Month: March 2008

We’ve moved! Don’t worry, you don’t need to update your addressbooks for us. We just moved from the first-floor flat to the ground-floor flat. It seems a little unnecessary, but we now have access to a garden!

It was great to do it over a four day weekend (Friday and Monday are UK Bank Holidays, for our US friends). We managed to move virtually everything on Friday, spent Saturday organising stuff in the new flat, spent all day Sunday cleaning the old flat, and then spent today getting a few things at Ikea to finish getting the new flat set up.

By the end of this week we’ll be all set for summer BBQ’s at our new flat! We look forward to hosting you.

So this last weekend I was finally able to race in the Head of the River Race; only my second time in four years. (2007 was cancelled because of absolute s**t water conditions, and in 2006 I was diagnosed with a broken rib just a few days before the race.)

Considering that we only had a week to put our boat together, and had a grand total of three outings together as a final crew, I guess we didn’t do too badly. I think if we had a decided crew another week or two in advance we could have ironed out a few of our issues. C’est la vie!

Full results are here.

Anyway, here are a few photos from my crew on the day.

For those of you who know what I’ve been up to recently, I can announce the first round of success! Happy days!

It turns out the Navy’s newest operational submarine (USS Virginia) is going up against my old boat in some war-gaming as they prepare for their first overseas deployment. From The Day:

Last week they were preparing for a war-gaming exercise with the USS Hartford (SSN 768), another Groton-based submarine, in which they planned to fire 12 exercise torpedoes.

[snip]

There is no comparison acoustically between a Virginia-class submarine like the Virginia and a Los-Angeles-class submarine like the Hartford, Hurt said. He refers to other classes as “Brand X.”

“In the submarine world, if you’re the quiet guy you’ll come out on top all the time,” he said. “Acoustically we’ll tear them up.”

This kind of thing was always fun, even though we were all pretty knackered by the end of it. And based on the improvements in submarine technology, I think the Hartford will likely get a thumping from a Virginia crew that’s been training their asses off for this.

I really wish I could get a tour of a Virginia-class boat sometime; though I’ve seen simulators of some of the panels both forward and aft, it would be great to see the real thing and talk to the crew to see what the new stuff can really do.