We recently posted about “Women At Sea: Screening, Conversation, Reception,” which was held last Wednesday in Manhattan.  The program included a fascinating documentary Shipping Out, the Story of America’s Seafaring Women and a panel discussion with a number of women seafarers, including the Coast Guard Captain of the Port of New York, Capt. Linda L. Fagan; Coast Guard Head of Prevention, Commander Linda A. Sturgis;  tugboat Captain Ann Loeding; Sandy Hook Pilot, Capt. Coleen Quinn; former tanker, bulker and car carrier Second Mate Debra Tischler; Chief Engineer Jessica DuLong, and Marissa Strawbridge, Second Mate of the SBX-1.  The program and the presentations were extremely interesting and well done.

At the end of the evening I did ask myself one question, what is an SBX-1?  I had even asked Ms. Strawbridge and I still wasn’t sure.

This morning Bonnie K. Frogma, a fellow New York waterblogger, who was also at the presentation, discovered that when visiting Hawaii that she had a photograph taken of her in which there was an odd looking vessel in the background. It was the SBX-1.

But what is an SBX-1?  It is a Sea-based X-band Radar, a floating, self-propelled, mobile radar station mounted on a fifth generation Norwegian-designed, Russian-built CS-50 semi-submersible twin-hulled oil-drilling platform.  It is a dynamically positioned platform designed to operate in high winds and heavy seas and is a part of the U.S. Defense Department Ballistic Missile Defense System.

So it is either a critical part of our national defense or an April Fool’s Day joke.  OK, its is not a joke, just one of the odder looking and most unusual vessels on the ocean.