Stealth Destroyer launched in Bath, Maine

It does look stealthy. - GWC
Ship Photos of The Day – First Zumwalt Class Stealth Destroyer Launched in Maine | gCaptain ⚓ Maritime & Offshore News: "General Dynamics Bath Iron Works on Monday successfully launched the Navy’s first Zumwalt-class destroyer at their Bath, Maine shipyard. The ship, the future USS Zumwalt (DDG 1000), will be the first of three ships in the Navy’s newest destroyer class, designed for littoral operations and land attack. The ship began the transition from Bath Iron Works’ land-based construction facility to a floating dry dock on Friday. Once loaded into the dry dock, the dock was flooded and the ship was removed from its cradle. By late Monday, the dock had been flooded and the ship was floated off and tied to a pier on the Kennebec River."

Terrible beauty - Atlantic storm lashes northern Europe

Lou Reed

Lou Reed is dead at 71.   I can't remember why I bought the album - the first - Velvet Underground and Nico when it came out in 1967.  I don't think I really understood what he was saying in Heroin.  But I did like lines like "I don't know just where I'm going but I'm going to try for the kingdom..."  It certainly was not the Hootenanny folkie goodie goodie music like Simon & Garfunkel that I loved.  It was part of a new anti-establishment wave that had lasting impact, even for those of us who never did take a walk on the wild side.

Lifeboat Louie - Anchored to the Water - NYTimes.com

I don't know him - surprising given how much time I spend on City Island.  But now, thanks to the times, I know who owns those two boats tied together just off the doomed City Island Bridge.
Anchored to the Water - NYTimes.com:



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On the hard - sailing season over

North River 2 is on the hard ground now - at Barron's boatyard, City Island, NY

OTHERWISE: Eastport Road Map: Global Meets Local in a Very Small Town - James Fallows - The Atlantic

OTHERWISE: Eastport Road Map: Global Meets Local in a Very Small Town - James Fallows - The Atlantic:



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Fifteen Tons of Groceries, Sailing Down the Hudson - NYTimes.com

Ceres - the vessel of the Vermont Sail Freight project has landed in New York City. GWC
Food Matters | Fifteen Tons of Groceries, Sailing Down the Hudson - NYTimes.com:by Eviana Hartman

 "Before the Industrial Revolution, most food was regional by necessity, shipped via wind-powered boats. Urban waterfronts were vibrant centers of commerce and community. Seeking a more sustainable way to get his grain to market, the Vermont farmer Erik Andrus conceived the Vermont Sail Freight Project to find out if this model could work again today. In April, he raised more than $15,000 on Kickstarter to build a 39-foot-long plywood sail barge named Ceres (after the Roman goddess of agriculture). The Greenhorns, an Essex, N.Y.-based farmer advocacy group, and the Willowell Foundation, a nonprofit education organization, signed on as partners to raise additional funds, handle the project’s logistics and recruit farmers and volunteers."

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Eastport, Maine - James Fallows -- The Atlantic

Loading pulp paper at Eastport. In the 1840's a ship landed from Europe almost daily.

James Fallows loves to fly and he loves talking to people.  So he and his wife are touring the country in his plane, reporting on stirrings in small cities across the country.  I'm delighted that he has gotten to Maine.  I hope we'll soon have reports from Belfast and Rockland.  I'm banking on lots of pictures at Front Street Shipyard, the new force in shipbuilding in Maine.

 James Fallows - Authors - The Atlantic: "Greetings from the American city closest to Europe, and first to see each day's sunrise: Eastport, Maine, which Marketplace will describe in its broadcast on Friday and which we'll say more about starting tomorrow. The scene above is of an unimaginably vast warehouse full of bales of Maine hardwood pulp, destined for mills in Asia.

The "pulp," which I had envisioned as a kind of slurry, turns out to be thick sheaves of papery material, which will then be re-ground and turned into high-quality paper in Chinese, Korean, and Japanese mills. Each of the small footlocker-sized rectangles shown above weighs more than 500 pounds. We watched them loaded into a Norwegian-flag freighter, with a Filipino captain and crew, at the Eastport dock at a rate of 28 tons (one of the truckloads below) every 90 seconds or so."



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NOAA will no longer print navigation charts

GCaptain reports that NOAA will stop printing nautical charts.  Hard to believe.  I use a GPS and manual charts but must admit that I look at the screen more often than the printed map. - gwc

A man for all seasons - Col. Robert Rheault, obituary - PenBay Pilot

Col. Robert Rheault, obituary - PenBay Pilot

OWLS HEAD — Col. Robert Bradley "Bob" Rheault, 87, died peacefully at home in Owls Head Oct. 16, 2013. He was born in Boston Oct. 31, 1925, the second of three sons of Charles Auguste and Rosamond (Bradley) Rheault of Westwood, Mass. His father had been a member of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, while his mother worked in Labrador, for Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, of the Grenfell Mission.During the summer, for three years, from age 14, Bob worked as a cowboy on ranches in Wyoming: moving cattle, mending fences and stacking hay. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy and the United States Military Academy at West Point, Bob served for 26 years in the U.S. Army, retiring in 1969 as commander of Special Forces in Vietnam. He worked for Hurricane Island Outward Bound School for 32 years, from assistant watch officer to president of the school. During the last 19 of those years, he started and ran the Outward Bound Program for Vietnam Vets suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder.***A memorial service will be held Nov. 2, at ­­2 p.m. at the Camden Opera House, 29 Elm St. in Camden.In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Hurricane Island Outward Bound School, 39 Mechanic St., Suite 310, Camden, ME 04843 or to the Georges River Land Trust, 8 North Main St,, Suite 200, Rockland, ME 04841.