Got off work a tad early on Tuesday, which gave me the chance to see USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) returning to NASNI¹, which was a neat thing to see. In the photo above, if you look real hard, you can see USS Carl Vinson just above and to the right of the aircraft carrier currently berthed at NASNI, USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72).
I pretty much just sat next to my window while watching and snapping pictures. It was a neat thing to see. To give you an idea of where this all took place, I give you (TA-DA) a map.
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| Ruh-roh! |
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| Plenty of room for both ships. |
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| Home again. |
Pretty cool to watch her come in.
Now it's rack time.
¹ Naval Air Station North Island
Curious Sarge, about how much time elapsed for that sequence of photos?
ReplyDeleteAbout thirty minutes.
DeleteThat is way cool and thanks to your photo series I have now seen an aircraft carrier's return to port exactly one time. That includes my two years on Forrestal because each and every time the ship left or returned to a pier I was below decks making sure the lights stayed on.
ReplyDeleteAre there enough photos to make a GIF?
I don't know about the GIF, I've got roughly 20 pics of her coming in.
DeleteWhat a cool sequence! Thank you!
ReplyDelete👍
DeleteVery cool.
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DeleteI know that place well. Ranger and Kitty Hawk
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DeleteVery cool photos! This is the first time I've seen a series of photos showing a carrier returning to port. In the first few photos it looked like all of the small watercraft were approaching the carrier, then later photos it appeared all the small watercraft were fleeing from the carrier! And then, of course, big mama shows up! Thanks for the photo series.
ReplyDelete- Barry
The actions of the small boats were scary at some times, amusing at others.
DeleteThere were Australian Coast Watchers, now there is a Rhode Island one :)
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L.J.
😁
DeleteWatched a lot of ship maneuvering from the confines of CIC, but never had the opportunity to see it anywhere but on a radar repeater, where everything else moves relative to the ship.
ReplyDeleteJust once I’d have liked to have been manning the rails.
I’m guessing that you’re working at 32nd Street?
DeleteSkip #1 - Actually rode the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) down that very channel some years back. Saw the whole evolution from the flight deck. Which was, as you might imagine, even cooler than watching it from afar.
DeleteSkip #2 - We're working at Pier 12 which aligns, more or less, with 18th St. (We're not far from the 19th St. gate.)
DeleteNice!
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DeleteThat's my girl! Served on her from 19 June 87 to 03 Oct 94. Made that passage several times to load/unload the airwing. We were stationed out of Alameda (with a stint in Bremerton drydock). Was usually on watch in #2 Reactor Auxiliary Room (or in my rack) so never got to see the San Diego transit. Thank you for letting me see it from shore. Shout out to the Midway museum on the right, my Dad served on her in the late 70's.
ReplyDelete"All stop" ... "Moored, shift colors"...
DeleteI do miss it so.
You're a good man, DV. BZ.
DeleteDV #1 - That's pretty sweet, two carriers with ties to your family. Well done!
DeleteDV #2 - I completely understand.
DeleteSTxAR - Roger that, concur!
DeleteA fond memory is a week spent in that city doing handicapped accessibility surveys of Union 76 gas stations. Of course, my motel room wasn't in a great location.
ReplyDeleteSandy Eggo is a great town.
DeleteI kept looking for the tug or two that would be escorting her or ready for her. Second to last photo shows a beige blob near her rear, which in the last photo looks blobbisly like a tug to scoot her stern in. And there looks like one near her prow near that underwater bulge thingy all ships seem to have these days.
ReplyDeleteAnd it shows the size of Panamax ships. Which our carriers are, along with that car carrier that passes her. Glad someone in the Navy can still pilot or navigate busy waters. Hmmm.. Panamax... Wonder if there's any plans to upscale the carriers into New Panamax size? Probably not, though imagine what one could do with 60 more feet of beam and 250 more feet of length. That would be a lot of aircraft...
And I wonder what is up with the 4 boats in line in the latter pictures. Navy patrol boats? Coasty patrol boats? Hmmm.
Thanks for the pics. Must have been cool to watch in person. Miss seeing the ocean. Miss it I do.
There were two tugs in attendance, if you look at the last photo there is one by the bow, starboard side, and another just aft of the hangar door, port side.
DeleteI did note those small boats, they looked Navy but I couldn't really make them out. They d0 have patrol boats about when a carrier is transiting in or out. In Norfolk we had a helo escort us out past the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, the day I got to ride USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69).
Nice montage, Sarge. I see the weather has been holding, monotonously so (my old friend from Dallas, who lives up in Scripps Ranch, when asked if he missed the weather variability, said, "Hell no!"). And the big ship you captioned "Ruh, roh!" would more properly captioned, "RO-RO", from all appearances... :-)
ReplyDeleteNot to make you homesick, but I just watched a re-run of a This Old House or related show where they guys were on Naragansett Bay, sailing up to what was then their new project house in Barrington. And coincidentally just saw an Aerial America show that was an hour of material on RI ... both shows shot during nice weather and had some really nice 'footage'.. or whatever a length of video bits and bytes is called.
That was actually a car carrier, so it is something like a RO-RO. (Which would also have been far more clever than what I came up with.)
DeleteThe weather here has been pretty consistent. Was a bit cloudy yesterday until around 1000 or so. We've even had a couple of rain showers, not that they helped water the gardens, far too short-lived.
Ah yes, I am a bit homesick, but I'll be back in Little Rhody before you know it.
Is it just the viewing angle or is Vinson a larger ship than Lincoln? With only 2 CVN numbers between the two, the latter seems unlikely.
ReplyDeleteHas to be the view, cause they're the same size.
DeleteThat's kinda what I suspected, but the map made it look like the viewing angles, albeit of opposite sides, would be about the same.
DeleteYup, same size, same class of ship (Nimitz-class) but I'm broadside to USS Carl Vinson and looking down the port bow of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
DeleteDV knows his carriers!
Why no fly off for the air wing?
ReplyDeleteShe's only in for a week or so. So the Air Wing stays aboard.
DeleteI had no idea how big a Nimitz class carrier really was until we were waiting at the dock at North Island and watching them exit single file.
ReplyDeleteCall 5000 of them
They are big.
DeleteI saw one from a LONG distant in the mid 70's at Pensacola. It was still HUGE at that distance.
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