Sailing To New York City

Sailing To The Mouth Of Delaware Bay (continued)

 
Two views of the ship Pontodromon, with the left-hand picture including the steaming cooling tower of the Salem nuclear power plant. The ship is at anchor outside the main shipping channel in a general anchorage marked on the chart. Pontodromon is a bulk carrier built in 1986 and registered in Cyprus. It is 741.5 feet long, 105 feet wide, and displaces 64,975 tons.

 
Passing the Green 3R buoy, Jesse doesn't look like a happy camper.  


 
Looking astern from Pilgrim, you can see a big container ship steering directly toward us. Are we about to get run over? Stay tuned...  


 
These two ships, YP683 and YP689, are training ships operated by the U.S. Naval Academy. They were part of a flotilla of six or seven nearly identical ships that were heading up the Delaware River, all in line, a few hundred feet apart. Each ship had a different national flag flying from the starboard spreader (I'm not sure what that meant). As the training ships approached a big commercial ship, we could hear someone in the flotilla making radio calls to communicate their intentions. He sounded like a kid, and like he was a rookie, so they must be learning how to run the ships. The YP training ship has a wooden hull and aluminum superstructure; it is 108 feet long, 24 feet wide, has a draft of 8 feet, displaces up to 176 tons, and has a range of 1,800 nautical miles.

Internet Links For This Section


Previous Page   Next Page   Contents Page   Sailboat Cruising Page   Home Page