On Leg 2 of the Volvo Ocean Race, the Team Vesta Wind boat ran aground Saturday on a reef in the Cargados Carajos archipelago about 430 km to the northeast of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. There are no reported injuries and the nine … Continue reading
Category Archives: Current
In 2009, a humpback whale sighting in New York Bay was a surprise. In 2011, there were 5 whales sighted over the course of the season. By 2012, there were 25 whales sighted, then 43 whales in 2013, and in … Continue reading
The Board of Longitude Project, a partnership between Cambridge University Library and the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich in the UK, has digitized the complete papers of the Board of Longitude from its founding in 1714 until its abolition in 1828. … Continue reading
Last February, we posted that the US Navy planned to deploy its first laser weapon on one of its oldest ships. The new laser weapon has now been deployed on the 43 year old USS Ponce, an Austin-class amphibious transport dock, for field … Continue reading
An update on previous posts involving sailors of a certain age. Sir Robin Knox Johnston, 75, sailing Grey Power, placed third in the highly competitive Class 40 fleet in the Route Du Rhum race between St. Malo in Brittany to Guadeloupe. In … Continue reading
Unless I am mistaken, when the Oracle Team US AC 72 sailed to victory in 2013, there was only one American citizen in the crew. The members of Emirates Team New Zealand, which needed the sponsorship of Emirates Airlines to … Continue reading
Great news! The Massachusetts of Department of Conservation and Recreation has signed a contract with Boothbay Harbor Shipyard for $6,048,025 for the restoration of the schooner Ernestina, ex-Effie M. Morrissey. As we posted in July, private donors, Bob Hildreth and Gerry Lenfest, contributed $2.8 … Continue reading
The TS Royalist has sailed into Portsmouth for the final time. The 43 year old sail training ship owned by the UK Marine Society & Sea Cadets is being decommissioned. Since her delivery in 1971, TS Royalist has taken 30,000 … Continue reading
A month long Pacific cruise on the Princess Cruise Line Crown Princess has been disrupted by a norovirus outbreak. 158 of 3,009 passengers were sickened by highly contagious stomach virus, while 14 of 1,160 crew members were affected. The ship will return … Continue reading
Twenty years ago, a small group of enthusiasts conceived a plan to build a replica of the French frigate, l’Hermione, the ship which carried the Marquis de Lafayette, to America in 1780 with the news of French support for the American revolution. … Continue reading
Let’s hope this sort of stupidity doesn’t become popular. Recently, 26-year old Australian, Harrison Williams, thought that it would be a good idea to jump onto the back of a dead and decomposing humpback whale, drifting in the ocean off … Continue reading
Great news about the schooner Nathaniel Bowditch. In February, we posted about the foreclosure and auction of the 82 foot long schooner. There were no bids at the auction in Camden, ME, which ended after 27 seconds. The future of … Continue reading
Back in the 70s, the advent of oceangoing ships with wheeled cargo introduced the shipping community to the Ro-Ro (roll-on/roll-off.) Since then acronyms with an “o” sound have gained in popularity. General cargo and container ships became Lo-Los (lift-on/lift-off). Combination … Continue reading
Yesterday, Horizon Line, a US Flag Jones Act container ship operator, announced that it was ending operations. It had sold its Alaskan service to Matson, its Hawaiian operations to Pasha Group, and would be shutting down its operations to Puerto … Continue reading
Recently, the BBC published an article titled WW1: The indestructible warship. The article refers to the Graf Goetzen. Calling her the “indestructible warship” seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. As warships go, she was not very impressive and … Continue reading
Thanks to Richard Pekelney for passing along the link to a wonderful panoramic and audio tour of the USS Pampanito, a World War II Balao class Fleet submarine museum and memorial that is open for visitors daily at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. … Continue reading
In September, the wreck of one of the two ships in Franklin’s lost expedition of 1845 was located near the the Victoria Strait in Canada. As both ships in the expedition were similar sized bomb vessels, modified for exploration, it was initially unclear whether … Continue reading
I have mixed feeling about modern supermaxi monohulls. They are complicated, expensive sailing wedges — pointy in the bow and broad and flat on the stern. But they are really fast, and watching Jim Clark‘s new 100’ carbon fiber speed-demon … Continue reading
In Lake Champlain this summer, on July 31, near Scotch Bonnet, cryptozoology enthusiasts Katy Elizabeth and Dennis Hall recorded underwater audio which sounds remarkably like echolocation of a marine mammal. They say that it sounds like a beluga whale. Beluga … Continue reading
An estimated quarter of a million people lined the docks and the shore at St. Malo in Brittany to watch the start of the Route du Rhum Race, the 4,500 mile trans-Atlantic singlehanded race to Guadeloupe, which is sailed every … Continue reading