Submarines

Location : At Anchor, African west Coast

We are at anchor waiting for our berth & there is nothing to see. The capital of the country looks from this place like a desolate township near the bus stop on a highway. Well we are anchored about 10 miles from the coast, so hopefull that might
explain it.

Seeing nothing brings me to this snap of a Submarine that passed us by in the Panama Canal. The submarine is of the Columbian navy and as the pilot described it, is "engaged in the war on drugs".

Interesting fact - Under the UNCLOS treaty, a distance of 12 miles from the coast baseline is considered as territorial waters of the country. A forign naval vessel can enter the territorial waters of another country under something called "Right of
innocent passage". A submarine going submerged or a ship operating an aircraft is not innocent under law.

Whales

Location - Anchorage , West Coast Africa

Yesterday, I had put up a post on my philatelic blog about Whales from Estonia. Today, by some strange coincidence we spotted dozens of Whales all around the ship. It was an awesome sight, and I truly missed my old camera with 10X zoom.

Tribal Beauty

This is Puja's latest painting. Its inspired by one of M F Husains painting & we call it "Tribal beauty".

Columbus

Location - The Atlantic - 05 36 N, 020 30 W

We have been in the Atlantic for some time now and so I think it's apt to put a post about a chap who did it much before me. Columbus sailed out of Spain and crossed the whole of the Atlantic a long time back. The picture above is of the built to scale models of the ships that Columbus used to cross the Ocean with. I'm not sure if I told you about these before, but these ships are at the Corpus Christi Museum on the south end of the Corpus Christi inner harbor Bridge, opposite the State Aquarium.

My knowledge, is limited at the best of time, but If I remember, Columbus left Italy with a convoy of three ships & at least one of them was named "Santa Maria". I could spot only two ships put up for display there.

Whatever the case might be, to travel halfway across the globe, when everyone else thought you to be crazy, I guess you had to be a bit crazy. Here's to the craziness in all of us!

The Curacao Waterfront

Location : The Atlantic - 07 34 N, 033 50 W

A few days back I had shown you a night snap of the curacao waterfront as seen from the floating bridge. This is a picture of the same area as taken in the day. Thought I'd put this up because I was posting a stamp on my philately blog which has an illustration with the same style of the buildings as can be seen in the background.

BTW, as Willemstad is a commercial harbour, under the local laws, even small vessels such as this in the picture have to enter with a pilot on board. If a sailing boat skipper does not wish to pay pilotage simply to complete immigration formalities at
the Custom house (about half a mile up the channel), then s/he has the option to drop anchor in the Spanish Bay about 10 miles up the coast and then catch a taxi to the custom house.

Kavo Topaz

Location - The Atlantic - 08 13 N, 038 25 W

Today was Diwali back home & we had a small meeting down below. Just wanted to drop by and let you see this picture of the Kavo Topaz shot at Gatun Lake in Panama. She is a beautiful ship & this always is one of the best profiles to take a picture of a ship from.

The Kavo Topaz is a Panamax gearless bulk carrier & by the looks of it has not been out of the yard for more than a couple of years. Ships such as these are a pleasure to sail on.

Happy Diwali to all you good people out there.

USNS Pililaau

Location - The Atlantic - 09 21 N, 045 57 W

I like pictures like this one taken in Corpus Christi, because they show so much of what happens in that area. In this picture, we can see a tug tied up with the ship as it goes along the narrow parts of the channel. Up ahead is a lift bridge below which we can see a barge coming down and another tug going up the channel. On the north side of the channel, moored alongside is the USNS Pililaau.

As I came to know recently, "USNS" vessels, like any vessel prefixed by the "USS" are also controlled by the US Navy, but are manned by civilians from the merchant Navy. These ships though painted in the naval colors are cargo ships and carry vehicle and supply for the naval force.

BTW, its Diwali in India today, so Happy Diwali to all you folks out there.

Flowers

Location : Atlantic - 10 00 N, 050 36 W

Puja has come out with another reproduction that we call "the flowers". Currently she is working on an painting of M F Hussain.

Curacao - waterfront

Location : Off Tobago : 11 27 N, 060 14 W

Am off the Island of Tobago right now. Now we leave the confined waters of the caribbean and step out into the huge Atlantic Ocean. Before we step out of the Carrib, let me part with a snap of probably the most popular place in Curacao, the waterfront.
The Waterfront in Curacao is not really the sea front, but the narrow channel leading from the sea to the Willemstad harbor. across the narrow channel, they have built a bridge that floats on pontoons and is imaginatively called the "Floating bridge".
The above picture is taken from the bridge at night and shows the building in all their splendid colors & dutch design. during the day, the Restaurants set up tables along the water and you get to enjoy the best that the Caribbean has to offer for 3.99
a glass of Baccardi cocktails.

BTW, a point of interest, the route from Curacao to the present position off Tobago, brought me off the Island of Tortuga yesterday evening. The kind reader may remember it as a pirate stronghold in the motion picture "Pirates of the Caribbeans" where
everyone keeps fighting with each other & women strangely keep slapping all men in sight.

Avast Me hearties! Arrr!

Isla Refinery , Willemstad - Curacao

Location : 2 Miles off Curacao - 12 03 N, 068 54 W

Before I begin, a disclaimer. The following has been told to me by the people attending the vessel such as the pilots and the agents so it might actually be the truth. I will need to verify the facts once I get down, but till then, here's the story as I heard it:-

I am right now a couple of miles from the Island of Curacao, fueling up for the long voyage up to the West coast of Africa & the place looks as beautiful as I remember it. The sun is out & the Island looks every bit as inciting as it is made out to be
by the tourist broucher.

But the last time I was in Curacao, I saw the most distressing sight to be seen in a tourist hot spot. Right in the middle of the Willemstad Bay, at any time of the day, you can see a huge oil slick floating around for all to see. This was explained to
me by a story that does not seem so shocking these days.

The Island of Curacao really gained any prominence only in the second world war, when the allies installed big storage tanks in the Bay Of Willemstad and used it as a fueling depot. For people who haven't been to Willemstad, its a natural deep water
cove, that can be approached only from a narrow entrance & surrounded on all sides by cliffs. It must have been a great safe haven in the war. So once the tanks have been set up in the war, The Shell oil & Gas company stepped in and set up a refinery
in the place and operated the place from the forties to the mid eighties. Now here's the shocker - The oil tanks in the refinery did not have any oil retaining bottom. What that meant was that as you pumped in oil in those tanks, the oil would simply
seep into the ground. They weren't bothered about that, firstly, because the oil quantity seeping in was considered too less to actually install bottoms to be cost effective & secondly, oil had after all come out from the ground so there couldn't be
much wrong if a bit of it went back.

As this went on for about fifty years, Shell found out in the seventies that the whole refinery was sitting on so much oily mud that it had actually started seeping out of the mud of the Island.

In the picture above, you can see the oil in the water, and on the shore you can see a trench. The Islanders have now dug trenches right around the refinery's premises & what happens is that a lot of oil gets accumulated in these trenches throughout the
night and is then sucked out by tankers that take rounds in the mornings. I think in the next hundred years the oil should have pretty much seeped out totally to not be considered a hazard.

In the meanwhile, to avoid any action, Shell sold the Isla refinery to the Netherland Antilles government for one dollar.

The finger insect at Curacao

Location - The Caribbean - 12 43 N, 070 49 W

I agree that on the face of it, close up images of an insect do seem strange on a blog focused on sea life, but we are reaching Curacao tomorrow for supplies & the last time I was there, this very strange fellow dropped by the ship. I am very surprised that this species have not become extinct till now, simply because it spent almost nine minutes out of ten on its back wriggling its legs. I infact had to flip it over so that it could give me a couple of profile shots. After obliging me, he promptly flipped over & began the leg wriggling. It might be that this is some arcane insectile mating ritual, but I doubt it.

The curious thing about it though is that when yo look at it, it looks astonishingly like a thumb or a finger. Sort of like doing a cut-thumb trick and then the thumb sprouts legs and starts crawling around. Creepy!

Happy Halloween everyone!

USS Lexington

Location - The Caribbean - 15 50 N, 077 37 W

As you come out under the Corpus Christi inner harbour bridge, you'll find the USS Lexington on your port side, moored to a jetty next to the Texas State Aquarium. The Lady Lex (as she is popularly known) has been decommissioned for some time now & has been converted to a Museum. I had gone on it the last time I had come to Corpus & it has a great flight simulator where you get to see an actual flight mission in Iraq & then get close to planes lined up on the main deck.

This time we saw the aquarium, but gave a pass to the Lex.

The Copus Christi Inner Harbor bridge

Location - Yucatan Channel - 22 07 N,085 54 W

This is the Corpus Christi inner harbour bridge & if you look a few post back to the bridge of the Americas, you'll realise that it bears a striking resemblance to the bridge of the Americas in Panama. I'm not sure which bridge was inspired by whom , but surely it's more then a plain coincidence.

As we had come to the port at night, this is the snap of us going out. On the left of the bridge is the Texas State Aquarium, where we went and saw a nice dolphin show. On the right of the bridge is a Museum (I think of fine arts. Which we did not go to. I think our priorities are very clear. :)

Though the bridge might look like the Bridge of the Americas it is no where near in size. The bridge has a horizontal span of 300 Feet and a vertical span of 138 feet. When we came in, we had an air draft of 132 feet and as we passed under the bridge,I was convinced that I had come out on the other side minus a radar antennae.

Corpus Christi - Texas

Location : Gulf Of Mexico - 24 06 N, 089 26 W,

I have been off the blog for the last few days and the reason for that was that we were in the port of Corpus Christi, Texas. Though its not a port you hear of often, it did rank as the sixth busiest port in USA. As the outbound pilot explained to me,
the ranking is done on the basis of the deadweight handled by the port. Corpus christi, with more then 42 feet of water is one of the deepest ports in the US and thus handles bigger ships and so manages to climb up on the charts.

But regardless of the number of ships that the port might handle, my berth could not have handled too many ships. It took us almost five days to load a cargo of about 37,000 MT. The picture above shows the jettey where we were tied up for the duration of the stay.

Arrived Texas

Location : At Anchor off Galveston

We came in and dropped anchor off the coast and I must offer my condolences to all Texans. This coastline is some of the most unexciting coastline in the whole of the US. I have been up and down the coast of this magnificent country many times, and the
Texas coastline always seems to me, the most boring part of the country.

And coming from a place like Panama, it really looks fore lone and barren. The only thing visible are some smoke stacks of a few refineries & a few people out fishing in small dinghies on a weekend.

More in an effort to cheer myself, I'll show you what I was seeing four days back. As the moisture laden wind rises just a hundred feet, you could literally see the clouds being formed out in Panama.