Saturday, September 01, 2007

Chesapeake Bay Departure

GPS : 32 39N , 079 39W

To come out of the Baltimore port, you have to go through a pilotage for about 14 hours & then pass out of the Norfolk & Chesapeake Bay area. As we were coming out of the departure channel, we met another Aircraft carrier on the way in. The Chesapeake
Bay & the Norfolk Naval base are featured a lot in the Tom Clancy Novels & my Brother is very fond of them. I wondered if he was around here, he would have had great fun thinking about the area where Jack Ryan had fun with the Red October.

Sadly the Aircraft Carrier didn't have a single plane above deck & had only one Helicopter that was going all over the place. I suppose if you are the Captain of an aircraft carrier, you can post a lookout pretty much where you want!


1 comment:

PM Velankar. said...

in one of your posts you had mentioned piotetage of about 4 hours or so and then I had felt , must have been one hell of a crowded, narrow and long treack to require 4 hours of piolatage and must be considered one of the majorly long pilotage . Now I see that to leave Baltimore it needs 14 hours of pilotage !!! Must be one of the longest known pilotage requirements . From what I feel , the pilot has to be alert and on his toes to earn his payment ,in this case for 14 hours , so what happens to duty hours and crew fatigue ?

Generally I have seen Lat & Long positions in four digits. Here I notice that your GPS locations Northings are in four digits but Westings in five . Why is it so . Has the fact that there are only 90 deg N and 90 deg S but 180 deg E and 180 deg W got some thing to with it ?