Nautical Oddities

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by knottybuoyz

What guy?

Oh, OK . . . Is the ugly girl with no top, no boobs, big arms, and hair in her armpits and on her chinnie-chin-chin holding a snorkel, or a bong?

TaoJones

[knottybuoyz]

The Canadian contingent of its International Peacekeeping naval force headed to sea this morning to help prevent the outbreak of violence that's festering between the two rivals. Seen here is "HMS Fiat Panda" straight out of a two year multi million dollar refit in Vancouver Shipyards.

Commanding HMS Fiat Panda is Captain Gord May a native of Thunder Bay (or thereabouts) Ontario. When asked how he perceived his role upon arrival in the East China Sea Captain May said: "...............

[rsn48]

Here are some links to the annual Bathtub Race in Nanaimo, BC. If you look at the pics in the gallery, you'll see some "interesting" early designs. This is a race that began in 1967 and was the "original" bathtub boating event. Now the Aussie are into big time (too much beer I think) and are "dominating" the sport. Entry is free and if you aren't doing anything next July 08, you too could be running your bathtub entry into perhaps the cheapest motorized racing boat event in North America.

http://www.bathtub.island.net/gallery.php

http://www.bathtubmuseum.org/bathtubraces.htm

[delmarrey]

Happen to find this offshore liveaboard today. Just had to share!

[S/V Elusive]

Ummm... Rick? Isn't that a Mexican Flag that the HMS Fiat Panda is flying?

[David M]

Originally Posted by delmarrey

Happen to find this offshore liveaboard today. Just had to share!

A boat only a mother could love.

[knottybuoyz]

Originally Posted by S/V Elusive

Ummm... Rick? Isn't that a Mexican Flag that the HMS Fiat Panda is flying?

Could be Thomas. I'm color blind so it looks like a Cdn flag to me.

[knottybuoyz]

[Microship]

Does Photoshop count?

(This was Hogfish, sort of the F-31 precursor built by Walton and Michie before starting Corsair. I owned it from 1995-1997 in the early stages of the Microship project, and my girlfriend of the epoch did a Photoshop mashup with a photo of the Pilgrim replica in Dana Point.)

[David M]

I would never call this one odd...at least, not to it's face.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...8HSV-X1%29.jpg

[cooper]

This one bites too....

[Alan Wheeler]

There was one of those big things here in NZ. It was used for crossing the straight. Very fast and capable of sustaining high speeds in upto 3m of sea. Made the Cookstraight crossing very quick. But the wake was horrific to the shoreline of the sounds, so it had to slow down through that area, it was considered too dangerouse at high speed for Wellington harbour, so had to slow down in there, so in the end there were so many speed restriction placed on it, it was no faster than the standard Ferries, so it was dropped.

[David M]

Thats too bad about the wake. We have some 38-40 knot catamaran ferries here on the San Francisco Bay whose wake is pretty minimal considering how fast they are going and how large they are. By comparison, most tugboat wakes are larger. I am thinking that boats can be tank tested for wake before they are actually built? I wonder what happened Alan?

San Francisco Bay Photos - Catamaran Ferry 'Del Norte'

[Alan Wheeler]

The wake itself never looked big. But it had awesome power behind it. I guess that comes from the vessels high speed. The Sound is an area where sea state simply does not ever get chance to build. So the shore line is fragile. The Fastferry wakes were erroding the forshore badly and causing severe damage. One of the last straws was when a whole lot of bones rolled out onto a local foreshore, when an ancient Maori Burial site started being erroded away. That didn't go down well for both local Maori and beach go'ers.

[cooper]

These ferrys are made by Incat of Tasmania. They had one crossing bass straight and doing the trip in half the time of the mono ferries. The problem was first they made it leave from Port Welshpool which is an out of the way port and hours drive from Melbourne, second it could not operate in rough weather or seas ( most of the time). It was not that it was unsafe it was because the craft became covered in spew !! Even those people who had strong constituions often became over powered by the "volume". It was shut down.......the purpose built dock and boarding office is still there empty..