Saturday, October 17 (continued from yesterday) — Next we went to see the HMS Surprise. This boat was originally named Rose and was built in 1970 in Canada as a replica of the Royal Navy frigate HMS Rose. She is 179.5 feet long, 32 feet wide, has a 13 foot draft, and displaces 500 tons.
The replica builders used the original plans and were obsessed with making an exact copy of the original. The original HMS Rose was built in 1757. She served in Continue reading
Saturday, October 17 Last weekend we took Kosmos out for a short jaunt just to give her some exercise. This weekend Eric intended to work on some boat chores, but when he got up this morning, he just didn’t feel like it. It was an absolutely beautiful day, and he wanted to go and play. We decided to go over to the Maritime Museum. Christi has never been there and Eric hasn’t been there in years. The main reason we wanted to go there is to check out the Russian submarine they have on display. We are dreaming of owning our own submarine someday.
When we got to the museum we were delighted to see that they have recently added another vessel to their collection, a submarine! It is the USS Dolphin, the only operational diesel-electric submarine in the US Navy’s fleet. The USS Dolphin is 165 feet long, 18 feet wide and has an 18 foot draft. She displaces 800 tons. Her engine is a Detroit 12V71 diesel: 1650-hp and she has only one shaft. She is fitted with “246 Module VRLA Battery”. Under water, she can do 10 knots for a short duration, for sustained time under water she can do 4 knots.
She was first commissioned in 1968 and decommissioned in 2007. Thanks to a special pressurized hull, she is the world’s deepest diving submarine. How deep she has actually gone is still classified information, all the navy will disclose is more than 3,000 feet. In 1969, the USS Dolphin launched a torpedo from the deepest depth ever recorded. Most of her career she was used for research, aiding the navy in the development of submarine-ship communications, Extremely Low Frequency antennas, sonar systems, and ocean floor surveys. Later in her career, she was also loaned out to civilian organizations for special oceanographic studies. Most of its life in was in service in or around San Diego. In 2002, she almost sank. The sub was saved by the brave crew onboard and nearby military vessels that came the rescue. She was seriously damaged and the navy spent $50 million dollars repairing and upgrading her. The retrofit was completed in the summer of 2005 and she went back to work. A year later the navy decided to retire her and a few months later she was pulled from service.
Of course, we made a beeline for USS The Dolphin. The tall hatch that sticks up used to be the only entrance/exit onto the sub. As you can see, the hatch is quite small and steep. When equipment needed to be loaded/unloaded, it had to be disassembled into small bits and reassembled on the other side. The hatch was also the only source of fresh air. There was no snorkel onboard, so when they dove under there was no fresh air source. The museum built a special entrance that is easier to get in/out of. You can see the walkway to the door to Eric’s left.
When we walked in, we were surprised Continue reading
We are zooming backwards in time again with this post. We are going to make a concerted effort to get the blog stories caught up to real time before we leave for our road trip on April 24th. So we have a lot of writing to do in a short time! Check back often as there will be updates over the next month.
Sunday, October 5th Kosmos is docked in San Diego Bay. Yesterday, we decided to take her over to Mariner’s Cove anchorage in Mission Bay, the next bay north, and spend the night. It is about a 15 nautical mile trip. Before we left for our around the world journey, we went to this anchorage several times on our practice runs. It is one of our favorite spots in the local area because it is very sheltered, and thus calm and flat. It is off one of the more popular beaches in the area, so it is by no means an isolated paradise. But, you can also go to shore where there are a plethora of shops, restaurants, bars and even a roller coaster all within walking distance.
Since we haven’t taken her out in several weeks, it took quite a while to get Kosmos ready to go. Christi was in a great mood as she got the boat ready to go to sea. Eric was not in as good a mood, carrying work stress home with him, but Christi knew that once we dropped the anchor he would relax and forget about work. We both love anchoring out and have been sad that we haven’t had a chance to do so until now.
We pulled out of the marina at about 1300. The ride over was Continue reading
The March/April 2010 edition of Ocean Navigator Magazine has an article in it about piracy that Christi wrote. Piracy questions are probably the most frequent questions we get, and the article answers many of those questions. It also reveals our gun secret. Up until now, we refused to say if we had guns or not. Find out in the article! The magazines are on the stands now.
Also, we will be speaking twice at the Anacortes Trawler Fest. On Friday, May 21 from 3:30 – 4:30 we will do a presentation on our circumnavigation where we discuss overcoming the things that hold most people back and give an overview of the world trip. On Saturday May 22 from 2:30 – 3:30 we will be doing a seminar on “Adjusting to Living Aboard” that talks about various aspects of what to expect when trasitioning from land to boat life, including a big discussion on costs to expect. The “Adjusting to Living Aboard” presentation will be done jointly with Denis and Mary Umstot, who have cruised 50,000 miles from Alaska to Europe and back. The Umstots also have a great new book out, called Voyaging to the Mediterranean Under Power. Both seminars are included in the regular ticket price to the show, and are not part of the PMU classes that cost extra money to attend. At the San Diego Trawler Fest we met several blog readers, which was fun for us. Hopefully, we’ll met many more at the Anacortes one.
We are taking a car trip from San Diego, the southwest corner of the country, to Maine, the northeast corner of the country. We figured that since we’ve been around the world, we should probably go across our country. Of course, there is a twist to this road trip that makes it special and unique. We’ll announce the twist the day we leave and hopefully post daily updates of our travels throughout the trip.
We are hoping to set up some speaking engagements along the way. If anyone has any suggestions for a venue in the following cities, please let us know: