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Panama Departure
2007-09-26 02:56:00
Location : Pacific Coast Panama - 08 30 N, 079 31 WWe crossed the remaining locks of Pedro Miguel & the Miraflores today. As we left the channel waters it was dusk & the pacific coast was just as beautiful. For some reason, the clouds in Panama, stick to the tree tops of the forests even though theyare not really high hills. The view was spectacular & I look forward to coming back to this part of the world around the middle of October. Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless;Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:05 UTCMessage-id: 344963783
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Panama - Gatun Locks
2007-09-25 02:22:00
Location : Panama Yesterday I showed you the snap of us approaching the Gatun locks from the Atlantic side. These are the pictures of the vessel as it climbs into the second set of locks. It really is a very tight fit for the vessel & the shocker is that the walls ofthe docks aren't even lined with some rubber fenders or tyres. It is very tense times for people low in the food chain like me, but these pilots do seem to have things well in control & take out the vessel with hardly a foots clearance on either side!Pretty neat sight. This amazing control is primararily due the the locomotives attached to the vessel on all four corners. You can see two locomotives on each bow of the ship. These send out wire ropes to be fixed on the ships bollards & then the vessel is positioned inthe locks by the tightening or slacking of these wires. There are two sets of these also on the stern & these eight locomotives move along with the ship on rails provided for that purpose.You ...

Gatun Locks
2007-09-23 18:13:00
Loacation : PanamaCrossed the Gatun locks today. Pictured above is the entrance the docks. On the Starboard you can see the Sunlight Venture going through the East Docks. There are three dock gates at Gatun and right in front of us, you can probably see the aft & Funnel of a ship at the top most lock. We passed through all those locks & went up there an hour after this picture was taken. Between the Derrick post & the fore mast, you can probably see the tower on the shore. That is the tower on which the webcam is fitted. You can checkout the ships passing through on :www.pancanal.com & also on www.czbrats.comIt was fun. Will send some more snaps over the next few days.

Curacao
2007-09-23 00:00:00
Location : PanamaI never did get around to telling you all about Curacao . I think we did go over the basics of the Netherlands Antilles & the ABC Islands. Before coming to Panama we had gone to Curacao. Pictured above is the Bridge of Curacao. It is probably the mostfamous landmark of Curacao. This Bridge has a span of 55 meters on high water & is a beautiful & rather unususal design. This picture was taken after we had come in the bay. In the background is the channel & then the sea. As you enter the channel, you are greeted by a row of beautiful buildings & the downtown area on either side. The next day, we were actually having acoffee on the waterfront and saw a ship passing by. It was a beautiful sight & sadly denied to me because we entered & exited in the middle of the night.

Panama
2007-09-22 03:42:00
Location : Panama AnchorageReached the Panama anchorage today. We were coming in to Panama from Curacao and this gave me the opportunity to coast along the Venezuelan & Columbian coastline. By the morning the Panama coastline came on the horizon & it was great. I have put up asnap of a ship on my port quarter at Sunset with the coastline in the background. The whole country just seems to be one big expanse of forests & in the evening the clouds had settled in the mountains & the view was just spectacular. The thing about this area is that the weather is pretty much equatorial. If I had shown you the picture on the front of the vessel, you would have seen pouring rains & lightning all over the place. Puja tells me that its harmful for the eyes to look atlightnings & the risk is not mitigated by even looking at it from the view screen of a digital camera. So sadly I can't show you any lightning snaps.

A Seagull Massacre
2007-09-19 21:00:00
A couple of days after I had written about the seagulls out in the carribian, we recieved this peice of news today:Worker Fined For Seagull Massa cre A Longshoreman was fined nearly USD 20,000 after being found guilty of mowing down 189 seagulls at Packer Marine terminal in Philadelphia port. Municipal Court Judge Deborah Shelton imposed the minimum fine of USD 75 per bird against Daniel Gallagher,the President of an International Longshoremen's Union local. The incident occurred in February 2006 when Gallagher was driving across the terminal. According to local media reports, he was talking on a two-way radio and trying to grab spilling coffeewhen he looked up and saw the flock of birds. But rather than stopping, Gallagher said he panicked, hit the gas and ran down the 189 seagulls before crashing into a parked container chassis.Must have been one heck of a sight!
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Seagulls
2007-09-17 05:22:00
Seagulls are not really my favourite. I think my dislike stems right from my cadetship, when I would spotlessly clean or paint the deck & a seagull would come swooping down from the heavens, crap on the deck & nonchalantly fly away to another part ofthe deck to repeat its handiwork. As I progressed along the ranks, I grew slowly possessive of the ships under me & the behaviour of the Seagulls was simply unacceptable. In most parts of the world, these chaps are excellent fliers & often glide in place for up to fifteen minuteswithout moving a wing. Actually that would be neat in itself, but what happens is that they keep pace with the moving ship & maintain their position without flapping a wing. As the ships bows break through the waves, they glide around the bow, waitingfor the fishes to break through the frothing sea before they would dive & in my fervent imagination, be run over by my bows to be gruesomely killed in the churning propeller. But that was not ...
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USS Yorktown
2007-09-13 00:16:00
Yesterday we had seen the Bridge at Savannah. Let us go back to the Charleston Bay Bridge. In the picture you have one of the pillars of the Bridge & in the back ground is the Aircraft Carrier USS Yorktown . The Yorktown is a uncommissioned warship &serves as a museum these days. I had gone on a similar Warship Museum at Texas city & they maintain the whole thing very well. That one had even got an Aircraft Simulator type of movie in it featuring an actual mission in the Persian Gulf. For some reason, the Radar antennae of the warship was turning. Pretty weird considering that she could hardly have moved an inch in a long time.

Portland Senetor at Savannah
2007-09-12 00:14:00
Pictured above is the Portland Senetor in the Sava nnah River & in the background is the Bridge over the Savannah River named the "Eugene Talmade Memorial Bridge". I'm not sure anyone calles it that though.And the second picture shows us going underneath it at midnight. I had taken it on longer exposure so the thing has come out a little blurred. The savannah is a gently meandering river that snakes its way between the borders of two of the Western states of the US & the activity along it is surprisingly heavy. Most of the shipping traffic like Jettys & the terminals are built along thesouthern shore and because of this they stretch right along the river till more then fifty miles inland, So you actually have substantial traffic moving in the river even though there might not be much to see out there. I remember that I had gone ashore in Savannah as a third mate & for the first time in my life discovered a place called an "Army-navy sulprus store". The amount of cool stuff o...

Flag Etiquette
2007-09-10 18:12:00
The Carribians : 13 16 N, 069 56 W, Spd 13 KtsLet's go back to the container ship Tokyo Express that we had seen a couple of posts back. Seen in the picture above are the flags on the main mast above the Wheelhouse / Bridge. On the extreme right we can see the Smoke stack or the funnel of the shippainted Orange & then the three windows of the Bridge. On most ships, the flags have to be hoisted by going above the Bridge, to a deck called the Monkey Island. But on Tokyo express the flag halyards seem to be tied to the Bridge deck on the areaoutside the enclosed bridge. This area is called the "Bridge Wings".International Flag Etiquette is very clear on the method of hoisting flags on the merchant ships. The last time we saw Tokyo express, I had shown you the Jack staff where the Flag of registry (Germany in this case) was hoisted. It is on the main mastthat the rest of the flags are hoisted. The flag on the Extreme Starboard of the main mast is always the country of visit. As the sna...

Mona Passage
2007-09-09 20:54:00
Mona Passage : 17 54N , 068 06W , Spd 13.0 Kts ,Co -200(T)For anyone desirous of entering the Caribans, there two main passages to go through. The Windward passage, & the Mona Passage. The Windward passage is between Cuba & Haiti, whereas the Mona passage lies between the Dominican Republic & Puerto Rico. The passage is called Mona because of the Mona Island that guards it. Today was a bright & beautiful day & the visibility was great. If you look at the chart of the Mona Island, you can see that its a circular Island with about a miles radius. Itsgreat to look at from Google earth & you must try it out sometime. The pictures along with the chart are of the Isla Monita, a small rock jutting out of the ocean a few miles northwest of the Island (also there on the chart) & the full Mona Island as seen from a distance of about 5 miles. An interesting thing about British Admilarity (BA) Charts is that the UKHO has decided a few years back to start using the local names of...
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Tugs of the Savannah
2007-09-09 14:46:00
Approaches to Mona Passage: 19 07 N, 068 05W , Spd : 13.4 Kts, Co - 172 TThere is a large lobby of ship enthusiasts that are ardent admirers of the Tug. The tugs are the work horses of the marine industry and are typically small vessels with a strong engine, built more for the power then for the speed. In fact a normalcruising speed of a tug rarely crosses 10 kts. Pictured above are a couple of tugs that passed by in the Sava nnah river. The Edward Moran is a typical tug used for ship handling & it is really beautiful. The tug is a classic and is built along the lines of the tugs made in the late 70's & eighties.I won't be surprised if that really was the age of the old lady as some of these vessels can last a long time in the rivers fresh water. The second tug, ugly by most descriptions, including some of my own, is the tug "Savannah" The reason that its front is cut off into a blunt end is because its really meant to carry barges. The US applies cabotage law along its coast. ...

Tokyo Express in Savannah
2007-09-08 19:13:00
Posted north East of Bahamas : 22 32 N, 070 51W, Spd 13.1, Co 131.8All mariners think of ships as women. Probably because we don't see many of the real ones. But notwithstanding any and all allegations of sexisms, you have to agree that you can tell a lot about a ship from the way her stern looks.Pictured above is the Container Ship Tokyo Express discharging Cargo at Sava nnah .The information garnered from the picture of the Stern is as follows:Name : Tokyo ExpressPort of Registry : HamburgIMO Number : 9193290Call Sign : DGTXPoints of note:The picture also shows some neat points of interest to those who think that those points of interest are neat. Firstly, the lifeboat used on the ship is that of the free fall lifeboat. The advantage of these lifeboats is that the owner is required toinstall only one of these on the ship. Conventional lifeboat fittings require each side of the vessel to have lifeboats for the total life saving capacity of the ship. The problem with this kind o...

Free!
2007-09-07 05:00:00
Posted North of Bahamas : 27 51 N, 077 35WIt always surprises me how far you can see out at sea. After the months of being at home, when you finally do step out on the bridge of your ship, the horizon is so far far away that you wonder if you ever will catch it. It is good to be out at sea & especially good to be out of the US. I think I had told you about the IALA buoyage system & how the US has an opposit system in place. Well I always feel that you are going the right way if you keep green on the Starboard.This seems more then symbolic when you have to keep the green buoys on your Stbd as you leave American port.Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless; Fri, 07 Sep 2007 03:07 UTC Message-id: 214161148
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Charleston Bay Bridge
2007-09-05 00:07:00
I have been sailing on the larger ships for so long that I had almost forgotten how much fun it was to pass under the bridges. Char les ton was a dreary place. It was cloudy & rained pretty much throughout the stay there. For some reason, there was nocity in evidence. Most US cities that I have seen are characterized by these clutter of high rises that the Americans inevitably call downtown (I have no idea where that would be in an Indian city) & then spread all around it would be the industrialarea, the warehouses & then the suburbs. If Charleston has a downtown with high rises, they were not visible from the river. But it does have a stunning bridge going for it. The Charleston bay bridge has a charted clearance of 186 feet and we with anair draft of 132 feet would have comfortably passed under it. But like getting out of a chopper, you always feel like ducking every time you pass under one of these. Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless; Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:58 UTC Mess...
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US Coast guard 211 at Charleston
2007-09-03 21:41:00
Posted at sea : 30 35 N, 082 19W When alongside the berth at Char les ton, this Coast guard vessel passed by. Like the Naval ships, coastguard ships don't carry the names painted on their sides. This one seems to be a supply of support craft of some sort. Charlston is a small port butthere is a substantial presence of the coastguard. This presence is also manifested because there are fewer naval vessels here. I had got to speaking to a chap from the USCG & he was telling me that a pert of the movie "The Guard ian" a movie based onthe rescue squad of the USCG, is based on the camp at Norfolk hardly a couple of hours drive from here. I think I'll have to watch that movie again.That capable fellow told me that there was a bigger presence of the USCG at Norfolk, but the staggering mass of the Naval contingent there meant that no one really noticed the USCG. Or as he put it, " They don't notice us - till things start goingwrong!"This is also a great snap ...
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Helicopters
2007-09-01 20:46:00
posted at sea : 31 49 N, 069 56W I have been seeing a lot of Helicopters over the last few days. Smaller ports like Charlston & Wilmington didn't have many of these, but Baltimore & Chesapeake had plenty of them. The ones near Chesapeake & Norfolk were mostly military ones butBaltimore had all types of choppers from News, medevac to Police Choppers. The Chopper refueling jetty was near our Terminal so we would see choppers coming every twenty minutes or so to Land, take fuel & then be on their merry ways. Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless; Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:48 UTC Message-id: 213177213

Chesapeake Bay Departure
2007-09-01 00:52:00
GPS : 32 39N , 079 39WTo 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 ChesapeakeBay & 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!Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless; Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:54 UTC Message-id: 213057705
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Depart Baltimore
2007-08-30 21:14:00
GPS Position : 36 13N , 075 02W Another reason that I liked Baltimore was because it gave a feeling of a classic city. Sort of like a snapshot of an American city from the forties. Cities like New York seem to have lost their soul in the maze of concrete & glass. Most of the High-rises in Baltimore are concentrated in the Downtown region as is the case with most American cities, but they do look beautiful. I'm not sure which any of these buildings are but I'm sure that almost any Baltimore resident would havebeen able to recognize these buildings. Another picture that intrigued me was this huge Sugar factory called "Domino Sugar". At least I think that is the factory & not an Advert Billboard. For some reason, a sugar factory in a major port of the US seems to be a bit strange. One would imaginethat All American sugar would be made elsewhere. We did leave Baltimore today, but over the last few ports, I think Baltimore is one of the cities that I would enj...

Baltimore
2007-08-30 06:34:00
Current GPS Position : 38 48N, 076 24WI Liked Baltimore . At least the bit I saw from the five miles away. I had actually planned to roam about in the city, but circumstances pervaded & I stayed on the ship. The evening on the Baltimore River Front was beautiful. As the sun began to cometowards the horizon & people came out in the Sailing boats & small boats for a bit of a sail. As the Sun set, all of these boats came back to the Marina like birds to their nests. Any City that affords its citizens a sail on a weekday can't be all thatbad!Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless; Thu, 30 Aug 2007 04:36 UTC Message-id: 212706328

Norfolk Anchorage
2007-08-29 19:49:00
GPS : 39 06 N, 076 14W Norfolk anchorage is not really a very busy place. If you come from the major shipping lanes like the Malacca Straits and the English Channel, you would actually think it a bit deserted. The only things other then a few Container ships that keepmoving to & fro are the Naval Ships from The Norfolk Naval Base. Yesterday I had shown you the Princess I riding to her anchor. On the other side were rows of Aircraft carriers (I counted six!) being refitted. I even spotted the aircraft carrier thathad interfered with the movements of ships the other day. All it sported was a solitary & sad looking plane with no one for company. In the other picture, you see the Warship 67 coming in the channel being escorted by her Tugs. I chose this picture because you see the Aircraft carrier in the background, & you can even see the sailors lined up on the deck. I'm not sure why all thesailors are required to line up on deck whenever a Naval vessel comes to port, ...
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Princess I & the IALA buoyage
2007-08-28 15:33:00
GPS :36 57N, 076 20WWe anchored near the Princess I at the Norfolk anchorage today. The Princess I looks like a Panamax bulk carrier & has five Hatches & four cranes. It's a bulk carrier of just the right size to go to great ports and it's a treat to handle a vessel ofthis size. It looks like the chaps there are doing a bit of hatch cleaning as they have partially opened two hatches. In ships like these, you generally have two hatch covers over each hatch & they open by folding and stand up at either ends of theHatches. The hatch covers are opened by Hydraulics & waterproof the hatches by thick rubber packing. I remember the many-many times that we had to repair leaks in the hydraulic piping and the testing of the water tightness by hosing down by a firehose. To test the water tightness, one team would go inside the hatch & the other team would start hosing down on the sides of the hatch with a fire hose at good pressure. The tricky part was to let the p...

Chesapeake
2007-08-28 00:51:00
USA is beyond doubt one of the most beautiful countries in the world. We came into a place called Chesapeake today. It is a berth at the end of three hour long pilotage and passes through the Norfolk Naval Base. The base is one of the biggest navalbases & also a very old & famous Ship yard. I saw more then twenty naval ships either under construction or being refitted out there. Today they were going to launch an aircraft carrier at 1000 hrs & they had decided to shut down the whole channel forit. Luckily managed to sneak in just a few hours before the window began. As you pass the Norfolk area, the USS Missouri lies as a Museum on the Port side and a friend works in one of the offices near it. After the Norfolk area, you come to thesparser countryside with green grass & wide fields. It's a little scary to pass underneath a few draw bridges, but it's a perverse fun to watch all the cars waiting for you to pass so that the bridge will be lowered. Received: fr...

At sea
2007-08-26 15:57:00
Its a beautiful day. The sun is out & the visibility is fine. The weekend is on & the local people will start moving out of the marina's in a couple of hours. We were in port yesterday and the amount of boats out on a saturday evening was simplyamazing. They were like bugs moving all around the ship trying to get where ever they might be off to. I'm not sure if the Americans do anything productive on their boats over a weekend, but they sure did make the second mates day. I think he managedto see three episodes of Baywatch in the Half an hours berthing.Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless; Sun, 26 Aug 2007 14:15 UTC Message-id: 212068808

Stuck in the middle of the Ocean
2007-08-26 00:15:00
There have not been many entries in my blog over the last few days. The reason for this is that I have joined a Ship again and this particular moment finds me far removed from the Internet. But regardless, I shall keep trying to updating the blog byemail. The only problem with this is that I will not be able to check up on the stuff I write. Probably a good thing. :)Received: from GCC at Globe Wireless; Sat, 25 Aug 2007 22:17 UTC Message-id: 211995818
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And they also eat!
2007-08-02 08:34:00
After the post about the sparrow, I felt obiliged to atleast put out some food for them. They ahd a few pecks, but I'm not sure they are crazy about uncooked rice. :)

The legend of the house sparrow
2007-07-25 05:48:00
A blogger I regularly read is Eric, who maintains a philately blog. He recently posted a stamp featuring the sparrow from Belarus. A further research informed me that stamps on Spar rows were around in some quantity. While I am not going to start another collection on sparrows, let me tell you the story of why the male sparrow has a darker chest then the female of that species.It so happened that once Mrs Sparrow decided that she wanted to apply Kajal (Mascara) to her eyes, but sadly back then the sparrows didn't have any. So she told Mr Sparrow to get some. Mr Sparrow flew far and wide, but there was no Mascara to be found anywhere. After a long futile search, he finally came upon a big black rock. This was the perfect rock that Mrs Sparrow could use for her Mascara. But it was simply not possible for Mr Sparrow to take the big rock to the Mrs. And god forbid the thought of Mrs Sparrow coming out of the nest without her make up intact for applying the Kajal! So Mr Sparrow did the o...
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A Blog on Philitaly
2007-07-22 06:21:00
Hi All.Over the past some time, people who read this blog would have realised my fondness for the Postal service. In view of this, I have decided to start a new blog solely dedicated to the postal dept and my stamps. The blog is called "The Stamps of Velu" (for lack of more imaginative title)Please do drop by and spend some time there.Regds,Velu
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More stamps
2007-07-17 05:19:00
Some time back I had written about the Indian postal departments philately scheme to let you receive newly released stamps at your home after opening an account with them. This has proven to be very useful to someone like me who doesn't hang around the country for more then half the year.On returning back home this time, I saw that the postal department has released some great stamps over the last few months. The Miniature sheet for the 2550 years of mahaparinirvana of the Buddha is one of the most beautiful pieces of work I have seen released by this country.The first of the six postage stamps depicts a statue from the gandhara period of Siddhartha when he was a prince. The second stamp is a sculpture from Myanmar where buddha is an ascetic. The third stamp depicts the blissful head of the meditating Buddha from Sarnath, India. The fourth stamp is that of Buddha holding the nectar of immortality in a jar & the fifth stamp contain incarnations of Buddha past and future. The Hina...
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The wall
2007-07-16 11:01:00
We had gone over to Puja's village home at Astha and I found a most photogenic wall.I'm not really sure which of the pictures I like to most, so I'll let you people have them all.I think the Cycle gives it a classic look. I should have clicked one snap off in black and white
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