Tag Archives: ship

Parade of Ships

I have mentioned the LCS ship that was part of the Parade of Ships for Fleet Week. It was one of several warships to take part in the parade. Most were US Navy ships but there was also a Coast Guard ship and a visitor from the Royal Canadian Navy. They entered the bay under the Golden Gate Bridge before parading in front of the spectators arrayed along the shore and in the boats out on the water. The first ship was led by a fire boat that sprayed water from its cannons in greeting.

These pictures are a sample of the different ships that were on parade. Another warship was part of Fleet Week but it remained tied up during the parade which was a shame as I would liked to have seen it. You could tour it if you wanted but I had other plans that meant that wouldn’t work out.

USS Coronado LCS

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As a small boy, my Gran would take me to Portsmouth each August for Navy Day. We would spend a day walking around the dockyard and getting on to various warships to see what they were like. This was a pretty big event and, in those days, the number of ships in port for those days is probably more than the Royal Navy has in total today. The result of this was an interest in an early day with warships. Growing up by the water meant that ships of all types were a regular feature of life.

Warship design underwent quite a transition. Traditionally, warships had been slender designs that achieved speed and supposedly provided the most stable ride. However, this was not an approach that was universally agreed and shorter broader designs started to gain favor. The Royal Navy’s Type 23 frigates were one of the first signs that Navy’s were taking new configurations seriously.

The US Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) program has gone a stage further with one of the builders. There are two LCS designs in production and one of them has a narrow center hull and two additional outboard hulls further aft. This trimaran configuration provides slender hulls but with a lot of stability and the space for a large deck. One of the LCS ships was in San Francisco for Fleet Week and took part in the Parade of Ships.

USS Coronado (LCS-4) was the ship on display. She is the second of the General Dynamics – Bath Iron Works ships to be commissioned and entered service in 2014. As she entered the bay under the bridge she turned towards to city and you could get a good view (albeit at some distance) of the unusual hull shape. As she got closer, the view was more abeam the ship but you could still see the layout of the armaments. As she headed away, a view of the stern hinted at the hull layout but really emphasized the width of the deck.

The US Navy is currently reconsidering its needs and is looking for a frigate that is more heavily armed than the LCS designs but makes as much use of the hull designs as possible. We shall see how that all works out. In the meantime, this is one of the more unusual shapes afloat. The Zumwalt destroyer is even more unusual so I shall have to try and see that at some point too.

Submarines

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There weren’t just sailing ships along the harbor front. A couple of submarines were also there. One was an old Russian sub while the other was far smaller but was a research submarine. The Russian sub is a Foxtrot class diesel-electric sub and it is moored a further out on a pier away from the shore. The USS Dolphin was a test and research sub for the US Navy and was involved in much deep diving research and test programs to support the fleet subs. She has a very simple hull shape compared to operational subs. She was only retired in the last ten years and was the longest serving sub in the Navy.

Old Frigate

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Alongside the clipper on the waterfront in San Diego is an even old sailing ship. This had the look more of a frigate from the times of Nelson. The shape of the hull is broad to provide a platform for the men and weapons and the gun ports on the side allowed the cannons to fire at any enemy. The boat looked exactly as you would expect for that vintage and, in keeping with the fashion of the day, an intricately carved figurehead was mounted on the bow.

Having grown up on the south coast of the UK, ships of this type were not unknown. HMS Victory was a ship I visited on a number of occasions and it was a big ship compared to this one but the lines are unmistakably similar. The idea of traveling around the world in something like this is fascinating (and terrifying) to me. Doing that and then getting shot at by some pretty unpleasant weaponry with access to minimal medical help if you got hurt is even more scary!

Clipper

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A long weekend away was on the cards so we decided to head down the coast to San Diego. Just over an hour on the plane and you are there so it is a pretty easy trip for us to do. San Diego is a city with a lot of things to offer so you won’t be surprised to see a bunch of different posts showing up in the coming days that are from there. Far too much to put into one or even a couple of posts.

One afternoon we had a bit of spare time between things we had planned so we took a walk along the waterfront. This is an area designed to appeal to tourists (which, after all, we were) and it has a number of attractions playing on San Diego’s nautical heritage. One that caught Nancy’s attention was an old clipper style of ship. These were the speed demons of their age moving goods around the globe (at a pace that would now be considered impossibly slow). They were big square riggers and it was the rigging that was what impressed Nancy. The complexity of the ropes is quite something. In order to hold the high loads using the ropes of the era, they are multipled up on a pulley type of arrangement to provide the strength required. From a distance they look impossibly complex and even up close, they are still something to see.

Container Ships

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I was in Alameda recently and, as I started to head back towards Oakland, I came along the channel that separates Alameda from the container port. One of the large container ships was just making its way out of the port with some tugs in support. As a kid, I grew up by the sea and used to watch the container ships coming out of Southampton. Those ships looked huge at the time. Now, they are lightweights in comparison to the modern ships. The one I saw on this day was not big compared to the very latest mega ships but it was still pretty substantial. While it had plenty of containers onboard, I am guessing that a lot of them were empty as she was riding quite high in the water. Even so, it was still cool to appreciate just how big these things are.

Later, while we were up on the Marin headlands, I saw another ship making its way in under the Golden Gate Bridge. That was another comparison of sizes in which the ship suddenly looks rather insignificant compared to the bridge!

Lots of Work Down the Drain

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No pictures in this piece and that is kind of the point. I have been working for a long time on setting up a photo shoot. The plan was to get some pretty unique shots of a rare jet that is owned buy a great guy I have worked with for a long time. The plan was to charter a camera ship that allowed some options to get shots that are harder to get normally. I had found an operator of the right aircraft that was in the right place and was happy to do the job.

We had the pricing agreed and they had even sent me the draft lease documents. I had made some amendments to these and sent them back to be finalized and then suddenly everything goes quiet. I send a follow up and hear nothing for a while. Then I send another email and the response I get is not good. They have found a more lucrative job and I am no longer on their schedule! How about that? You spend time briefing what is required, discussing all of the details, agreeing the pricing and you think that you have it all agreed. You are finalizing a lease document which includes a down payment so you think they are serious. Then you are dropped like a stone.

I think it is fair to say I am really pissed off. I am not going to name names because that isn’t going to help and one day I might need them for something else so I will keep the details out of this. However, I try to always be professional in the way I deal with people whatever part of my work is involved. I guess not everyone shares that approach. If they found a better job, perhaps they might have tried to solve my problem as well. They gave me a name for an alternative but this short a notice period is unsurprisingly meaning that an alternative is not available. The other guys tried hard to come up with a suggestion and I am grateful to them for that.

Having ranted I shall now wrap up. I was really hoping that you would see here the great results of what had been planned but I shall have to say instead that it just didn’t happen. Now to see if there is something we can come up with instead.