BurbleChaz

Wed Nov 08 23:20:33 2006

Dear Santa

I've been so good all year.

All I want for Christmas is one of these:

We saw her from our apartment. She's moored right outside the pub. It was well before sunset, but she wasn't wearing an ensign. We went for a closer look - the proximity of the pub was not a factor.

She's (going to be) HMAS Ararat, a brand new Armidale class patrol boat. She's come here for her commissioning ceremony, hence the lack of an ensign. Her main armament is a 25mm cannon, with a pair of 12.7mm machine guns for making smaller holes in things. She looks a lot faster than the 25kts in the specs. I'm not quite sure what you do with a patrol boat that's slower than many merchant ships. She's heavier, slower and much lighter-armed than the Fremantle class she's designed to replace. The power plant is similar, the crew is slightly smaller and she's 13 metres longer. The builder's site says 'In excess of 25 knots', but with the same engines, 50 tonnes more displacement and 13 metres more wetted surface, she's going to be a lot slower than her predecessor. She may have a much longer range (3000nm vs 2360), but that's not much good if you can't even catch a a container ship.

She looks damn cool, though. Want.


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Last modified: Thu Aug 31 22:46:27 AUSEST 2006