In November 2015, the German Navy training ship, Gorch Fock, went into a shipyard for hull repairs. The cost of repairs and refurbishment to the three-masted barque, built in 1958, was budgeted at 9.6 million euros. Repairs were expected to take 17 weeks. Now, over three years later, the ship is still not in service and the final project costs are estimated to reach 135 million euros. Der Spiegel refers to the overruns as a “cost explosion.”
The repairs are reported to include the replating of 80% of the hull, new masts, completely rebuilt mid and upper decks and a new teak deck.
At various points, the work has been stopped to evaluate options but so far, the German Ministry of Defense has approved continuing the work. The Ministry determined that the cost of a new ship could reach 167 million euros. The Federal Court of Auditors has said that that figure is too high based on other recent new ship construction.
Today marks the 100th year anniversary of the Great Boston Molasses Flood, which inundated Boston’s North End sending a wall of molasses, killing 21 and injuring 150.
Much of the media have taken the claims of Boyan Slat at face value. The young Dutch engineer has claimed that his design for a series of floating ocean booms will clean the oceans of plastic. The BBC headline in 2014 which read, “
A new analysis published in the journal 
In August of 1772, a powerful hurricane devastated much of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. On the island of St. Croix, the town of Christiansted was virtually leveled. An impoverished 17-year-old clerk, who worked for a local merchant, 
The Dungeness crab season opened late in the Northwest, starting last Friday, January 4th. The weather was terrible, with high winds and waves. Conditions were especially challenging on river bars, where the river’s current opposing the ocean waves can raise monstrous breakers. 
I am very excited by a new series, “
The effort to save the Falls of Clyde has suffered at least a temporary setback. Last 
On New Year’s Eve 1918, over 200 men crowded the dock at the port of Kyle of Lochalsh waiting to the board the 
In 2010, 16-year-old 
Around 1,800 nautical miles northwest of Oahu, the car carrier Sincerity Ace is adrift and on fire. Sixteen of her Philippine crew have been rescued, while four are feared dead and one remains missing. The fire broke on on Monday on the Panamanian flag car carrier operated by Mitsui OSK Lines, traveling from Japan bound for Hawaii. The cause of the fire is still unknown. 
Here is a wonderful sea story which appears to be more or less true. 
Sometimes the events of the day seem downright surreal. Yesterday, I read about the US Coast Guard cutter Campbell which 
Recently, teams of 
On Wednesday, 71-year-old French adventurer Jean-Jacques Savin set off to cross the Atlantic in an unlikely craft — a barrel. He departed from El Hierro, one of the Canary Islands, west of Morocco, in a barrel-shaped capsule with the intention of drifting, carried by the winds and currents, across the Atlantic Ocean. He hopes to arrive in the Caribbean in about three months. The barrel in which he is drifting is 10 feet long and 6 feet 8 inches wide, built of epoxy and plywood and ballasted with concrete.