Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Vandenberg Sinks!!

So a bunch of us from Sea Base were going to drive down to the Brinton Center and take the Scoutmaster to Key West to watch the Vandenberg sink but there were too many people from the Brinton Center so the boat was full. Instead we loaded up on the BSA Adventure(Newton) at 6 am and Capt Carol drove us down the ~3 1/2 hours to watch. It was a long ride but certainly memorable. We arrived about 9:30 and anchored just outside the 1 mile radius safety zone with our front row seats. We pulled out our cameras and binoculars to check it out and watched all the other boats there to watch as well as the planes and helicopters flying over head. At about 10:20am the first charge went off and she started to sink but just as it was going down the Key West Express drove right between us and the boat and totally blocked our view. We thought ok it will be out of the way in a minute and we'll still be able to see it as they predicted 3 minutes for it to sink. Well, by the time the huge Key West Express moved the boat was gone. 1 minute and 45 seconds and it was done. It was still neat to see but the gosh darn Key West Express was in the way!! There were tons of people yelling at the boat on the radio and evidently people were trying to throw things at it and shoot water at the boat because they were equally as mad about the view being blocked but evidently the Coast Guard came to their rescue. So it was neat to see, well what we could see of it, and I won't forget it.
Pictures on Facebook...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2070577&id=44801562&l=28f3bef598

1 comment:

Sherpa Tom said...

Great pictures of the sunrise and of the Vandenberg before it went down. We will have to dive on it and on the Oriskany. Too bad that you got blocked by that other boat.