Hither and Yon 2

This looks like but is not a “scull-vaults-palms” foto.  guess the location?

Here’s a bit more context.  Answer follows.

Different context . . . know this vessel and location?  Given the five boros’ idea these days for a BIG WHEEL on the waterfront, these things are recyclable!!  You can buy a preowned wheel or even rent one.    Who knew!?@!!  Also, note the stealthy one hoping to catch a ride on the floating pier?

Vessel is Geo Caspian, and AIS says therefore this must be Cape Town.

Here’s Colin from Cape Town on what she does:  “Geo Caspian finds out what rock is on the bottom of the sea in order to have a better idea if the rock is likely to be oil bearing or not.  She tows up to 16 wires and microphones and compressed air guns behind the ship and banging off with the guns a bit underwater and collecting the echo reflected from the bottom of the sea. The whole spread of cables astern can be up to 8,000 metres long and to get it to be wide as well they have foils in the water to spread the wires apart.  There are also “birds” connected along the tubes which carry all this stuff.The birds are able to move their wings so as to guide the instruments up or down deeper and are controlled from the ship.  A lot of this stuff is in plastic flexible tubes which contain light oil of the correct specific gravity to neither sink or pop out on the surface.   All this stuff is controlled with large winches in the stern and there are compressors there as well that produce compressed air at a very high pressure which is fed to the compressed air guns to make the noise under water.  The ship is guided by satnav as to where they want to survey and the information gathered goes to head office by satellite as well as being stored on tapes to be flown back when the ship enters port.”

Also in Cape Town at the moment is CS Leon Thevenin.  She replaces CS Chamarel, which was lost off Namibia in August 2012.

The four Cape Town fotos all come from Colin in Cape Town.  Colin and Pamela Syndercombe sent along info and fotos of the move overland of the South African steam tug Alwyn Vintcent;  click here for the latest newsletter on this project. The top two I’m using thanks to Maureen, who got the fotos on the scull on the Tiber in Rome.  Last spring Maureen sent these intriguing fotos from Venice.

For  info on a manufacturer of big wheels . . . a la Staten Island, click here.  Click here and scroll all the way down for pics of big wheels in different cities.