Appropriately I haven’t used this title in a year;  “government ships” entitled the post a year ago when I was in town for the grand entrance for Fleet Week 2008.  I’m indebted to the vigilant bowsprite for catching the recessional . . . the fleet processing out the sixth boro for watery parts not yet revealed.  Intended or not, schooner Pioneer certainly had an up-close-and-personal here with DDG-80 Roosevelt.  That’s Ellis Island, in one of its many moods, in the background.

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Bowsprite also recorded Iwo Jima‘s exit past the Morris Canal.

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Here Roosevelt received visitors for a week at the Manhattan passenger terminal.

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Given my recent post on the gunnery to be carried aboard Onrust, whose maiden voyage to the sixth boro will happen next week, I made it a point to find out about DDG-80‘s Mark 45 inside the red circle below.

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Bow view of LHD-7 Iwo Jima.  Note the lone sailor on duty at bow just to port of the mast; he was from Texas and thrilled by the New York welcome he got.   The surprises for me waited inside the “well” or well deck:

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a landing craft with twin Kort nozzles (as well as some barnacles on the hull) and

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(what’s this . . . an 11′ diameter propeller . . .

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another 11′ diamter propeller ??)  Aha!  it’s the starboard and port propulsion fan of one  LCAC . . . with

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some jacuzzi jet drive vehicle on its back.  I wish now I’d gone onto this small patrol craft, because it’s bringing to mind a children’s song about a hole in the bottom of the sea…  like    “there’s a inflatable on a patrol craft on the LCAC in the well deck of the LHD in the harbor . . . of the island at the center of the world . . .”   (Good luck trying to set that to music!)

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But here’s the biggest surprise for me:  a sign that I believed carried some security code:  #NYCFW.  Wrong . . . this is twitter speak!!!!  The secret tweeting world I’ve avoided was staring me right in the face.

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Many thanks to Jed and technosavvy Elizabeth for information used here.

Fotos 1 and 2 by bowsprite;  all other by Will Van Dorp.