What are the ugliest or most useless monstrosity you’ve ever seen floating?
Here are some I think are real gems:
For you c.captain…
[ATTACH]3261[/ATTACH]
What a waste of a classic truck!
[QUOTE=commtuna;104730]For you c.captain…[/QUOTE]
Oh Man! I am so with you here!
the only thing that can save this phugly piece of shit is Xena topless on the bow as a figurehead!
curse that wonton bitch to HELL…SIR!
of course there is also this jewel
wonder how many thrusters they’ve burned up in a year? Phugly stoopid design and shitty construction…what a great combination and can’t even work in the Arctic where it was intended to go. One of the truly useless ships at only $545M to build. Way to go Shell!
FUCKING SHELL EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION COMPANY IN HOUSTON IS THE BIGGEST BUNCH OF OBTUSE AND IDIOTIC RUBES EVER TO INFEST THE OFFSHORE INDUSTRY!
.
[QUOTE=rshrew;104731][ATTACH]3261[/ATTACH]
What a waste of a classic truck![/QUOTE]
Oh I’ve seen them do much much worse while conductiong AMIO in the Carribbean. Some interesting creations that somehow float, its amazing…
here’s a couple more
[QUOTE=commtuna;104730]For you c.captain…[/QUOTE]
Was that taken in Mobile?? I think I saw it there a few years ago
[QUOTE=catherder;104782]Was that taken in Mobile?? I think I saw it there a few years ago[/QUOTE]
Hey now we do have standards in Mobile.
[QUOTE=c.captain;104737]here’s a couple more
[/QUOTE]
I actually think the bottom one is pretty cool looking.
[QUOTE=catherder;104782]Was that taken in Mobile?? I think I saw it there a few years ago[/QUOTE]
Dutch Harbor, AK when it went aground last year.
I’m not sure which category this falls more into, ugly or useless, but ugly and useless though it may be you can’t deny it’s still kinda cool. Tell me you wouldn’t spend an afternoon or two hangin’ out on this thing if you could. I certainly would. I wouldn’t want to cross the pond in the thing but I wouldn’t mind romping around the islands with it either.
Anything with an orange T on the side like this oldy moldy here!
The first is ugly but useful. The second is useless but awesome!
Bizarre Navy ‘Flip Ship’ Turns 50
[ATTACH]3270[/ATTACH]
FLIP is 355 feet of weirdness that is towed out to sea lengthwise, then flips on end to float like a giant buoy. With most of its hull below the water, acting as a giant stabilizer, the flip ship is an extraordinarily stable platform for scientific instruments conducting fine measurements above, below, and on the surface. 16 people – five crew and 11 scientists – can cram into the unsubmerged portion for up to a month of at-sea experiments. Owned by the Office of Naval Research and operated by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, FLIP was originally built to research the acoustics of underwater sound, a life-or-death issue for sailors hunting submarines.
Vestas’ Sailrocket 2 becomes the fastest sailing boat on the planet
[ATTACH]3271[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH]3272[/ATTACH]
On the 12th of November, it made a 54.08 knots (62.23 mph) run over a 500 metres (1,600 ft) distance, then 59.23 knots (68.16 mph) on the 16th. It attained 55.32 knots (63.66 mph) on a one mile run on the 18th and simultaneously 59.38 knots (68.33 mph) on 500m. On 24 November, with wind speeds at roughly 25 knots (29 mph), it ran the 500m course at 65.45 knots (75.32 mph) with a 68.01 knots (78.26 mph) peak. Both records are ratified by the WSSRC for the 500m and the mile.
[QUOTE=Fraqrat;104829]Anything with an orange T on the side like this oldy moldy here![/QUOTE]
man Fraq…that vessel is a cruiseship compared to where the industry started at
now them’s was da bad old timey daze!
Arthur Blounts mark on the maritime industry, pretty cool family right there
The epitome of ugly AND useless. $80,000,000 and it just sits at the dock unused…
Oh you are so correct sir…that pig is a winner amongst winners! I really don’t think you can top it?
btw, the winning bid to buy the fucker is $751K by a Dutch firm that intends to use it in windfarm work. LESS THAN ONE FUCKING PERCENT RETURN ON THE DOLLAR!
With only one bidder, future of yet-to-be-used Mat-Su ferry remains unclear
Published: March 29, 2013
By LISA DEMER — ldemer@adn.com
PALMER – One $80 million ice-breaking ferry, one $751,000 bid to buy it.
The Matanuska-Sustina Borough, trying to rid itself of the novel ferry it once embraced but has never used, received just a single bid by the noon Friday deadline. It doesn’t have to accept it.
The vessel was completed in 2011 and born out of a partnership between the borough, which wanted a ferry, and the Navy, which wanted a fast military landing craft. Named the Susitna, it was built as a Navy prototype that would be owned and operated by the borough. The project was funded mainly with Department of Defense earmarks wedged into the federal budget by then-U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
But the borough hasn’t been able to get suitable docks or a workable business plan to operate it as a ferry between Anchorage and Port MacKenzie in the Mat-Su.
With monthly costs to the borough averaging $75,000 for insurance, maintenance, fuel, docking fees and other expenses, the Borough Assembly has directed employees to find the most economical way to shed it.
While the borough solicited buyers, it also launched a parallel track to give away the boat to a government organization that met federal requirements. Of those that expressed interest, proposals by Los Angeles County and the U.S. Virgin Islands are still being evaluated by the Federal Transit Administration.
On Friday, Russ Krafft, the borough purchasing officer, opened the sole bid, a $751,000 offer from Workships Contractors BV, based in The Netherlands. It wants to use the vessel to support offshore wind farms, according to the borough.
“I was expecting more offers and higher offers, even if it was just for scrapping the vessel,” said Marc Van Dongen, the borough’s port director.
Patty Sullivan, the borough’s public affairs director, told him there was no need to talk about turning the highly engineered vessel – with a barge deck that raises for faster sailing and lowers for beach landings – into scrap. She’s spent hours with the designers and ridden on it for test runs and appreciates its steady state at sea. It is docked near the Ketchikan shipyard where it was built.
The borough has engaged international ship brokers and queried the Alaska Marine Highway System about taking it on. The state ferry system, in a new draft study, concluded the Susitna would be expensive to run and that existing docks would need to be reconfigured. The study said the boat can hold 134 passengers but only 20 vehicles, and burns 375 gallons of fuel an hour. A state ferry with a similar capacity, the Lituya, burns 55 gallons an hour. The state ferry system doesn’t want the Susitna, the staff report said.
The borough has checked with the Coast Guard, oil spill cleanup companies, and Royal Dutch Shell, one of the major companies trying to drill in the Alaska Arctic. It’s heard from entrepreneurs, including a man who wanted to turn it into a floating casino off the coast of Hong Kong. That didn’t seem right for a vessel that the Navy helped design and pay for, Sullivan said.
Emerson Krueger, a borough planner who is leading the search for a new ferry home, has heard from all sorts.
“The best so far as far as commercial interest in purchasing the vessel was a guy in Denmark who represents a group of Chinese investors that owned an offshore resort outside the coast of Singapore and wanted to buy the vessel for somewhere between $10 and $20 million and use it to run their guests,” Krueger said.
But only Workships made an official bid and put up $5,000 in earnest money.
While most of the money to build the boat came from defense earmarks, the Federal Transit Administration invested at least $12 million into outfitting the boat, engineering and design work for ferry landings, and a ferry terminal. The borough also has $6 million from the transit agency still in hand. The agency expects at least a portion of the grants to be repaid unless the boat is put to use for public transit by a government entity.
The borough doesn’t yet know how much it might owe the federal agency, but the $751,000 offer provides a sense of market interest, Krafft said. The best option will likely be to give the boat to another government agency, Van Dongen said.
The government of the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory, said it was interested, but then seemed to back off. A community college in Seattle inquired about acquiring it to train merchant marines, but that’s not a public transit purpose. A fledgling research laboratory in Wisconsin wants it, too. A village of Native Hawaiians sent representatives in an executive jet to Alaska to check out the boat, but would have had to partner with the state, the federal agency told the borough. And that hasn’t happened.
At least two governments are still on the list being considered by the Federal Transit Administration, the borough said.
Los Angeles County wants to use the Susitna for public ferry service to Catalina Island, and also as an emergency response vessel that could respond to oil spills, conduct search and rescue operations, transport equipment, and serve as a sea-based mobile command, county chief executive William Fujioka and fire chief Daryl Osby said in a Feb. 22 letter to the borough.
The U.S. Virgin Islands is “in dire need of reliable inter-island travel,” Senate President Shawn-Michael Malone wrote in a March 18 letter to the borough. The ferry that used to run between St. Thomas and St. Croix was severely damaged in a 2011 accident at sea, he said.
Ultimately, the Borough Assembly will decide the Susitna’s future.
SOMEBODY SHOULD HANG BY THEIR THUMBS!
.
Alaskan politics at its finest. Wonder if they will approve of the sale.