let's do this again

Wipe the dust off your luggage! It's time to do this Winter Work thing one last time.So, while I'm packing my bags to head back to Dubai, I should probably bring you up to speed...Last January, I flew out to the UAE to intern on a yacht restoration project, henceforth "The Haida Project." Haida was launched in 1947 by Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine, USA. There's a short background on the project here. Shortly after my arrival, the vessel was towed from her berth in Port Khalid, Sharjah to Al Jadaf Shipyard in Dubai. We waited almost two weeks before the shipyard had room to lift Haida. The lift itself was quite an undertaking. Ten years had elapsed since Haida's last docking, and shipyard and dry dock officials were concerned about the vessel settling onto the keel blocks squarely. There's...

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Posted in: announcements,haida,traveling

deja vu

I am almost positive that I've been here before...The flight from Atlanta to Dubai was regrettably turbulent-free, and we arrived practically on time. I flew Delta this time around, so I didn't run into any flight attendants named Guido. From my recollection of the Emirates flight, I think that there were more Americans flying on Delta. It was particularly great to find that there were no screaming children stomping about the economy cabin on my Delta flight. Overall, I suppose I would fly Delta to Dubai again; although, I do miss my free Emirates Airline socks.After an excruciatingly long queue for Passport Control, I raced to collect my bag, narrowly saving it from the "return bag to behind the carousel's wall" monster. I scanned the crowd that lined the exit towards ground transportation....

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Posted in: Delta Airlines,dubai,Emirates Airline,sharjah,traveling

stick to the script

Over the last 48 hours, I have often reminded myself to stick to the script. You see, readers, since returning from Pawleys Island, South Carolina after the Fourth of July, the schedule on on the First Coast has been chock-o-block. While the circumstances that led to what some may call a hectic schedule are a touchy subject with at least one reader, it will suffice to say that time on the First Coast was more limited than I had anticipated.But let's talk about what's been going on!The parentals and I made the annual trek up to Pawleys Island, South Carolina on Friday, July 2. Pawleys, for the Google Maps challenged (though, do see below) is about 90 minutes north of Charleston, SC. The tiny barrier island is generally calm and peaceful...

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Posted in: first coast,leisure photos,script,traveling

victory in newport

I pulled out of Newport, Rhode Island on a crisp Thursday morning after spending the last two days working with David Pedrick, a Webb alumnus from the Class of 1970 on the Haida project. One of my tasks this summer is to move the watertight bulkhead arrangement project along so that ABS can approve construction drawings, and Haida can be one step closer to satisfying the most stringent, modern rules and regulations. David and I spent time in February surveying Haida to determine the least obtrusive locations to install additional watertight bulkheads. For the non-naval architects in the readership, watertight bulkheads allow a vessel to be compartmentalized under the main deck to increase the survivability of the vessel in the event of a breach...

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Posted in: america's cup,haida,leisure photos,newport,traveling

thesis adventure

What started as a simple day trip to Mystic, CT for the 19th Annual WoodenBoat Show metamorphosed into an epic three day adventure over land and sea to ports of call including Greenport, Orient Point, and Shelter Island, NY and East Lyme, New London, and Mystic, CT (plus some small towns on back roads between Mystic and New London). In May, the thesis team of Dixon, Lachtman, and Mouravieff (henceforth, Lidia, Andy, and Hampton) made plans to attend the WoodenBoat Show as a means of conducting parametric research for our senior thesis project. Lidia, Andy, and I are designing a solar-electric, wooden launch for our thesis. Our thesis will take the design from blank paper screen to construction-ready drawings. In order to do that, we need to...

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Posted in: ferry,mystic seaport,shelter island,thesis,WoodenBoat

at it again

It has been a few months, admittedly. To those (to one) of you who have frantically wondered what happened since Day 4 in Egypt, I've got a quick summary in this post to bring you up to speed.After leaving Dubai at the end of February, classes resumed in full force. This semester marked the beginning of the Webb Trifecta: ship design, marine engineering design work, and thesis. Over the duration of sixteen weeks, our class completed conceptual designs for six different "small" ships, a preliminary design for a product carrier fire main, and researched and selected thesis topics. We also continued to take classes like hydrodynamics, ship structures, and American government. The end of the semester ended in its usual whirlwind.And now, I'm...

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Posted in: announcements

Day 4: "i love egypt"

After two great days with the Briers and Mohammed, I didn't know what we would do on Thursday when the Far Horizons group was traveling to Luxor. Luckily, Mohammed had a friend that was also a tour guide. Mohammed set everything up for Mother and me and almost jumped off of the bus on Wednesday afternoon without telling us his friend's name. "I made it easy for you. His name is Mohammed -- you're in Egypt, what did you expect?"Mohammed (Mohammed I's friend) and Mohammed's friend, Moudi, picked us up at our hotel on Thursday morning. Both Mohammeds (okay, honestly, this is turning into an Abbott and Costello routine) arranged a half day of touring Islamic, Coptic, and Old Cairo. As Mother and I set off for the Citadel, we had no idea how much...

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Posted in: cairo,coptic cairo,egypt,giza,islamic cairo,leisure photos,old cairo,walk like an egyptian

Day 3: "and behind this pyramid..."

Let's get this out in the open now: I misspelled the name of one of the largest and oldest necropoli on my Egyptology midterm. There. From this day forward, you can "wake me up in the middle of the night," ask me to spell Saqqara, and I will respond with S-A-Q-Q-A-R-A. Thank you. We can now go fry bigger fish.Our second day with Professor Brier and Pat started a wee bit earlier to accomodate the long drive out to Memphis, the oldest capital of Upper and Lower Egypt. Memphis is in the valley near the Saqqara and Dashur plateaus. Almost everything that remains of the city has been damaged by thousands of years of mud and water. The high water table that allowed Memphis to thrive now jeopardizes the integrity of the artifacts. We visited the open...

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Posted in: bob brier,dashur,egypt,far horizons,leisure photos,saqqara,traveling