Friday, November 26, 2010

One ping, one ping only

"Let me get this straight you're sailing down the coast and you want to go look at boats while you're here?"

Yep we sure do!

Took a gander through the maritime museum here. It's fairly comprehensive, not only can you walk around and touch *everything* ...well except you can't climb the rigging... which to tell you the truth I really really wanted to. They also have museum type displays that tell you all kinds of interesting things!



The main attraction is the Star of India, the oldest iron hull vessel of its kind still capable of sailing. She's very impressive, and the video footage they have of her restored maiden voyage is awe inspiring. It took many hours, and many skills, some so old that they called guys out of retirement to come do. She looked magestic in among all the hundreds of thousands of sailboats dotting the bay that turned out for the event. Half a million people were there to witness it!



I also got to tour a Soviet Submarine, and it was the one used in the movie Red October (I think)! They sure have a lot of pipes and wires and knobs and levers everywhere. There was more room than I thought there would be, but I imagine once you put more than one person inside you'd feel cramped pretty quickly. My favorite part was the torpedo tubes... yep I fit *grins*



They have a special hatch that if the sub gets stuck you can let it loose from the inside and it will float up to the surface with a rope attached so rescuers can find the sub. In an emergency there's a hatch they can use where the guy gets in, they lock it, flood it and then he can climb up the ladder and out the outter hatch and slowly up the rope to the surface... if you're really desperate a torpedo tube can also be used. Of course both of those only work if the sub isn't too deep.



Right, so super awesome by day... tactical error by night. I should've worn pants, it is quite cool in the morning and the evening here now... and for some reason the sun seems to set more quickly than it does up north. I haven't figured that one out yet *shrugs*

Our other tacticle error though was trying to do anything on Thanksgiving. You Americans take thanksgiving wayyyy more seriously than we do, the streets were deserted, the place was like a ghost town... you didn't even have to play frogger to jay walk. So getting a cab was a bit of a challenge, we ended up sharing it with some lady who was late to get to her plane... I gather she tried to scoop us on it, but the taxi driver said no because Dad had waved him down. Thank you so much Mr taxi driver.

Oh and another thing, we've been having trouble with is American money lol... see with all our colored bills in Canada it's easy to tell how much you have (or don't have), well that and the smallest bill we have is a $5. With all the American bills being green though, you have to look at the numbers... so even though you have a mitfull and it *looks* like you have lots, it seems to always end up being $20 in $1 bills.

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