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
Yes, blog posts are still behind real time by quite a ways. Here the start of a story about a fun trip we had, although not aboard Kosmos. We have been exercising Kosmos about every other week by taking her out of San Diego bay and into the ocean for a few miles. She must be wondering what is going on, since we have not run her for more than 4 hours straight since we have been back. A far cry from the more typical 100 hour runs we used to do. We do try to run all the engines under some load (main, wing, generator) once a week.
Friday, September 25th Ever since Eric returned to his job, he has been working on a huge project that required lots of over time. The project was wrapped up this week, and we decided to celebrate by going out of town for a three day weekend. We had a hard time deciding after all, there were so many people and places that we wanted to go visit. But, we decided on Yosemite, since Christi has never been there and Eric hasn’t been there for many years. We could also see our good friend, Cindi, who lives close by.
Today was the drive up. We left San Diego around 1100 and are pleased to report Continue reading
Sunday, September 20 On Monday morning, Christi picked up some rubber o-rings for the watermaker fresh water filter housing. Eric changed out the rings out when he got home from work. Unfortunately, that didn’t do the trick in terms of stopping the leak, so more investigation is going to be needed to figure out the source of the leak. It looks like the filter might not be fitting just right.
We forgot to mention that a few weeks ago, Eric and his dad went to see Continue reading
Time seems to pass by in a quick sort of way these days. Here is a story from a little while ago…
Sunday, September 13 We had been procrastinating on putting in a new main engine starter battery largely because we were undecided about whether to replace it with the same size or a smaller one. On our last bay cruise, we noticed that the secondary alternator that charges the battery seemed to have inconsistent voltage drops. Hmmm”¦ was it the battery or the alternator causing the issue? We realized we couldn’t put off replacing the battery anymore. It was time to make a decision.
Our starter battery is a size Continue reading