If you’ve forgotten why I call these exotic, it comes from a bird book I have on the shelf.  Read about it here.

RV Ridley Scott Thomas came into the sixth boro yesterday, arriving here between Driftmaster, 1949–exotic in a different way–and the light, West Bank.

Here’s my question:  where and when was Ridley Thomas built?  Answer follows.  When I saw it, I wondered whether it had just left a shipyard for the first time.

Arriving yesterday after a nine-day trip from Curaçao, she had lots of folks on deck enjoying the beautiful Saturday morning.

Click here for more info on EGS, now a Hong Kong based company, and click here for info on her fleetmates. It turns out that one of her fleetmates is RV Bold Explorer, which some years ago you saw here as an EPA vessel named Bold. How her change of ownership came to be can be extrapolated here.

 

Sloop Puffin squeezes between Driftmaster and the research vessel.  Note the flag on the ridge?  It’s flag day today, and if you’re wondering how that started, click here.  I’m a fan of #6.  There are two US flags in this photo, one at the official site Fort Wadsworth, and another as courtesy flag flying from the mast of Thomas.

As of this writing, she’s still in over in Elizabethport.

 

All photos, WVD.   I’ve no idea why she’s in town, but for more on RV Ridley Thomas, click here.

And the answer to the questions . . . she was built in Singapore in 1981, first carrying the name Western Inlet.