as an accent.

Since returning from Peru, I have come up with my own variation — pisco grog. Continue reading →

Hedy Lamarr — Radio-Controlled Torpedo Designer and Movie Star

Posted on by November 9, 2015
Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr

Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, better known as Hedy Lamarr, was born to Jewish parents in Austria on November 9th, 1914, one hundred and one years ago today. At the height of her movie career, she was known as the “most beautiful woman in the world,” a description that I would not argue. In addition to her beauty and her skill as an actress, Hedy Lamarr was also a scientist, inventor, and mathematician.

During World War II, Hedy Lamar and George Antheil developed a radio-controlled guidance system for torpedos. Because they realized that a radio signal could be jammed, they developed a “frequency-hopping” radio system that was almost impossible to jam. They were jointly awarded a patent on the system in 1942 and they turned it over to the US Navy, which then essentially did nothing with the system for the rest of the war. It was finally adopted in 1962 when it was used by U.S. military ships during a blockade of Cuba, one year after the patent had expired.

Hedy Lamarr’s invention, however, was applied to far more than just torpedos. The Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum described in her patent is integral technology in cell phones, GPS, Bluetooth devices, and wi-fi. Lamarr received no credit for her pioneering invention until 1997, when the Electronic Frontier Foundation honored her with a belated award for her contribution to communications.  Hedy Lamar died in 2000, at the age of 86.

Submarine Missile Launch Creates West Coast Light Show

Posted on by January 14, 2016
Photo : Julien Solomita

Photo: Julien Solomita

Last night, right about sunset, the western sky over Southern California was filled by a weird blue-green light streaking across the heavens. Visible as far as Arizona, the mysterious light didn’t look like a meteor.  For a time, it was literally an Unidentified Flying Object, a UFO. The Twitter-sphere was filled with speculation about alien invasion, the Death Star, and doom, among other topics. Soon, however, it was identified as a being the launch of an unarmed Trident II (D5) missile fired from the USS Kentucky, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine that sits off the coast of Southern California in the Pacific Test Range.  There is a video of the missile launch after the page break.

As reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Continue reading →

Temporary Reprieve for SS United States

Posted on by November 7, 2015

At the beginning of October, the SS United States Conservancy announced that its board had retained the services of a broker to explore selling the SS United States for scrap “over concerns about the organization’s long-term ability to continue financing the upkeep of the ship in the absence of firm redevelopment commitments and capital.”  Since then the Conservancy has raised $100,000, which has given the organization some breathing room, although not much. With monthly expenses for berthing and other costs running at $60,000, the newly raised funds will not last long. Yesterday, the Conservancy issued a statement saying, in part:

“Progress has been made due to your commitment and we are still compiling the necessary information to help the Board fully and responsibly evaluate our current situation from a financial and redevelopment standpoint. As a result, the Board has opted to defer any additional determination about the ship’s immediate future until later this month.”

Statement on Future of SS United States

Thanks to Miro for contributing to this post.

Brazil’s Snake Island — Don’t Go There

Posted on by November 6, 2015

Queimada Grande is a Brazilian island in the Atlantic Ocean roughly 90 miles from São Paulo. It is off limits to most visitors, not because it harbors secrets or treasure, but rather because it has more snakes, between one and five per square meter than perhaps any other spot on the face of the earth. And these are not just any snakes, but a unique and deadly species of pit viper, the golden lancehead.  Not surprisingly, Queimada Grande is nicknamed Snake Island.

SNAKE ISLAND – ILHA DA QUEIMADA GRANDE

Wind Power Returns to Block Island

Posted on by November 5, 2015

biwindOff the coast of Europe, offshore wind turbines with an installed capacity of over 6,600 MW generate enough electricity to power almost five million households. In the United States, the number of households powered by offshore wind is almost zero, though, with luck that, is about to change, if only slightly. The foundations for the first US offshore wind farm are rising above the waters off Block Island, RI.  The 30 megawatt, 5 turbine Block Island Wind Farm is scheduled to be online in 2016. The Block Island Wind Farm will supply most of Block Island’s power and will help to reduce air pollution across southern New England.  Of course, opponents of clean energy have filed another lawsuit to stop the project. Deepwater Wind, the lead firm behind the project, has condemned the suit as baseless and says that “the project is proceeding at full speed.”

While this may be the first US offshore wind project, Block Island, an island in the Atlantic Ocean about 13 miles south of the coast of Rhode Island, is no stranger to wind power. The first wind mill, known as the Harbor Mill was originally built in 1770 and transported to Block Island around 1810. A second wind mill, the Littlefield Mill was installed around 1815. Both stood through the turn of the twentieth century.

Continue reading →

Restoring the 1885 Windjammer Wavertree

Posted on by November 5, 2015

The Wavertree, an iron-hulled windjammer built in 1885, has been a museum ship in at New York’s South Street Seaport Museum since 1969. In May, the historic ship shifted to the Caddell Dry Dock in Staten Island to undergo stabilization and restoration. The $10.6 million dollar project is one of the largest of its kind undertaken by a museum in the United States.  The Wavertree was built in Southampton, England and was one of the last large sailing ships built of wrought iron. She is one of the largest iron sailing vessel afloat.

South Street Seaport Museum Wavertree Restoration

Transport Canada: Capsized Leviathan II Met Stability Requirements

Posted on by November 6, 2015

The first reports from accidents are often wrong. In the case of the capsizing of the whale-watching boat, Leviathan II, off Tofino on Vancouver Island with the loss of six passengers, the initial reports from CBC News said that the vessel was originally a tug boat that had been modified as a whale watching boat.  They also reported that the “refitted Leviathan II didn’t have to undergo more stringent stability tests outlined by Transport Canada that are reserved for larger vessels.” (In our blog post, we repeated these statements with a link back to the CBC article.)

Apparently, these statements were not accurate. Transport Canada, in response to this and related reporting, issued a statement saying that the MV Leviathan II did undergo both a stability assessment and an inclining test when it was refitted in 1996. An inclining test is a means of accurately determining a ship’s vertical center of gravity (VCG), which is a critical component of determining a ship’s stability. Once an accurate VCG has been calculated based on the results of the inclining tests, the ship owner must present calculations demonstrating that the vessel meets all stability requirements in accordance with national requirements. According to Transport Canada, Leviathan II  met all stability requirements.

So, why did Leviathan II capsize? Continue reading →

Fishing for and Swimming with Piranhas, the Ferocious Maneater That Isn’t

Posted on by January 14, 2016
Red-belly piranhas

Red bellied piranhas

My wife and I recently took a trip on the riverboat MV Amatista from the jungle city of Iquitos upriver on the Amazon to the confluence of the Marañón and Ucayali rivers. Before we left, several friends warned us not to get eaten by the piranhas, the small meat-eating fish with the reputation as a ferocious man-eater. It turns out that we ate piranhas, not the other way around.

Our brochure for the trip promised that, among other river and jungle excursions, we would be able to go swimming with Amazon pink dolphins. We also could fish for the dreaded piranha. We did both and it turns out that we swam with dolphins in roughly the same area that we fished for piranha. So, yes, in addition to swimming with dolphins (who were actually some distance away, so whether we were swimming “with’ them might be open to debate,) we were also swimming with piranha. And we didn’t get eaten. No one in our group was so much as nibbled on.

Continue reading →

NTSB: Wreckage Believed to be of EL Faro Located

Posted on by January 14, 2016
USNS Apache

USNS Apache

From a press release from the National Safety Transportation Board (NTSB):

A search team on board the USNS Apache has found the wreckage of a vessel that they believe to be the cargo ship El Faro, which went missing on Oct. 1 during Hurricane Joaquin. The vessel was located at a depth of about 15,000 feet in the vicinity of the last known position.

Sophisticated sonar equipment towed from Apache first detected what are believed to be images of the vessel using Orion, a side-scanning sonar system, at about 1:36 pm ET on October 31 during the fifth of 13 planned search line surveys.

Continue reading →

Friday Evening at the Sultana Downrigging Weekend, Chestertown, MD

Posted on by January 14, 2016

A beautiful Friday evening at the Sultana Downrigging Weekend in Chestertown, MD. The schooner Sultana, launched in Chestertown, Maryland, in 2001, serves as an educational vessel for schoolchildren as it travels around the Chesapeake Bay. Now in its fifteenth year, Sultana’s Downrigging Weekend Tall Ship and Wooden Boat Festival has evolved into one of the largest annual Tall Ship gatherings on the East Coast.

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A New Home in Red Hook, Brooklyn for the SS United States?

Posted on by January 14, 2016

In early October, the headline in the Philadephia Inquirer was Is the S.S. United States headed toward the scrap yard?. After years of attempting to save the iconic cruise ship, the SS United States Conservancy announced that the SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever built, might be “lost by the end of October.” The group has spent years attempting to find a developer  to convert the 1951-built liner to a hotel, casino, museum, or some other form of tourist attraction. The ship has been sitting at a berth in Philadelphia for the past 19 years and is costing $60,000 per month in berthing fees.  Now, a new berthing offer has emerged which may offer a reprieve for the ship.

John Quadrozzi Jr., owner of the Gowanus Bay Terminal in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, has offered a rent-free berth at his facility to the SS United States to allow time to work on the development plans.  There are still obstacles to the plan, not the least of which is raising the estimated $2 million dollars that it would cost to tow the ship from Philadelphia.

If the ship does move to Red Hook it will be very close to its original berth on the Hudson River. As noted by New York Magazine, “This may be the first recorded case of an elderly New Yorker moving back from Philadelphia because the rent is cheaper here.“

Leviathan II & Ocean Thunderer — Death at Sea Lion Rocks

Posted on by January 14, 2016
Photo: Albert Titian/Facebook

Photo: Albert Titian/Facebook

In 1998, the whale-watching boat Ocean Thunderer was hit by a wave and swamped, throwing all on board — three passengers and one boat operator — into the waters near Sea Lion Rocks, also known as Plover Reefs, off the western shore of Vancouver Island, Canada, near Tofino. The boat operator and one passenger drowned. The two other passengers were rescued, suffering from hypothermia.

Last Sunday, the whale-watching boat Leviathan II broached and capsized, throwing most of its passengers overboard near Sea Lion Rocks, not far from where Ocean Thunderer swamped seventeen years before. Five of the Leviathan II’s passengers drowned and one is still missing and presumed dead.

Continue reading →

Edwin Fox, Teak East Indiaman at Picton, NZ

Posted on by January 14, 2016
Photo: Ben Talman

Photo: Ben Talman

Ben Talman, a reader and contributor to the Old Salt Blog, visited the Edwin Fox in Picton, New Zealand and took a series of wonderful photos of the historic ship. The Edwin Fox is an East Indiaman built in 1853 of teak in Calcutta, India.  She is the second oldest surviving merchant sailing ship. Only the whaling ship Charles W. Morgan is older. To see more and larger photos of the Edwin Fox, click here.

Her career is described on the Edwin Fox Society website:  On her maiden voyage to London via the Cape of Good Hope she carried 10 passengers and a general cargo. Less than a year later she was purchased by Duncan Dunbar and was immediately put into service with the British Government as a troop ship for the Crimean War, reputedly carrying such illustrious passengers as Florence Nightingale. After the fall of Sebastopol she was refitted out to again carry civilian passengers and general cargo. Edwin Fox made her first voyage to the Southern Ocean on 14 February 1856 carrying 5 passengers and some cargo arriving in Melbourne on 28th May.

Continue reading →

Why Stopping Ocean Plastic Dumping Matters — Are You Eating Plastic for Dinner?

Posted on by January 14, 2016

Recently, we posted that five nations were responsible for 60% of the plastic dumped in the world’s oceans. Why is plastic so destructive to the ocean environment? National Geographic put together the short animation below to explain all the damage that dumping plastic can do.

Are You Eating Plastic for Dinner?

Canadian Whale Watching Boat Sinks : Five Dead, One Missing

Posted on by January 14, 2016
Photo: Albert Titian/Facebook

Photo: Albert Titian/Facebook

MV Leviathan II, a 65′ whale watching boat, sank late yesterday afternoon, off the port of Tofino on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. 27 were aboard when the vessel sank. Five are reported to have died and one person is still missing. Of the 21 rescued, 18 were sent to a local hospital.

Leviathan II is owned by Jamie’s Whaling Station & Adventure Centres and is one of the largest whale watching vessels in port Tofino. The boat sank near Plover Reefs, west of Vargas Island. The area is said to be a seal rookery. There is speculation that the boat hit a rock while observing seals. There are reports of a “mayday” call from the stricken vessel. The first responders on site were boats from the Ahousaht First Nation, whose members saw a distress flare. They were soon joined by local fishermen and the Canadian Coast Guard with a rescue boat and helicopter.

Continue reading →

Five Countries are Responsible for 60% of Plastic Dumped in the Oceans

Posted on by October 25, 2015

stemmingtideFor several years now, we have posted about the so-called ocean garbage patches, the great swaths of the oceans where plastic and other floating debris accumulate while riding on vast circular currents. The problem is that an estimated 8 million metric tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans each year. A new study by the Ocean Conservancy and McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, Stemming the Tide, identifies the leading plastic polluters. According to the study, five countries are responsible for 60% of the plastic dumped in the oceans — China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

Continue reading →

The Threat of GPS Hacking — Brush off Those Sextants

Posted on by January 14, 2016

sextantsightIn 1998, the United States Naval Academy dropped celestial navigation from its curriculum. If a naval officer wished to know where he or she was, the officer simply had to read the display on a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver.  Sextants, chronometers, and nautical almanacs became artifacts of another, less technological time.  Now, a decade and a  the Navy has had second thoughts. Recent concerns about potential cyber-attacks on global positioning satellite software and data, which could disable or spoof GPS navigation systems world-wide, has led the Navy to return to teaching  celestial navigation to midshipmen at the Naval Academy. Time to brush off the sextants.

Continue reading →

Hurricane Patricia — Record Breaking Storm on a Misnamed Ocean

Posted on by January 14, 2016

hurricanepatWhen Ferdinand Magellan rounded the tip of South America in 1521, he encountered favourable winds. He named the ocean Mar Pacifico meaning “peaceful sea” in Portuguese.  Today, Hurricane Patricia, the most powerful tropical cyclone ever measured in the Western Hemisphere, is expected to make landfall on the Mexican west coast near the resort cities of Puerto Vallarta and Manzanillo. This morning, the hurricane’s maximum sustained winds were measured an unprecedented 200 mph (320 kph).  Weather.com reports that  Hurricane Patricia now also holds the record for lowest pressure in any hurricane on record. With a minimum central pressure of 880 millibars (25.99 inches of mercury) at the 4 a.m. CDT advisory, Patricia broke the record of 882 millibars set by Wilma almost exactly 10 years ago. Perhaps, Magellan could have chosen a better name for the, so often, less than “peaceful” Pacific Ocean.

“The Finest Hours” — New Movie About Heroic Coast Guard Rescue

Posted on by October 22, 2015

The US Coast Guard rarely gets enough credit for the remarkable work that they do in routinely rescuing mariners in often extremely dangerous conditions. A new movie, “The Finest Hours“, is coming out this winter, which tells the story of what is considered by many to be the greatest small-boat rescue in Coast Guard history — the heroic effort to save the crew of the SS Pendleton in a horrible nor’easter off the coast of Massachusetts in 1952. Four men — coxswain Bernard C. Webber and his crew Andrew J. Fitzgerald, Richard P. Livese, and Ervin E. Mask — would later receive the Gold Lifesaving Medal, the service’s highest decoration for heroism during a rescue operation.  The movie stars Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Eric Bana.

The real-life story behind Disney’s forthcoming Coast Guard rescue movie, ‘The Finest Hours’

The Finest Hours Official Trailer #1 (2015) – Chris Pine, Eric Bana Movie HD