Photo: Marko Thiem, Marinetraffic.com
After attempting to sail on Wednesday and Thursday, the cruise ship Carnival Splendor finally departed San Diego under its own power on Friday, accompanied by two tugs. As of Sunday morning, around 05:00 local time, the ship was approaching San Francisco under its own power at roughly 12 knots. The ship will be drydocked in San Francisco to complete repairs and is expected to return to service on February 20th. The 215′ tall ship could not be drydocked in San Diego as it could not fit under the Coronado Bridge which has a 200′ maximum vertical clearance. The Pier 70 dry dock in San Francisco was expanded three years ago and is now the only drydock on the West Coast capable of repairing a ship the size of the Splendor.
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An update on 
Last November, 
A group of former workers at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in the San Francisco Bay Area has launched a campaign to bring the USS Olympia to San Pablo Bay. The Olympia, Commodore George Dewey’s flagship at the Battle of Manila Bay, is the only surviving steel warship of its era.
Nelson style speed dating? I hope this doesn’t involve boarding with cutlasses.
As one who is shivering in the snow, I am highly envious of the good folks in San Diego who will be celebrating their 3rd annual 
This story is a few days old, but remains strange and disturbing. The Dutch coaster Leopard, carrying a cargo of weapons, was reported to have been hijacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Oman last week, but when a Turkish naval vessel located the ship, there was no sign of the crew of six, nor of the pirates. A hijacked Taiwanese owned fishing vessel, believed to be being used as a pirate mother ship, was observed heading towards Somalia. There is speculation that the crew was aboard the hijacked fishing vessel. There is also concern that the crew, two Danes and four Filipinos, may have been killed. The Leopard was carrying a cargo of arms but was apparently abandoned by the pirates, leaving the arms cargo untouched.
Grim news. Late Saturday night, the wooden vessel Hasan Reis in the Mediterranean, carrying over 260 passengers, reported to be illegal immigrants from Afghanistan, began to leak in heavy seas and subsequently sank. The Dutch ship 
An interesting followup to a 