Gordon Bok — Sailor, Singer, Songwriter and Wood Carver

Posted on by May 12, 2018

Gordon Bok – Photo by Chris Koldewy

If you are fond of songs of ships and the sea, you may already know Gordon Bok’s music. If not, you should definitely make his acquaintance. Bok is a particular favorite of mine — a sailor, songwriter, singer and a master wood carver from Down East Maine. He was recently interviewed by Rick Landers in Guitar International.  Landers writes: 

The roots of the many songs by master songwriter, Gordon Bok, stir a cauldron of mystery, wonder, fear and joy that are never far away when one sails the sea along the coast of his native Maine. Gordon has the deep rough-hewn gravitas of a man who not only thrives by the sea, but in many ways is of the sea.

His tunes cast a net that gathers us up in his songs and his tales of life where laborious skills are honored, when some are notable for their beauty and others held dear, as they may be relied upon when life and death slip beyond the philosophical and dip into the harsh realities of the sea. Click here to read the full interview.

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Tall Ship Oliver Hazard Perry in Annapolis and Philadelphia

Posted on by May 11, 2018

If you are around Annapolis tomorrow, May 12th, the 200-foot Class A Tall Ship, SSV Oliver Hazard Perry will be at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and will be open for public tours from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Dewey Seawall (Gate 1 entrance).  On Monday, May 14, it will depart with 26 Midshipman Candidates and four instructors from the Naval Academy Prep School (NAPS) in Newport, R.I. While sailing on a 12-day voyage, the students will learn about shipboard life, the mechanics of sailing and teamwork. Once in Philadelphia, they will participate in a spectacular Parade of Sail (Thursday, May 24) for Tall Ships participating in Sail Philadelphia’s Tall Ships Festival, before disembarking on Friday (May 25).

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Scientists Report Humpback Baby-Boom Off Antartica

Posted on by May 10, 2018

After posting about a terrible year for North Atlantic right whales, in which no new calves were spotted following breeding season, it is refreshing to see some good news about whales. Scientists have observed what is being described as a “baby-boom” among humpback whales in the Southern Ocean off Antarctica. The researchers are not entirely sure why, but female humpbacks, in recent years, have had high pregnancy rates and are giving birth to more calves.

Humpback whales have seen a worldwide recovery after a moratorium on commercial whaling was imposed in the late 1980s. As we posted in 2016, of the fourteen distinct humpback populations in the world’s oceans, ten are no longer considered to be endangered. Humpback communities off northwest Africa and in the Arabian Sea are considered to be endangered. Populations near Mexico and in the Western North Pacific are listed as threatened.  Continue reading →

Guilty Plea in USS Fitzgerald Collision Court-Martial

Posted on by May 9, 2018

The US Navy courts-martial of the officers of the USS Fitzgerald have begun. The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer collided with the Philippine-flagged container ship, ACX Crystal near Yokosuka, Japan on June 17, 2017, killing 9 US sailors. A Navy investigation concluded that the collision was caused by ineffective watchstanding and failure of the bridge crew to respond in a timely manner and change course to avoid the collision.

Yesterday, Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, the junior officer responsible for navigation at the time of the collision, pleaded guilty to the charge of dereliction of duty.  According to a Navy statement, she received a punitive letter and will forfeit half a month’s pay for three months as part of her sentence.

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Tall Ships in Alexandria, VA — At and Beneath the Waterfront

Posted on by May 8, 2018

Photo: Katherine Frey/The Washington Post

Last October we posted about the Providence, a replica of a Revolutionary War sloop, which in the summer of 2019, will be moving to its new home port, Old Town Alexandria, VA. Old Town Alexandria is certainly no stranger to 18th-century ships. Indeed, it would be literally accurate to say that Old Town was, at least in part, built on ships. As ships wore out, they were filled with soil and used in expanding the waterfront in what was then a very busy commercial port. 

Recently, three 18th-century merchant ships were uncovered in a single block during the excavation for a townhouse and condominium project along the Potomac River. The area was originally a cove called Point Lumley. The three ships were scuttled and used as fill in around 1798. The newly filled land was used for the construction of warehouses, mills and other commercial buildings.

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Not Just the LCS — EPF, Expeditionary Fast Transport Ships Deficient, As Well

Posted on by May 8, 2018

The Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) are not the only small new Navy ships with serious operating deficiencies. Recently, the Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General released a report on the shortcomings of a new class of fast, shallow draft, transport ship, the Expeditionary Fast Transport (EPF), ordered by the Navy.  In addition to being over budget, the aluminum catamaran vessels are slower and have less range than designed. They also cannot transfer vessels at sea in waves much larger than a ripple. Also, the ships have cybersecurity flaws which could potentially allow hackers to disable or take control of the ship’s systems.  

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Ancient Mariners — Homo Erectus in the Philippines 700,000 Years Ago?

Posted on by May 6, 2018

Researchers have dated stone tools and bones from a butchered rhinoceros and other ancient fauna found in the Philippines’ northern island of Luzon, that date back over 700,000 years, or several hundred thousand years before modern man evolved. So far no human bones have been discovered, but  as reported in a recent report in the journal Nature, recent excavations in the Cagayan Valley of northern Luzon in the Philippines that have yielded 57 stone tools associated with an almost-complete disarticulated skeleton of Rhinoceros philippinensis, which shows clear signs of butchery, together with other fossil fauna remains attributed to stegodon, Philippine brown deer, freshwater turtle, and monitor lizard.

The discovery raises many questions. Who were these early hunters? When did they arrive in the Philippines? How did they cross the seas to reach the islands?  Because Homo sapiens, or modern man, did not arrive until around until around 300,000 years ago, the rhino hunters on Luzon were most likely Homo erectus, the first the first hominin believed to have ventured out of Africa.

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When Keels Fall Off — Cheeki Rafiki & Assigning Blame

Posted on by May 7, 2018

Cheeki Rafiki After Losing Keel

When the keel on the Cheeki Rafiki, a Beneteau 40.7 sailing yacht, broke off in a storm in the mid-Atlantic in May 2014, the yacht capsized and four UK sailors died. Why did the keel fall off and who was to blame for the deaths?

In response to the second part of the question, the British courts chose to blame Douglas Innes, managing director of the Stormforce Coaching, the firm which owned and was responsible for the maintenance of the yacht. Innes was charged with manslaughter and with failing to operate the yacht in a safe manner. In July of last year, he was found guilty of the lesser charge, failing to operate the yacht in a safe manner, contrary to the Merchant Shipping Act. At the end of last month, a jury acquitted Innes of the manslaughter charges.

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Politics Creates Chesapeake Crab Crisis

Posted on by May 4, 2018

The good news is that the waters of the Chesapeake are getting progressively cleaner and the crab population has experienced a significant rebound. The bad news is that anti-immigrant politics have plunged the Chesapeake crabbing industry into chaos.

First, more on the good news. Last year, a study by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science reported that in 2016, Chesapeake Bay fisheries received an “A” for the health of the blue crab, anchovy and rockfish populations. Blue crabs scored 90 percent, improving drastically compared with two years ago, when the grade was 32 percent.

The really bad news is that despite the recovery of the crab fisheries, there is a dramatic shortage of workers to pick the meat sold in restaurants and supermarkets. The anti-immigrant policies of the current administration has resulted in 40% of the seasonal crab workers not receiving temporary visas to work in the Maryland crab processing plants.

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Bowhead Whales, Jazz Singers of the Sea

Posted on by May 3, 2018

Photo: K Stafford

Last month, researchers from the University of Washington released a study performed over four winters which recorded 184 bowhead whales singing beneath the ice in Greenland. What they found was remarkable. Kate Stafford and other UW oceanographers discovered that the songs of the bowhead were far more complex and nuanced than perhaps any other whale, including the humpback whales, which are well known for their yearly songs. Some have called the bowheads jazz singers for the creative variations in their songs.  Science Daily reports:

“If humpback whale song is like classical music, bowheads are jazz,” said lead author Kate Stafford, an oceanographer at the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory. “The sound is more freeform. And when we looked through four winters of acoustic data, not only were there never any song types repeated between years, but each season had a new set of songs.”

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Akademik Lomonosov — Floating Chernobyl or Nuclear Titanic?

Posted on by May 2, 2018

The media has called the Russian floating nuclear power plant Akademik Lomonosov a “Floating Chernobyl” and a “Nuclear Titanic.” Is this just headline hyperbole? Or, is the barge-mounted 70-megawatt nuclear reactor a serious threat? It is hard to tell, which is scary in its own right. 

The floating reactor is currently on its way to Murmansk, a town in Northwest Russia, to be loaded with nuclear fuel. Once operational, the plant will be connected to the electrical grid in the Arctic town of Pevek in 2019. It will be the world’s northernmost nuclear reactor, capable of powering a town of 100,000 people. The reactor barge will be anchored at the Kamchatka Peninsula in the Arctic, northwest of Russia.  The almost 500-foot long Akademik Lomonosov has a displacement of around 21,500 tons.

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Of Eleven Littoral Combat Ships Commissioned, Zero Deployed in 2108

Posted on by May 1, 2018

The saga of the US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) continues. The ships were intended to be small, versatile and relatively inexpensive. So far they have succeeded only in being small. The Navy intends to have around 30 of these ships built and so far has commissioned eleven. This year, the Navy plans on not deploying any of the LCS. Maintenance issues have many of LCS tied to the dock. The program itself is not new. The first LCS was commissioned a decade ago, but the problem-plagued ships have seen relatively little actual service. 

The LCS, which early on earned the nickname “Little Crappy Ships,” are actually two different ships types. The Freedom Class are monohulls while the Independence Class is a trimaran design. Why the Navy chose to develop tow very different designs in parallel is the subject of some discussion. The LCS were originally intended to be built for around $200 million a copy. Their cost has not risen to close to $600 million each. Both classes have been plagued with reliability and maintenance issues. It is also unclear whether the LCS would have much a chance to survive actual combat. The ships were designed to highly modular able to switch between various mission configurations, but this flexibility has proven to be largely illusory.

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The Fourth Amendment vs the Penn. Fish and Boat Commission

Posted on by April 30, 2018

A very interesting case was argued recently before the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Superior Court over a $75 fine issued to a boater for not having enough life jackets aboard his boat. The issue before the court, however, was not life jackets, but the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.

It all began in May of 2016, when Fred Karash and four friends were enjoying a boat trip on Lake Erie on Fred’s 23-foot cabin cruiser. Without warning, they were boarded by law enforcement officers and detained for an hour, while Fred’s boat was searched. The officers admitted they had no reason to suspect the boaters had violated any law or regulation but claimed the right under state law to search any boat at any time on any Pennsylvania waterway in order to conduct a “safety inspection.” As it turned out Fred had all the required safety equipment aboard but was short one life jacket. The officers issued a ticket for $75 and sent Fred and his friends on their way. 

Now, most would have simply paid the ticket, while perhaps uttering a few choice curse words beneath their breath. Fred Karash chose another course. Continue reading →

SSV Oliver Hazard Perry — Employment Opportunities

Posted on by April 30, 2018

SSV Oliver Hazard Perry is the largest civilian sailing school vessel in the United States and the first ocean-going full-rigged ship to built in the U.S. in over 100 years. Her accommodations hold 32 people overnight in addition to her 17 professional crew. And speaking of professional crew, the Oliver Hazard Perry Rhode Island organization is looking for applicants for all positions for the spring/summer 2018, including captain, mates, engineers, ABs, deckhands, steward, bosun, medical officer, and program manager.  To learn more, click here.

Record Quantities of Microplastics Found in Sea Ice

Posted on by April 28, 2018

A new study has found record quantities of microplastics in sea ice. The study, published this week in Nature Communications, demonstrates “just how pervasive this type of pollution has become in every last corner of our planet,” says Melanie Bergmann, one of the study’s authors. The researchers found extremely high concentrations of plastic in their samples—up to 12,000 particles per liter of sea ice, or about 45,000 particles per gallon. The majority of particles were microscopically small. 

The ice cores were gathered from five regions throughout the Arctic Ocean in the spring of 2014 and summer of 2015. They were taken back to the laboratory, where they were analyzed for their unique plastic “fingerprint”. The BBC reports that the “plastic fingerprint” from the ice samples suggests they were carried on ocean currents from the huge garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean or arose locally due to pollution from shipping and fishing.  More than half of the microplastic particles within the ice were so small that they could easily be ingested by sea life, said Ilka Peeken of the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, who led the study.

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