Update: One blogger has plotted the trajectories and determined that the contrail was that of US Airways flight 808. At least no one is claiming that it was a weather balloon. The Daily Show has its own spin.
On Monday night what appeared to be a missile launch from the Pacific ocean was video-taped 35 miles out to sea, west of L.A. and north of Catalina Island. Thus far, no one has been able to identify who launched the missile or even if a missile was launched.
Perhaps the best news for the stranded passengers on the disabled cruise ship, Carnival Splendor, is that the flush toilets aboard are back in service and that the ship is proceeding slowly under tow to the mainland. Still lacking refrigeration on the ship, the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. Navy have delivered, by helicopter cases, Spam, boxes of croissants and other easy-to-transport food and supplies. The supplies are being airlifted to the ship on a Navy Seahawk helicopter from the aircraft carrier, USS Ronald Reagan, which arrived on the scene on Tuesday.
Two tugs are now towing the ship with a third as escort. A statement by Carnival announced, “Given the ship’s speed and current position, we have decided to take the vessel to San Diego where it is expected to arrive late Thursday. Additionally, we are in the process of making all the necessary hotel and flight arrangements for our guests. If the ship is unable to maintain sufficient speed under tow, it is possible that we could revert to the previous plan and dock in Ensenada.”
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Thirty five years ago today the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, loaded with more 26,000 tons of taconite pellets, sank in a November gale in Lake Superior. All 29 of her officers and crew were lost. The sinking was the greatest disaster in the history of the Great Lakes and was made legendary by a song by Canadian folk singer Gordon Light foot. (A video of the song after the jump)
Despite repeated investigation of the wreck site, no single cause for the sinking has been agreed on. The US Coast Guard analysis suggested that ineffective closure of the hatch covers could have caused the sinking while the Lake Carriers Association believe it was due to damage following a grounding. A third theory suggests that a rogue wave sank the ship.
EDMUND FITZGERALD – unexplained 35 years later
Edmund Fitzgerald: The song, the survivors, the anniversary
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Klondike shipwreck brought to life with 3D scans
A Gold Rush-era shipwreck at the bottom of a Yukon lake is coming to life with the help of cutting-edge digital 3D scan images. The images were produced in June by researchers working on the wreck of the A.J. Goddard, a 19th-century sternwheeler that vanished in Lake Laberge in 1901. Researchers from the Institute of Nautical Archaeology captured images of the sternwheeler with underwater sonar scanners supplied by the U.S. firms BlueView Technologies and Oceangate. Millions of captured images were then assembled into a 3D model, similar to a recent map of the wreck of the Titanic off the east coast of Newfoundland.
Update: Tugs have been dispatched from Long Beach to tow the stricken cruise ship to Ensenada, Mexico to disembark passengers.
An early morning fire on Monday in the engine room on the Carnival Splendor has left the ship dead in the water in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Mexico. The 952-foot Carnival Splendor is one of Carnival Cruise Lines’ biggest ships at 113,000-tons with a reported compliment of 3,299 passengers and 1,167 crew members. The fire is reported to be extinguished and there are no reported injuries
The U.S. Coast Guard has sent three cutters and a helicopter and the Mexican Navy is reported to have sent a patrol boat and aircraft.
Carnival Splendor Catches Fire Off Mexico, Ship in Limbo
Coast Guard responds to fire aboard cruise ship en route to Puerto Vallarta
Thanks to Irwin Bryan for the heads up.
William Hammond’s new novel, For Love of Country, was released in October. Set in the early 1780s in the years following the American Revolution, the novel follows the adventures of the seafaring Cutler family of Hingham, Massachusetts, and the supporting cast from the first novel of the series, A Matter of Honor.
An interview with William Hammond based on an interview originally published in Astrodene’s Historic Naval Fiction:
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Sad news from over the weekend. A post-mortem on the 35 dead pilot whales was cancelled Sunday due to bad weather.
Photo of the Meerwald at Sunset by Gail South will be among the auction offerings.
Bayshore Discovery Project, the good folks who keep the historic schooner A.J. Meerwald sailing, are having their yearly Oyster Fest! this Friday, November 12th at the Centerton Country Club in Pittsgrove, NJ. Today, Monday November 8th, is the last day to reserve tickets.
From their press release:
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The CBC’s program “Land and Sea” broadcast their documentary “Concordia: Tall Ship Down” today, focusing on the knockdown and sinking of the SV Concordia. It can be watched on-line at the link below. The documentary doesn’t answer the outstanding questions about the sinking, but is a fascinating account by those onboard when the ship was hit by what many believe was a microburst.
In September, we posted that the Gipsy Moth IV, the famous yacht sailed by Sir Francis Chichester singlehanded around the world was for sale. Last week, it was reported that two anonymous donors donated more than £250,000 to the United Kingdom Sailing Academy (UKSA), the charity that owns the yacht, to allow it to continue to sail the Gipsy Moth IV to help train young sailors.
The 150 windowless inside staterooms on the new 4,000 passenger cruise ship, Disney Dream, will have something unusual – virtual portholes. High def cameras pointing port, starboard, fore and aft will transmit the appropriate view to the cabin “port holes” which is actually a 42 inch video monitor. Sounds like a great idea. What I am not sure about is the addition of “Disney magic” which will added composited images of various Disney characters flying by the port hole from time to time. Personally a view of the ocean is just fine without Goofy, Peter Pan or Dumbo floating by. But that is just me. The Disney Dream goes into service in January 2011.
MV Samho Dream
The MV Samho Dream, a Korean VLCC, and its crew of five South Koreans and 19 Filipinos, was ransomed for $9.5 million dollars. It had by hijacked by Somali pirates last April. The MV Golden Blessing, a Singaporean chemical tanker, with its 23 Chinese crew, was also ransomed for a report $2.8 million.
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The 36 meter steel schooner Noorderlicht celebrates her one hundredth birthday this year. With ten double cabins for passengers, she cruises along the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean in the summer and coastal Norway in the Autumn. Her winter employment is what makes her remarkable, however. In February, the Noorderlicht is allowed to freeze in the ice of the Tempelfjorden, a fjord on the island of Spitzberg. Here she serves as a hotel on the ice for hearty travelers who arrive by dog sled. The trips are organized by Base Camp Explorer.
Kevin Rushby writes about a visit to the Noorderlicht in this morning’s Guardian. Thanks to Tom Russell of the Traditional Sail Professionals Linked-In group for pointing out the article.
The Penobscot Marine Museum is seeking submissions from artists in all visual media for a juried art exhibit entitled “The Art of the Boat.” The show will examine the artistic aspects of boat design and construction, and will run from May through October 2011.
From the Museum press release:
“This exhibit will explore the boat as art and the boatbuilder as artist,” said the museum’s curator, Ben Fuller. “We will look for the artist’s interpretation of the boatbuilder’s art through studies of shape, form, structure and details.”
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Modern technology has revolutionized single handled ocean racing in so many ways for both sailors and spectators. The five sailors in the Velux Five Oceans race not only face all the hazards of the sea as they sail singlehanded around the world, but are also blogging, taking photographs and videotaping their exploits to entertain web-potatoes around the world. (A web-potato is similar to a couch-potato except that a web-potato sits in front of a computer rather than a television.)
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Photo: Newspix/Rex Features
Andy Irons, three time world champion surfer, was found dead in his hotel room in Dallas on Tuesday. He had been scheduled to compete in the Rip Curl Pro Search in Puerto Rico but became ill, reportedly with a bout of dengue fever, which he had contracted at an earlier event. He was on his way back to his home in Hawaii. On Wednesday, the Association of Surfing Professionals, Rip Curl event organizers and pro surfers unanimously decided to postpone competition until Friday out of respect for his memory.
Andy Irons – Top Hawaiian surfer and three times world champion
Julien Berthier is a sculptor and a conceptual artist. His work titled “Love, Love” is not in fact a sinking sailboat, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. Bertheir started with a 6.5 meter yacht which he cut in half and added a new keel to allow the boat to remain upright while appearing to be sinking. The modified vessel/sculpture also has a motor, so it can move around, no doubt startling everyone everywhere it goes. There is a photograph of “Love, Love” out of the water as well as a video of the craft after the jump.
Carter Fish Company by N. Rauam
A wonderful show by Naima Rauam. It captures everything about the old market with the possible exception of the smell of fish.
Fifth Annual Remembering Fulton Fish Market Art Exhibit 2010
The Boston Globe has an interesting interview with Geoffrey Wolff, who has written a new biography of Joshua Slocum, The Hard Way Around: The Passages of Joshua Slocum. The book also got a rave review by Nathaniel Phibrick in the New York Times Sunday Book Section.
While the biography sounds intiguing, reading the interview made me want to go back to reread Slocum’s classic Sailing Alone Around the World. Joshua Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone in1897 in his 37-foot sloop, the Spray. He wrote Sailing Alone Around the World, a masterpiece of nautical literature, in 1900 on the return from his epic voyage.
From the Boston Globe interview:
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Photo: Shaun O'Boyle
The Witte boneyard, often referred to as New York’s graveyard of ships, usually sits unnoticed on the shore of Staten Island on the Arthur Kill in a far corner of New York harbor. In the last week, however, it has appeared in the media twice – as a set on a network crime show and as a podcast on a local radio station. On this week’s CSI:NY (Do Not Pass Go – Season 7, Edisode 6) , a television show about crime scene investigators in New York City, a murderer hid a body on an abandoned ship in the Witte Boneyard on Staten Island. Through the wonder of editing, the scene inside the ship was shot on the windjammer Peking, tied up at South Street Seaport. Sadly, the interior of the Peking looks no better than the exterior shots of the ship graveyard, which is obviously why the ship was chosen as a set. (This takes place at about the 38 minute mark of the episode.)
Then a local radio station, WNYC, featured the salvage yard in a pre-Halloween podcast. Click on the red arrow below to listen.
The Witte Boneyard: A Different Kind of Graveyard
Along the lower part of Staten Island’s Arthur Kill waterway, historic ships rot and rust in the mud.