USS Gerald R Ford

[Graham M]

1066, it must have been...isn't it the biggest warship in the world, or at least close?

I believe it was at the time. I was on a smallish 30,000 ton tanker, running between various ports in the Caribbean and up the Chesapeake Bay to Maryland in a regular 3 week cycle. It was winter-time and the difference in temperature between steaming up the Florida coast in the golf stream to a couple of days later into sub-zero was mind numbing.

Although I later served on ships twice the weight of the Nimitz at over 2000,000tonnes they never looked quite so dramatic as most of the bulk was under water.

You served on a ship weighing 2 million tons bloody hell...........

[1066]

I got carried away with the zeros there Graham - Biggest ships I sailed on were the Shell "M" class tankers at a mere 200,000 odd tonnes. They seemed huge at the time, we used bikes to travel up and down the deck and when loaded there was 85 feet below the surface. The later "L" were considerably bigger than that at over 300,000tonnes.

This was the ship I was on running up Cheasapeake Bay - I was away 9 months on that trip, eventually left in Durban to fly home.
SS.
This is the ship, used as an Atlantic weather reporting vessel.

A spent a couple of 6 month stints doing this - The small ship is 70,000 tonnes. We used to meet the larger "M" class tanker in some sheltered area, very often in Lyme Bay, near Torquay, steam alongside and take 70'000 tonnes of oil off her. This was because at 85ft draught when full she unable to get through the channel to Rotterdam, Hamburg etc.

[Graham M]

Jeeze I get travel sickness on a bus, so I would be in real trouble on one of those.

[Shpagin]

Jeeze I get travel sickness on a bus, so I would be in real trouble on one of those.

Thanks Graham

Quite a lot of people get away from it all by "cruising" on container ships. No Wifi is the greatest blessing - you can put away your technology, not have any responsibilities and just read and write, or whatever. It is a lot cheaper than a cruise-liner, but of course has far fewer facilities. But if you get sea-sick it might not be for you.
Sorry I cannot reply in person, but appreciate your help very much.

[Graham M]