Keeping an eye on one of the hospital ships

[FightingIrish]

In 2018, the Trump administration had proposed scrapping one of the two USNS hospital ships. Only congressional pushback stopped that from happening. The big concern was that the Chinese were making inroads in Africa providing similar services.

Now we are told that the ships will be used to relieve Overloaded hospitals in New York and Los Angeles. The USNS Mercy left port in San Diego yesterday, purportedly heading to L.A. The ship traveled to a point three miles west of Imperial Beach and dropped anchor and is still dead in the water at that location after 24 hours. According to this news story, it will be doing “at sea certifications”.

https://news.usni.org/2020/03/23/hospital-ship-mercy-leaves-san-diego-today-for-los-angeles

It seems strange that these certifications could not be performed while underway to its destination or while the ship was still docked in San Diego. Moments ago a tender left the ship headed back to the naval base in San Diego.

In ordinary times with a trustworthy administration, I wouldn’t be as skeptical as I am about what we are told.

[Turbineguy]

1. The ships were built in 1974-1978

as tankers to service the Alaska pipeline and later converted. They are powered by steam turbines.

As ships go they are quite elderly, but well maintained.

[cloudbase]

2. I always liked sailing on the San Clemente/Coronado tankers.

They were well laid out and easy to run. I even survived the Ziggy and Clappy show on the Overseas Ohio.

I'd imagine there must be a ton of extra generating capacity and AC&R equipment on those two.