This morning we posted about the possibility of the immediate lay-up of the UK’s flagship, the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. We now read that one of the two new £3 billion aircraft carriers will never carry aircraft and may sail into lay-up or be put up for sale, shortly after she is delivered.
Navy aircraft carrier will be sold after three years – and never carry jets
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HMS Ark Royal
If the recommendations of a UK defense review are implemented, Britain will have the same capacity to launch aircraft from ships as Nelson did, which is to say, none at all, prior to 2019 when new aircraft carriers come into service.
Defence review: HMS Ark Royal to be scrapped
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NYK Yamatai
Two years ago, an article appeared in Scientific American, Slippery Ships That Float on Air, describing the various attempts to reduce frictional resistance on ship’s hulls by injecting air bubbles or introducing pockets of air beneath the hull. At the time, the research looked promising but had failed to develop a fully practical technique.
Now Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd may have gotten closer to getting it right. Earlier this year they launched the NYK-Hinode Line heavy lift ship/module carrier Yamatai equipped with the the proprietary Mitsubishi Air Lubrication System (MALS) designed to reduce frictional resistance by injecting air bubbles beneath the hull. The Yamatai is the the world’s first application of an air-blow type air lubrication system on an ocean-going vessel for permanent use. Testing is now ongoing.
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The Brooklyn Navy Yard, in New York on the East River in Wallabout Basin, has always seemed to me to be equal parts working industrial park, living museum, and ghost town. The land was purchased by the Federal government in 1801 and it became an active U.S. Navy shipyard by 1806.
An effort is being made not to lose the history of the shipyard. A new exhibition and visitors center is now under construction in the old Building 92 and is slated to open in late 2011. The 1857 Marine Commandant’s House is also under restoration and will feature a six-gallery exhibit.
Over 100 ships were built at the yard. At its peak, during World War II, the yard employed 70,000 people. The yard was sold to the City of New York in 1966 and space is currently leased to over 200 companies employing around 5,000 people. The tenants include dry-docking and ship terminal services.
King's Point schooner Summerwind
The Summerwind, a 1929 Alden schooner, donated to the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point just last year by Mr. and Mrs. J. Don Williamson, won the Class AA division of the Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race on corrected time. The other top contenders in Class AA (rated length greater than 50 feet) were the Pride of Baltimore II and the Lynx, both sharp built privateer replicas. Congratualtions to King’s Point. A very impressive performance.
In 2007 the schooner Virginia won the great Chesapeake Bay Schooner race, establishing a record time which remains unbeaten. This year, sadly, while the other schooners raced, she remained tied to a dock in Norfolk, Virginia.
Cash-strapped Schooner Virginia appears dead in the water
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American Brad Van Liew's Eco 60, Le Pingouin
Six sailors have crossed the starting line on the Velux 5 Oceans single-handed around the word race. They are all sailing Eco 60 class sailboats. As the race begins we thought it worthwhile to take a look at this “new” class of ocean racing sailboat, that looks somehow familiar.
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The story goes that the pirate, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, once mixed gunpowder in his rum, set the rum on fire and then drank the explosive mixture, sort of an early 18th century flaming jello shot, but with more incendiary and less jello. It seems that a New Zealand bartender, Ben Simpson at Motel Bar in Wellington, was inspired by Blackbeard to develop his Man O’War Gunpowder Rum, a tobacco, chilli, and gunpowder infused rum which may either put hair on your chest or just possibly set it on fire.
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British Isles
We recently have had several posts regarding rogue waves – a review of Susan Casey’s new book The Wave and the BBC Documentary Freak Waves. Oceanographers generally dismissed reports of rogue waves as wild exaggerations or “sea stories,” until a rogue wave was documented hitting the Draupner platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway on January 1, 1995. While rogue waves may not have been scientifically documented until 1995, ships’ captains have been reporting them for many decades. Here is an account of a rogue wave from the deck of three masted windjammer British Isles attempting to round Cape Horn in the winter of 1905. The account sounds almost exactly like the descriptions given in the BBC documentary by two ship’s captains of cruise ships struck by rogue waves almost a hundred years later.
From Captain James P. Barker’s memoir, The Log of a Limejuicer:
At that moment the moon, which had been hidden behind a thick blanket of scurrying clouds, broke through a rift to reveal a scene which caused me to gasp with astonishment and awe. . . . There, stretching endlessly north and south, a mighty wall of water, towering high above its fellows and making them appear insignificant by comparison, was rolling towards the British Isles.
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Today is Blog Action Day where bloggers around the wold are posting about a common theme – water. Most, no doubt, will be blogging about the almost a billion people in the world who do not have access to clean drinking water. This is an immediate problem which should be addressed. I have decided to blog to about another problem, not quite so immediate and not as easy to understand but still a serious threat to all of us – ocean acidification.
Ocean acidification is one of those terms that could easily put you to sleep or at least cause your eyes to glaze over. Nevertheless, if the scientists are correct, ocean acidification could result in the death of the worlds coral reefs by 2100. Likewise, the real threat to whales in the Southern Oceans are not Japanese whalers, but the possible widespread death of krill that are the whales food supply, due again to ocean acidification. Ocean acidification could cause a wholesale collapse of the ocean ecosystem. The effects on those us on shore would be equally disastrous.
What is ocean acidification? From the BBC:
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The SA Agulhas is South Africa’s ice-strengthened polar research vessel. The ship recently completed a five day voyage with an all woman crew and on her arrival in Port Elizabeth Harbor was guided into port by a woman harbor pilot. As part of National Water Week, the SA Agulhas sailed from Cape Town to Durban with an all-female crew recruited from various shipping companies.
Tomorrow is International Blog Action Day, when bloggers around the world get together to blog about a common theme. This year that theme is clean water. Will a few thousand, or even hundreds of thousands, of the chattering class posting about clean water do any real magic? Somehow, I am skeptical. Then again, can it do any harm? Probably not.
Attorney David Leslie-Hughes with model of the Mayflower
Today in the Bucks County Courthouse in Pennsylvania, a 20-inch-long and 22-inch-tall model of the Mayflower, the ship that carried English separatists, known as Pilgrims, to Massachusetts in 1620, will go on public display for the first time in the United States. The model is said to be built from a plank from the original ship. The display is part of a local historian’s presentation on the lives of William Penn and his father. What does the Mayflower have to do with William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania? Not a lot, but there is a tangential connection. William Penn died in Ruscombe, and was buried in the cemetery of the Jordans Quaker meeting house, which happens to be a few hundred yards from the “Mayflower Barn.” The barn is said to have been built from the planking and timbers of the Mayflower of 1620. In the 1930s, members of the national Quaker society removed a piece of timber from the barn and commissioned a model maker to craft three replicas of the Mayflower, one of which is being displayed today in Buck’s County.
Around Fells Point and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor will be a glorious place for any schooner lover to be this evening. There will be a parade of sail of the over forty schooners who are participating the 21st Annual Great Chesapeake Bay Schooner Race starting at 1700. Tomorrow the race from Baltimore to Portsmouth, Virgina starts at 1300. This year, transponders installed on the racing schooners will allow spectators on the internet to follow the race down the bay on-line. Click here to see more.
To celebrate the arrival of the schooners, Portsmouth Virginia is sponsoring its Schooner Days – a celebration of the world’s largest gathering of schooners along the waterfront of Olde Towne Portsmouth.
Today, October 13th, is celebrated as the birthday of the United States Navy, not to be confused with Navy Day, which is celebrated on October 27th. The current “birthday” may have more to do with bragging rights than real birthdays.
For many years, the founding of the Navy was celebrated on various dates, the most common being either March 27th, the day in 1794 when the Congress authorized the construction of five frigates, or on April 30th, the day in 1798 when the Navy Department was first established.
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The Center for Whale Research is using a novel approach to tracking orca whales. They are using the only operational zeppelin in the United States, the Airship Eureka, on loan from Farmers’ Insurance, the company that sponsors the zeppelin, which donated a day of flying for the orca survey in Washington’s Puget Sound.
Damage to Tanker Mindoro
This morning around 4:56 UTC the Cypriot container ship Jork Ranger collided with the Greek tanker Mindoro, carrying jet fuel off the Scheveningen coast in the North Sea. The collision caused a fuel spill from a five-meter wide puncture in the tanker.
Oil Slick In North Sea After Tanker-container Ship Collision
Reports quoting the Dutch Coast Guard said the spill did not cause any environmental damage, as a small trail of light paraffin was evaporating soon and drifting away from the Dutch shoreline.
The leak from a five-meter wide hole was plugged by rescue teams without much delay.
Damage to the Jork Ranger
Thanks to Dick Bal for passing the news along. Here is a remarkable AIS plot of the collision. The video is after the jump.
Collision between Greek tanker Mindoro and Cypriot container ship Jork Ranger
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The Mall Gallery in London has a show of work by the Royal Society of Marine Artists from Wed October 13 to Sat October 23, 2010.
Photo: Ayesha Rascoe
According to one study the US has enough offshore wind to power the country four times over. In Europe there are currently 830 wind turbines now installed and grid connected, totalling 2,063 MW in 39 wind farms in nine European countries with over 100 GW of offshore wind projects in various stages of planning. The US, in contrast, generates zero kilowatts from offshore wind. Zero.
Recently Google and Good Energies, a New York based financial firm, have agreed to make a major investment in a proposed $5 billion transmission backbone for future offshore wind farms along the Atlantic Seaboard, a critical bit of infrastructure to move power ashore. Last week, after a nine year legal and regulatory battle, Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, signed a 28 year lease for Cape Wind, a $1 billion, 130-turbine project in the Nantucket Sound that could provide up to 75% of all electricity for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. So is the US beginning to catch up with Europe and the rest of the world? Nope. Not even close. Formidable legal and regulatory obstacles still remain and it is by no mens certain that Cape Wind will ever be built.
Despite Lease Approval, Future of Cape Wind Remains Up in the Air
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Today is Columbus Day in the United States (and Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Happy Thanksgiving Canadians.) Columbus Day is celebrated tomorrow in Spain.
Every year about this time, various scholars and pundits emerge to denigrate the memory of the Genoese naviator and explorer. There were indeed many things for which Christoffa Corombo, as he was known in his home of Genoa, could be criticized for. He never reached China. He severely underestimated the circumference of the Earth, (which may have been more Ptolomy’s fault that Christoffa’s.)
Of course, these are not the faults for which what the modern pundits condemn Columbus. Columbus was indeed an imperialist and he promoted genocide. The man was clearly a monster! Or so they contend. Howard Zinn is his book A People’s History of The United States makes the case:
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