Boat Loads in Palau

Y'all may remember my best bud from my very first posts on AAW (OK 2 of you may remember).

works in Palau. Survivor has been filmed there and the islands are one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. Incredibly beautiful.

Here's a picture of Shipper:

No, wait.... here's a picture of Shipper. He's the one giving a wet willy to my other buddy Rich:

Shipper previously blogged about his trip to China in which no reported national incidents occurred. (They like to keep things hush-hush in China)

Check out his previous post, Chinese Democracy.

sent me a new blog yesterday. Check it out and leave him a note in the comments.

Cool Ships in Palau

A blog by
David Shipper

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Lately we have been treated to a number of cool ships coming through Palau. Here are three that have just been here:

The USS John Paul Jones.

This rig cruised in a couple of days ago. We get some military ships here on R&R occasionally but rarely one with this firepower. It’s an Aegis Destroyer and it is BAD.

You know I thought these ships were supposed to destroy things and kill people. Boy was I wrong. On the tour we learned that they “prosecute submarines” with various torpedoes:

And at times they choose to employ a “harpoon solution.”

The crew of this ship was pretty cool too. I had a few beers with them and was talking to the guy in charge of all the armaments. Of course I asked the question on everyone’s mind

“If money were no object, how quickly could you ‘prosecute’ Koror?”

The answer? Pretty damn quick – a matter of hours. The interesting thing was that the guy said he would pull anchor and sail away from Palau a few miles and then launch tomahawks. Why sail away? As he said, “those puppies have a pretty serious blast radius.”

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The Octopus

This is Paul Allen’s ride. If you don’t know, he’s one of the founders of Microsoft, one of the richest people in the world, and a walking commercial for socialism. The Octopus is the 5^th biggest private yacht in the world. It has a basketball court, 3 helicopters, and a remote control submarine.

If I couldn’t be Paul Allen, I’d like to be on Paul Allen’s boat crew. He will just tell them: “Meet me in (insert name of a tropical paradise anywhere in the world).” They will sail there and hang out until he flies in for a few days, and then they are off again. But alas, I don’t have such a charmed life – I have to live full time in only one paradise.

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Earthrace Boat

Finally, I was surprised to see this cool rig the other day at one of the dive shop docks:

The Earthrace boat is trying to circumnavigate the globe faster than any other watercraft. Its design allows it to slice through the waves rather than going over them. But the coolest thing about this boat is that it is trying to break the record on Biodiesel fuel – proving that we can thrive without fossil fuels.

I say that I was surprised when the Earthrace boat showed up in Palau, because of the email we got from them. It went like this:

Earthrace Boat: We would like to stop by Palau on our trip around the world to promote alternative fuels. Please tell us how often container ships arrive in Palau from Singapore so that we can schedule our shipment of biodiesel to meet us there.

Palau: How about never. Does that work for you?

And then they showed up. Once it became clear that they could not get any biodiesel here, they had to go to Plan B: Instead of using Biodiesel, they would just fill ‘er up with . . . wait for it . . . Diesel! Hey, why not? Actually, diesel is more pure – it doesn’t have all that “bio” stuff in there.

Godspeed Little Doodle.

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Thanks,

Dave Shipper

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