{"id":7196,"date":"2017-05-01T09:22:59","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T14:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=7196"},"modified":"2017-05-01T09:22:59","modified_gmt":"2017-05-01T14:22:59","slug":"building-ships-fast-and-other-random-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=7196","title":{"rendered":"Building ships fast and other random thoughts."},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s Monday morning and I am here in MD at our son Rob and DIL, Kandice’s home for a few days. \u00a0 As I begin this post it’s around 06:00 and I am sitting here with my granddaughter Tori, she lives here too, and she’s none too happy to share me with my post.<\/p>\n

Hours later… \u00a0Tori distractions and all…<\/p>\n

It’s sort of jarring, in a good way, to be in such a different environment after months aboard Pandora with a near constant eye toward the weather. \u00a0I got up with Tori our new granddaughter who’s also currently blissfully oblivious to the weather at around 06:00. \u00a0Now it’s after 09:00 and I am just turning back to this post. \u00a0Somehow I don’t recall the utter inability to get anything done when Rob and his brother Christopher were this young but that’s probably because I realized that it was hopeless and didn’t even try to focus on anything other than them.<\/p>\n

I guess I can’t totally blame Tori for not letting me get any writing done as she is quite cute, if distracting. \u00a0I was finally able to get this “happy” shot of her by using burst mode on the camera. \u00a0With 5 frames a second I got it. \u00a0That’s good as in that one second her emotions ranged from absolute happiness to a near meltdown.<\/p>\n

Get the picture? \u00a0I finally did too.\"\"Of course, the reason that I am now writing this post is that her father is up and watching her.<\/p>\n

Over the weekend we went to the birthday party of one Rob and Kandice’s friend’s one year old. \u00a0It turns out that Katie’s (the mom) father Denny (the grandfather), is involved with a WWII Liberty Ship, the John W. Brown, one of only two operational ships of it’s class left in the world. \u00a0 There were 2,711 of these ships built for the war effort and an amazing number, 1,554 of them, were lost to enemy fire, the highest percentage losses of any branch of the service. Because of these tremendous losses, there was an urgent need to build these ships faster than the German U Boats were able to sink them.<\/p>\n

As a result of these very heavy losses and the need to move troops and materiel to Europe during the war, it was very important to find a way to make these ships, and they were over 400′ long, finished and ready for sea as quickly as possible. \u00a0As a result, the building process was streamlined and while it took an average of 11 months to build a similar ship during WWI, using prefabricated parts, these ships were built in less than one month, a remarkable increase in efficiency.<\/p>\n

These ships were built at a number of shipyards on both the east and west coasts with the first ship of this class launched, the Oliver Perry, in 100 days in Richmond CA. \u00a0This video talks about being able to construct a ship in less than a month. \u00a0Later on, there was competition between yards with a record set of launching in 7 days, 14 hours and 32 minutes from the laying of the keel to launch. \u00a0 The ship was the Oliver Perry. \u00a0It’s an interesting story and worth reading<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And, speaking of Oliver Perry, he was a pretty important guy and there is a totally modern sailing ship bearing his name, beyond the first Liberty ship and others, that sails out of Newport RI. \u00a0 She’s an educational vessel and a real beauty.