| 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. |
