City of Water Day 2010 – Celebrating the New York City Waterfront

Posted on by July 22, 2010

New York City is metropolis of eight million organized into five boroughs, four of which are islands or are on islands.   This Saturday, the 3rd Annual City of Water Day Festival will be hosted by the Metropolitan Waterfront  Alliance to help remind the island and shore dwellers of the potential of the New York  waterfront for entertainment, education, adventure and flat out fun.   The festivities will he held across the harbor on Governors Island, at Liberty State Park,  at the Brooklyn Bridge Park, on Staten Island and at the Atlantic Basin.  There will be free kayaking, boat tours, waterfront bike rides, fishing demonstrations, and a kid’s fair as well as lots of music and food.  Sounds like lots of fun.

Volunteer Dies during Safety Training on the Star of India

Posted on by July 22, 2010

Greg Gushaw 68, an experienced volunteer, docent and a member of the board of trustees of the Maritime Museum of San Diego fell to his death last Sunday from aloft on the Star of India. Ironically, he fell during a safety training exercise.   His death is reported to be the first on the Star of India since the 1800s.   The Star of India, built in 1863, is the world’s oldest ship that still actively sails.

Man Dies After Falling Overboard From Star Of India Ship
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At Least it wasn’t Scurvy – Crew of Brig Niagara Struck Down by Salmonella

Posted on by July 21, 2010

Last week, twenty six of forty two crew members on the Brig Niagara were sickened by salmonella,  forcing the ship to cut short a visit to a tall ships festival in Cleveland.   Fortunately, the crew is reported to have recovered, and the Niagara set sail again Monday for Duluth, Minn.   The Niagara is a replica of the ship that Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry used to defeat the British at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.

Crew of tall ship sickened by salmonella

Breaching Southern Right Whale Crushes Sailboat

Posted on by July 22, 2010

Update:  South African authorities are investigating whether the whale was harassed before breaching.

A breaching Southern Right Whale landed on top of a ten meter long sail boat off the coast of South Africa on Sunday.   The remarkable photos below were shot by a passenger on a nearby boat.   Fortunately no one was hurt on the sailboat and the whale swam away without apparent injury.  The sailboat however was considerably worse for the encounter.  Click on the thumbnails below to view larger images.

Kaboom! Whale Crash-Lands on Boat

China oil spill a ‘severe threat’

Posted on by July 21, 2010

A worker struggles to rescue a struggling colleague in the Chinese port of Dalian

Sadly the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico is not the only ongoing major oil spill.

China oil spill doubles in size, is deemed ‘severe threat’

China’s largest reported oil spill more than doubled in size to 165 square miles by Wednesday, forcing nearby beaches to close and prompting one official to warn of a “severe threat” to sea life and water quality.
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Sallee Rovers by M. Kei, A Review

Posted on by July 22, 2010

Pirates of the Narrow Sea, Book 1 – Sallee Rovers by M. Kei is well written nautical adventure fiction with a twist or two, or perhaps three.

The novel is not set during the Napoleonic wars and features, as the title suggests, Sallee Rovers, Barbary Coast corsairs, sailing from the Atlantic coast of what is now Morocco.  In this novel the Spanish are the villains while British are not necessarily the heroes. The corsairs are the somewhat more heroic of the novel’s contending forces. The main character is a young, British officer, Lt. Peter Thorton, who for a range of reasons, both logistical and personal, gets caught up with the corsairs and eventually joins them.
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The White Lady with a Dark Past Visiting Panama

Posted on by July 20, 2010

One of the most beautiful tall ships on the water, the Chilean Navy’s Esmeralda, will be docked in Balboa, Panama through tomorrow. Esmeralda, a steel-hulled four-masted barquentine, is nicknamed the “White Lady.”   She is the sister ship to the four-masted topsail schooner Juan Sebastián Elcano, a training ship for the Spanish Navy.
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Collision in the North-East Passage – Two Arctic Tankers Collide

Posted on by July 20, 2010

Indiga and Varzuga

With the onset of limited trans-arctic navigation environmentalists have voiced concern about the potential for pollution due to increased ship traffic.   The recent collision  between two arctic tankers, the Indiga and Varzuga, on the Russian Northern Sea route, demonstrates the basis for these concerns.  Fortunately it appears that no oil was spilled.

Arctic oil tankers collided
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Ketch Bessie-Ellen Transporting 20,000 Bottles of Wine Across the Atlantic

Posted on by July 19, 2010

Last month we posted about the Ketch Bessie-Ellen carrying French wine to the Festival of Valleys in Ballyvaughan, in Ireland’s County Claire.   The Bessie-Ellen will soon set sail on a new 21-day voyage, carrying 20,000 bottles of Château Smith Lafite and Château de Cayx Bordeaux, from Bordeaux, France to Montreal, Canada.

20,000 bottles of wine transported to North America by sailing ship
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Sharktopus – Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Watch the Telly

Posted on by July 19, 2010

On this the thirtieth anniversary of the movie Jaws,  the SyFy Channel has teamed up with the legendary B-Movie Director, Roger Corman, to produce Sharktopus, a thriller about a Navy-engineered half-shark-half-octopus killing machine which, surprise, surprise gets out of control and starts chomping on beach goers, with a particular interest in beautiful women in bikinis.   This just might be so bad, it’s good. Or may not.

Sharktopus Trailer

RIMPAC – Sinking Ships for Fun and Practice

Posted on by July 18, 2010

HMAS Warramunga (FFH-152) engages Ex-USS New Orleans (LPH-11) with her 5" gun during a surface engagement, part of Exercise RIMPAC 2010.

RIMPAC 2010, the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, is  one of the world’s largest maritime exercises, with participation by 14 nations, including including Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, France, Colombia, Chile, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Peru, South Korea and Thailand.   RIMPAC began on June 23rd and will continue through the end of July.  Ships from the various navies started arriving late last month.
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Baltic Bubbly – ‘World’s oldest champagne’

Posted on by July 18, 2010

Divers have found 30 bottles of champagne thought to pre-date the French Revolution on the Baltic seabed.  Reportedly, it was still highly drinkable.

All I can say is that the seabed must be one hell of a wine cellar.   Dark, cold, but at a constant temperature, and totally devoid of oxygen – it does meet the requirements for storing alcohol.  The fact that the champagne was something other than vinegar is proof enough.

‘World’s oldest champagne’ found on Baltic seabed
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The Trireme Olympias Coming to New York ?

Posted on by July 18, 2010

There are plans to bring the trimere Olympias to New York harbor in 2012 coincide with the Tall Ships “OpSail” and July 4th celebrations.

The Trireme Olympias Coming Soon to New York

The H.N. Olympias is a full-scale, working replica of the legendary 170-oared Athenian trireme of the 5th century B.C. The ship is the fastest human-powered vessel on the planet. New Yorkers will have a unique and exciting opportunity to watch as Olympias is rowed and sailed in our harbor. For people looking for a fitness challenge, we will be recruiting and training teams of 170 men and women to participate in sea-trials and other nautical events.
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The Olympias Trireme – 5th Century B.C Warship Reborn

Posted on by July 17, 2010

Many historians have long suspected that the performance of the Greek triremes as reported by Esculus and others, were overstated.  Some have referred to them as “mythological.”   The  Olympias trireme, built in 1987,  designed by the naval architect John Coates, who died last week,  has proven to be as fast and maneuverable as the triremes described in the ancient texts.

The performance of the Olympias has been impressive. In trails in 1987 the trireme achieved a cruising speed up to 6 knots when rowed continuously for 30 miles, with an average of 5 knots. It reached 9 knots in sprints, and sailed at 10.8 knots under sail with a following wind.

In the late 1987,  John Coates,  John Morrison and N. B. Rankov wrote The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship describing their research, the design construction and testing of the Olympias. The second addition of the book, published in 2000, reports on what was learned in fifteen years of testing and training with the ancient craft.
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John Coates: Latter-Day Trireme Designer

Posted on by July 17, 2010

John Coates, front, demonstrating the three-level system of the trireme with oarsmen from Cambridge University

John Coates

John Coates, who died on July 10 aged 88, had retired as chief naval architect at the Ministry of Defence when he took a central role in the building of a Greek trireme, the first, fastest and best known oared warship of the ancient world.

Triremes were 100ft three-tiered vessels powered by two square sails and a huge crew of oarsmen. They were used at the Battle of Salamis in 480BC when the Greeks defeated the Persians (who were led by the emperor Xerxes), and there are references to them in classical literature and depictions on pottery relics and coins.
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