WET!

... and she floats, too.

The USNS CARL BRASHEAR was christened and successfully launched yesterday morning at 10:50 AM.

We'll hopefully have more on this later.

(UPDATE #1): Interesting phenomena that may only interest us: Notice how the stern of the vessel has kicked-out to port? That’s not the tugs doing it, that is a natural occurrence owing to launching from Ways 3 at the yard. The sea wall on that Ways extends out about 130 ft. further on the port side of the vessel than the starboard side.

So what is happening is a physical demonstration of Bernoulli’s principle. As the ship is sliding into the water, that water between the hull of the ship and the sea wall is being pressed out at a greater velocity than the water on the starboard side of the ship, where there is no sea wall. Bernoulli’s principle dictates this difference in the velocity of the water creates a corresponding difference in pressure – the water pressure on the port side of the ship will be lower than that on the starboard side so the aft end of the ship, which is the first part of the ship to experience this physical state will be “sucked towards” the sea wall resulting in the the ship rotating in a clockwise direction (bow of ship at 12 o’clock position).

And yes, if the sea wall were longer, there would be a small issue of the port side of the ship slamming into it.

Holy smokes that was evil! We hereby sentence ourselves two Red Hook Long Hammer IPAs and the 2nd half of the Baylor-Uconn game to purge that geek outbreak on a Friday night.

We haven’t forgot about Radio KBwD. Owing to circumstances down in the Gulf, we are doing something a little different. Tune in tomorrow.