It's graduation time at the Naval Academy -- "Commissioning Week" -- and Annapolis is going wild. On Sunday, May 23, we got a pretty good view from our boat of the Blue Angels (the U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron) practicing their precision flight maneuvers. It was impressive enough from here that we hiked out to the Academy (hiked is probably not the right word; it's only about one mile) the next day to see the real show. Wow! Six F/A-18 Hornets zooming around at 400+ m.p.h., flying upside down and sideways, breathtakingly close to each other. Yikes! We enjoyed the show very much, and expect our hearing to recover eventually.
We discovered another Commissioning Week event when we took some friends sailing with us on Saturday. As soon as we tacked out of the Severn and into the bay, we could see the destroyer USS Hayler anchored way out in the deeper water of the Chesapeake. This became our goal for the day; a close reach (for our non-sailing friends: this means sailing into the wind) in light air took us slowly but steadily up to the huge ship. We sailed past, then turned away from the wind to circle the destroyer and take some pictures. A careful jibe brought us around to our homeward track.
A few days later we walked over to the Naval Academy seawall, where they were running Navy boats[*] to take visitors out to the Hayler, and took the tour. Although we weren't allowed to photograph the combat command center and the sonar center (big rooms chock-full of computers, radar screens, and oscilloscopes), we got a few interior and deck shots.
|
|
Forward 5"/54 gun; the Tomahawk missile launcher; aft 5"/54 gun and flag |
|
|
Some of the radars; QM (in blue) and our tour guide (in white) show us the bridge; view from the bridge |
From the fact booklet handed out on the tour: the USS Hayler has a 529 foot waterline, a beam (width) of 55 feet (if Windom had the same proportions, Britt pointed out, our beam would be less than four feet!), and a 33 foot draft (which is why they anchor out in the bay -- they can't get any closer). The ship has a crew of over 300 of whom about 10% are women. The Hayler is a Spruance-class destroyer launched in 1982, the final ship in that series.
While
waiting for the Navy boat to take us out to the Hayler, we
caught the Pride of Baltimore II coming into Annapolis Harbor
under sail. This huge topsail schooner is 99 feet on deck, but
between the bowsprit and the protruding boom at the stern, she
measures 170 feet! That bowsprit is longer than our whole boat.
Not that we've been developing an inferiority complex, or anything. But the other day a huge motor yacht -- something on the order of 55-65 feet -- pulled into our marina, tying up alongside of the dock right in front of us. I caught a glimpse of a house-style refrigerator and freezer, and a wine rack, and beautiful varnished teak. The uniformed crew member washed the boat while the owner went off to enjoy Annapolis. If we could afford something like that (and the maintenance! and the dockage! and the crew's salary!), would we trade? Not on your life. (But we might take the fridge!)
