In its 137 year history the firm has only had four addresses:

25 Broadway, NYC, the classic Cunard building in downtown Manhattan, where we were reportedly the first tenants after the main tenant, Cunard.

65 Broadway, NYC, which at the time was also the headquarters of ABS.

90 Washington Street, a very attractive 25th floor office with beautiful views of New York harbor.

For the second time in three years we were asked to attend to damages of the shielding on the Brooklyn Bridge. Shielding is a type of staging that is fitted to a bridge when construction work is taking place, and both cases related to contact by a crane boom with the shielding that was suspended beneath the bridge. Fortunately nobody was hurt in either case.

This week we lost a client and a dear friend with the untimely passing of Gerry Ginter.

Chris Hanges, 1928 - 2012

Over the years many Arabian countries have built drydock facilities to open new industries to help them steer away from a completely oil dependent economy. Oman is the latest entrant to the list with their brand new facility in Duqm. The facility has two 400,000 ton graven docks and will also soon add a floating drydock. The facility is within an entirely new harbor and is just gorgeous with beautiiful workshops and even the retired Kungsholm as a hotel facility.

On a recent trip to Sicily to deal with construction issues on a number of high speed catamarans, I saw this forklift parked in a director's reserved parking spot.

December 15, 2011, in Rochester, New York to inspect a pier on behalf of the Department of Justice with regard to a fatal boater's crash on a dark night in 2008 on Lake Ontario.

It was surprisingly warm for this time of year, but the USCG Boatswain in charge of the 47 foot MLB and his crew performed a risk assessment and decided we should wear the mustang suits for the night time trip.

The Normandie is by far my favorite passenger vessel from a design point of view (On a pure love/looks basis, the pre-war Nieuw Amsterdam II beats her by a small margin).

Years ago I came across a set of drawings in our office with a last correction date of February 9, 1942 that show the conversion of the Normandie to an unnamed troop carrier drawn by Cox & Stevens.

My sister, Annemarie, who, as an ex tall ship sailor, has good salty connections sent me the words to this famous chantey.

So here we go:

High tech comes in many flavors. Some of it is just completely new like the Lever building in New York City or maybe an IPad, but I like high tech when it reaches back and reaches forward. In yacht design occasionally I get to see such instances. I particularly like those designs that use wood in novel ways. Last week I finally got the chance to sail on a 1980's Dick Newick wooden trimaran that has been taunting me on its mooring on the river near my house for many years (I am digressing a little here, bear with me).