Bananas, Helens, and Hedons

Unrelated but priority . . . don’t know if this is real:  Colvin schooner on beach for sale for $15000

I quote from gcaptain:  “According to AP Moller, the parent company of Maersk Lines, a single 20-foot vessel container on average can hold about 48,000 bananas. In theory then, Emma Maersk is capable of holding nearly 528 million bananas [aka 11,000 teu] in a single voyage – enough to give every person in Europe or North America a banana for breakfast.”    So I wondered . . . if Emma and sisters carry that number of bananas, then

CMA CGM White Shark = 243 million bananas,

Ital Lirica – 244.3,

Port Said – 82.03 . . . .   and

MSC Linzie – 242.3

There you have it, a new measure for container ships, the banana.  It’s right out there waiting to catch on  . .  like smoots, donkeypower, helens, and  hedons.

All fotos recently by Will Van Dorp.  Thanks to gcaptain for bringing up the banana idea.  Now would those be Cavendish bananas, plantains, or something else?

Dutch Surprise 2

http://longisland.craigslist.org/boa/2305694361.html

This blog has featured Dutch-built vessels permanently in North America before, like Livet (scroll thru a bit) and Golden Re’al.  There’s also a set of posts in September  2009 about a traditional  Dutch fleet transported to the these waters for a long month’s touristic sailing;  scroll through the “archives” on the lower leftside here to September 2009 and you’ll find a bunch, and here and here are fotos of this fleet riding Flinterborg back to Old Netherlandish waters.

Thanks to Rene Keuvelaar, here are more fotos of these American-built vessels that to this day still traffic European inland waterways, whether earning income carrying freight or spending savings gallivanting about.  Raised but unpainted lettering on the two closest hulls identify them as Muscadet (today Cordi Jan of Arnhem) and Corbieres (scrapped (?)  in 1995), hulls # 275 and 270, respectively.

Let me digress here.  Hic et Ubique was built in 1970 in the Czech Republic.  This foto was taken east of Rotterdam in 2005.  Can you guess

the cargo?  Answer follows.  Today Hic et Ubique goes by Vagrant.

Geran was Ingalls hull #276  (1951), originally known as Pomerol.  In 2005, she was shortened

by about 45′ and converted from vrachtschip (freighter)

to woonschip (houseboat).

Her original loa was just shy of 208 feet.

Ontario was hull  #277, originally called

Pontet-Canet.

Note the spare prop.

That cargo was sugar beets.  Although the US may still be the world’s leading producer, I’m not familiar with it.

Top foto from Vereniging “de Binnenvaart”  (European Inland Navigation Assocation).  All other fotos by Rene Kevelaar, used with permission.

I’d love to hear from someone familiar with Decatur, Alabama. Again, click here for some info on Ingalls Shipbuilding.  I wonder if the bunker tanker Manhasset (See 1958 here.)  I used to see in the sixth boro is the one built at Ingalls.  I know I had a foto of Manhasset, but can’t locate it.  Here’s Tom Turner’s.  Also, anyone know what has become of Manhasset and Mostank?