When I wrote the story Message in a Bottle I was just using what information I had on hand. The last quotation in the story was from a news source on the British Columbia (BC) coast where a Tofino, BC man found a one hundred and seven (107) year old message in a bottle.
I wanted to keep that story updated but the local media seemed to have lost track of the story as the man wants to donate?/sell? the bottle to a museum without opening the bottle.
While Googling the story of the Tofino man I found the news video of his find on Youtube . . .
The hijack of a ship on the British Columbia (BC) coast is a rare possibility, but with all the controversy over oil spills and destruction of coastal rain forests, the possibility is still there for terrorists or others to hijack a ship on the BC coast and hold the government for ransom.
In the rest of the world, piracy, or hijacking of a ship, is not unknown and shipping companies have had to find many ways to keep their ships safe. Speed is one method, but a fully-loaded freighter does not go very fast.
Today, October 17, 2013, a new website for me, Marine Insight, mentioned:
After posting the story Then You’ve Got to Clean Them! I obtained permission from Pacific Wild to use some photos showing the cooking of the salmon by the people in Bella Bella, British Columbia (BC). These pictures just made me drool. The people were cooking planked salmon which has to be one of the tastiest ways of cooking salmon over an open fire. See the photo and gallery below:
photo courtesy of Pacific Wild
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The photos above are in no set order – just as I downloaded them. On the lighthouse we used to cook the salmon many ways but this was the most fun, and the tastiest. Continue reading Now You Have to Cook Them!→
For an update on what a Mise Tale is then please see Mise Tales One.
Has anyone seen the movie released in 2009 entitled The Lovely Bones? It features a fictitious lighthouse marking the entrance way to heaven in a thoroughly entertaining film.
“Centers on a young girl who has been murdered and watches over her family – and her killer – from purgatory. She must weigh her desire for vengeance against her desire for her family to heal.” – IMDb
There is one strange thing about this lighthouse – the light in the lantern revolves counter-clockwise (CCW)! This is most unusual and there are only a few lighthouses in the world that revolve CCW, the majority revolving clockwise (CW).
A couple I found were in Australia. Does anyone know the whys and wherefores of CW vs CCW rotation of the lamp? I think this deserves further investigation and maybe a future article. Thanks for any help you can contribute. Continue reading Mise Tales Twenty-Eight→
I know this website is about lighthouses, but I do not plan these things! After posting the story on FLIP (Floating Instrument Platform) doing oceanographic research I was alerted to this story on the World’s Ugliest Ship which also does research of sorts. It is too interesting to ignore. Hey, it’s also red and white like the Canadian Coast Guard ships!
A seismic vessel, the Ramform Titan, has sometimes been dubbed “the world’s ugliest ship” as it has a 70 meter wide stern, making it one of the widest boats in the world. It is owned by Norway’s Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS). – more
Launch of the Ramform Titan from the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki, Japan (below):
[private]
The ship was launched on April 26 from the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki, Japan (see video at the end of this article). The giant oil-services vessel has docked in Bergen, Norway for the first time on Saturday morning and will remain in port until the weekend, when it sails off to the South Atlantic to shoot seismic in the Falkland Islands. The ship’s captain, Cato Grasdal told Bergens Tidende (in Norwegian), “The ship has tremendous power and is therefore okay to manoeuvre.” “The most unusual thing is that she is so short compared to the width, which makes her difficult to get onto the pier.”
On the Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) website a statement reads: “The new Ramform Titan Class puts PGS further ahead as the leader in safe, productive and efficient 3D seismic acquisition.” The boat’s wide stern is designed to drag up to 24 seismic cables, capable of shooting seismic over a 12 km² area. The boat is powered by the ship’s own on-board 18 megawatt power station.
The vessel provides an enhancement of many established features, all incorporated for one single purpose – “to collect maximum amounts of seismic data: quickly, safely and reliably.” As can be seen in the videos, on board there is comfortable space for an 80-man crew, and offers them a 225m² sports arena, a swimming pool, sauna, fitness room, 3 television lounges and an auditorium. [/private]
When I wrote the story A Wolf At McInnes I never really explained how the wolf got on to McInnes Island, so today I am going to combine two stories into one. Firstly, the wolf swam from nearby Price Island over two (2) kilometers away, probably island hopping to catch its breath. Pictured below and in the album are photos of wolves swimming taken by photographer Leanne Reandy, a staff member of Spirit Bear Adventures, on a trip back to Klemtu from Bella Bella, BC.
A friend, Brian Waddington (aka Gups-Y-Bees) and I, he an ex-lighthouse keeper from Ivory Island many years ago, have a common friend on my old lighthouse at McInnes Island.
The friend is Colin Toner and he has been on McInnes for a few years, but the following experience as related below and the same on Brian’s website butterfliesdragonspeace (Part 1 and Part 2) was a different day in the life of a lighthouse keeper!
Colin Toner looking out the kitchen window I see my dog lounging in the sun then it occurs to me this one is grey and mine is inside – beautiful grey wolf swam all the way here to visit .
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Light-house keeping is a fine career if you are the light-house keeper type. Rarely boring, always useful, fits right into Buddhist beliefs about what makes a proper job and you just never know who is going to show up for coffee and company.
Can you imagine a lighthouse being used as an aeronautical beacon? Well there is one. It is in the United States at Boston’s Logan Airport and it uses the Boston Lighthouse as a visual marker for Visual Flight Rule (VFR) landings. See the copy of the aeronautical chart below:
Boston Logan Airport aeronautical chart (not for navigation)
What do you think a lighthouse keeper would do if he spotted this floating on the ocean in front of his lighthouse? My first reaction would be to run and call for help!
Launched in 1962, the bizarre research vessel Flip (Floating Instrument Platform) can go from a horizontal to vertical position while staying afloat and stable in heavy seas – even in 80-foot waves. That allows it to perform oceanographic research measurements with great accuracy. Inside the crew areas is a strange Escher-like world of doors in floors, portholes in ceilings, and tables bolted to walls. . . more
Later I was thinking it is too bad that this technology was not available for the Canadian weather ships that used to be off our Canadian coasts. They could have operated nicely with a ship that only rose three (3) inches in eighty (80) foot waves!
