jack ryan sets sail for mauritania, page-4

An interesting read ......
"As we approached Belfast Lough, mid-afternoon, there was a surface fog that at times reduced visibility to less the a mile. Above the fog we saw a tower. We thought it to be an oil rig of some type and wanted to give it a good clearance. However, its bearing didn’t seem to change, even though we were altering our course southward to go around it. It didn’t compute!

When we were within a mile of it we could see through the fog that it was not a fixed oil rig, but a ship with a tall oil drilling rig in its aft superstructure, and it was slowly moving, but on a collision course! We then made a significant alteration to the north, giving it a wide berth. Within a half mile of it, we noticed a couple of sentry boats ahead of it on either bow. We were to later find out that this was Exxon Mobile’s GLOMAR JACK RYAN, the last big ship built by Harland and Wolff, the Belfast shipyard where the TITANIC was built.

C/- http://www.searoom.com/veleda/veleda4-log17A.htm