A Voyage of Discovery...

(10/17/2010) On Friday we say a ship come in the channel, then suddenly do an abrupt 180 turn - very strange! Then it dropped anchor just south of the shipping channel, and was shadowed by a small Navy vessel. In our 2 years here, we have never seen a ship anchor inside the Bridge Tunnel, something strange was up! Then on Saturday the boat disappeared, and on Sunday it was back, and at anchor!

It was a lovely sunny day today with gusty SW winds - we decided to take Silver Fox out and investigate! We had a lovely sail out and ate lunch on the way. Someone from the Ship came out to the fly deck and waved to us. The ship had Beluga Projects on the side, and was called Beluga Recognition. She had a red flag flying from her port flag staff, adding to its mystery!

We googled it all this evening, and found out lots of fun information...
(1) The Red Flag means it is carrying explosive materials!
(2) The ship is quite cool as it is partially WIND powered! It has a huge kite that it can deploy, to power it along and get 20% fuel saving cost!
(3) The ship is currently chartered by the US Navy.
(4) As I write this the ship has just pulled anchor and is heading out to sea towards the Panama canal.
(5) Full vessel and AIS information is available at this great site MarineTraffic.com.

More info on the ship here: http://blog.greenlogo.com/?p=11


Also on our sail back in the cut, we watched as the dredging continued and is in the cut/channel now.

Great fun!
Ralph Out.