Month: March 2009

Tell the Tale of The OctoFlood and Win Valuable Prizes

It was no April Fool’s joke, but rather a malicious act by an sneaky cephalopod. On February 12, 2009, the site of the crime was the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium. Here’s what happened:

Turning lemons into lemonade (which is probably better than turning octopus into fried calamari) the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium is running The Octopus Flood Art & Story Contest. There are 2 categories Grades K – 2 and 3 – 5 and lots of valuable prizes are at stake. So join in the fun and spin a yarn about this cephalopodic misadventure.  Entry deadline is April 15, 2009.

Share this post :

Bad News Day For Maritime Heritage And Professional Mariners

Some very bad news for tall ships, maritime heritage preservation and professional mariners today.

Plans for U.S. Brig Niagara’s sailing season could be sunk by Kevin Flowers for the Erie-Times News March 25, 2009 (download copy)

Foreclosure For Tall Ship Mystic by Joe Wojtas for The Day (New London) – March 25, 2009 (download copy)

I’ll be writing more about this later.

Share this post :

Maritime Art: Messing About On The River Thames

Plouf = splash in French

Plouf! was also a performance art piece by Julien Bismuth and Jean-Pascal Flavien on the Thames River in London for and in front of the Tate Modern on February 21, 2009. This video is part of the great Bloomberg TateShots short video podcasts series. From the website:

On a rare, almost miraculously sunny day in London, TateShots and a group of art lovers boarded a boat and sailed out onto the Thames. We were there to see a work by Jean-Pascal Flavien and Julien Bismuth, the splashily named Plouf!, which was first performed in the sea off Rio de Janeiro. The work consists of Flavien and Bismuth, who are on another, smaller boat, reading through a megaphone, signing semaphore and flashing morse code: a poetic tale of loneliness and loss at sea.

Share this post :

Weird Fishes: Deep Sea Robots

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO9oseiCTdk]
YouTube – Robot Fish

Okay, why exactly do we need $30,000 robotic fish? Fast Company tells us:

It’s a classic example of biomimicry. Fish, and dolphins and sharks, have evolved to the point where their swimming efficiency is extraordinarily high. It’s a vital technique to conserve precious energy reserves in a harsh eco-system, of course, and it puts most human-designed underwater propulsion systems to shame. Hence the interest in developing robot fish, hat can have a higher battery lifespan as a result.

The five-foot long fish in the SHOAL scheme will operate autonomously, swimming at will around selected areas of the ocean, only returning to their base stations every eight hours when they need a charge. They’re going to be equipped with a sophisticated sensor suite that will monitor for ship-and-shore-based chemical spills and oil contamination of the surface and deeper waters off the town of Gijón in Asturias. Their data logs are downloaded wirelessly as they charge, and collated to form a picture of when and where pollution was sourced.

Okay, but I prefer their cool cousins in this video made by Tobias Stretch for the the Aniboom Animation Contest For Radiohead’s In Rainbows.

Share this post :

9 Marine Energy Projects That Could Save The Planet

Fast Company has an interesting slide show with a grand title: 9 Marine Energy Projects That Could Save The Planet. From Fast Company:

Marine energy has taken a back seat to its more well-developed and well-funded rival, wind. That’s about to change. Water has several advantages over wind power: marine current turbines (essentially underwater windmills) tend to be smaller and less costly to produce than their terra firma brethren, and wave energy and tidal flows can be predicted with much greater accuracy than wind speeds. The power contained in accessible coastal currents is estimated at about 4,000 TW, or about a quarter of the electricity demand of the entire world. Some recent developments have been especially encouraging. The first 5 projects here have been shortlisted as candidates for the Severn River between England and Wales.

Hope they’re right!

Share this post :

FotoFriday: Show n’ Tell at Mass Maritime

This week we calling it Flickr Friend FotoFriday. WTF!

Here’s a shot by fellow maritime blogger and Massachusetts Maritime Academy cadet Christiaan Conover.

Chatham Boat House by Christiaan Conover

On Tuesday we posted about this historic USCG Boat House being temporarily relocated. (Historic Coast Guard Boat House Gets A Lift) Christiaan saw the post via Twitter and snapped this pic from his room at Mass Maritime at the tug and barge and boat house enter the Cape Cod Canal. Nothing like learning from experience!

Christiaan has a great blog and you can follow him on Twitter too!

Messing About In Ships Podcast Episode 35

newheaderbanner.png

Download MP3: Messing About In Ships Episode 35 March 19, 2009

(61 minutes)

This week I interview Nick Jaffe (Twitter @bigoceans) about his solo sailing adventures and sponsorship challenge from the social media / online crusing guide BlueMapia.  Please register (for free) for BlueMapia and plot a few points of interest on their online cruising guide to help raise some sponsorship for the remainder of Nick’s adventure

Music: So Far Down by David Usher

Subscribe Via iTunes HERE

Shownotes @ Messing About In Ships blog

Share this post :

Historic Coast Guard Boat House Gets A Lift

A boathouse, decommissioned by the Coast Guard in the 1980s and the former home of the rescue boat CG36500, which braved terrible conditions in the 1952 sea rescue of 32 men from the SS Pendleton, was placed on a barge last weekend for transit and storage in Quincy, MA. The building had been slated to be demolished before a group of preservationists stepped in. Jay Cashman, Inc. donated the equipment and staff to ship the building, estimating the move cost between $75,000 to $100,000.

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptFI15AW2Lo]
YouTube – Chatham Coast Guard boathouse move

[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sUbPXqLYa4]
YouTube – Coast Guard Boathouse Gets A Lift

The front page of the Boston Globe For more about the US Coast Guard’s amazing SS Pendleton rescue story, check out:

Share this post :