If there were large offshore barges spotted every 200 miles or so
across the Atlantic Ocean between the USA and Europe do you think there
would be enough business from private boats to keep them profitable?
Fresh water, fuel, food, & drink from just the basics to luxury levels
could be offered at various stopovers. Overnight or longer docking of
course and various entertainment (casinos, theaters etc.). Maybe in
addition to boats they could have a series of barges strung together
with a flat surface to allow a landing strip for smaller aircraft also.
What are the chances it will happen sometime in the future? Any ideas?

Ain't gonna happen. They would have to be stationary to be able to be found,
but would also have to move long distances fairly quickly and fairly often
to avoid bad weather. The logistics of it make it completely unrealistic.




"twoguns" wrote in message
oups.com...
If there were large offshore barges spotted every 200 miles or so
across the Atlantic Ocean between the USA and Europe do you think there
would be enough business from private boats to keep them profitable?
Fresh water, fuel, food, & drink from just the basics to luxury levels
could be offered at various stopovers. Overnight or longer docking of
course and various entertainment (casinos, theaters etc.). Maybe in
addition to boats they could have a series of barges strung together
with a flat surface to allow a landing strip for smaller aircraft also.
What are the chances it will happen sometime in the future? Any ideas?

"twoguns" wrote in message
oups.com...
If there were large offshore barges spotted every 200 miles or so
across the Atlantic Ocean between the USA and Europe do you think there
would be enough business from private boats to keep them profitable?
Fresh water, fuel, food, & drink from just the basics to luxury levels
could be offered at various stopovers. Overnight or longer docking of
course and various entertainment (casinos, theaters etc.). Maybe in
addition to boats they could have a series of barges strung together
with a flat surface to allow a landing strip for smaller aircraft also.
What are the chances it will happen sometime in the future? Any ideas?


Wasn't something like this proposed as a solution to the longitude problem?

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

And an occasional Starbucks? and Micky D?

G

"twoguns" wrote in message
oups.com...
If there were large offshore barges spotted every 200 miles or so
across the Atlantic Ocean between the USA and Europe do you think there
would be enough business from private boats to keep them profitable?
Fresh water, fuel, food, & drink from just the basics to luxury levels
could be offered at various stopovers. Overnight or longer docking of
course and various entertainment (casinos, theaters etc.). Maybe in
addition to boats they could have a series of barges strung together
with a flat surface to allow a landing strip for smaller aircraft also.
What are the chances it will happen sometime in the future? Any ideas?

In article .com, R-D-
says...
If there were large offshore barges spotted every 200 miles or so
across the Atlantic Ocean between the USA and Europe do you think there
would be enough business from private boats to keep them profitable?
Fresh water, fuel, food, & drink from just the basics to luxury levels
could be offered at various stopovers. Overnight or longer docking of
course and various entertainment (casinos, theaters etc.). Maybe in
addition to boats they could have a series of barges strung together
with a flat surface to allow a landing strip for smaller aircraft also.
What are the chances it will happen sometime in the future? Any ideas?



Now, outside of the question of mooring large barge in five or six miles
of deep water there is the weather thing. I can speak from experience
when I say a hurricane type sea is not something I would like to be
pinned to the bottom during let alone being stationed on a large barge
in the midst of it.

Then there's the cost and logistics of keeping said barges supplied with
fresh water, gas and oil, mars bars, etc. By the time you got that
covered anyone with a boat big enough to cross a couple of hundred miles
of open ocean and afford the services probably already has a boat big
enough to make the trip unaided.

Nope, not only hasn't it been done I doubt anyone ever gave it more then
five minutes of thought.

--
Mike G.
Heirloom Woods

www.heirloom-woods.net

twoguns wrote:
If there were large offshore barges spotted every 200 miles or so
across the Atlantic Ocean between the USA and Europe do you think there
would be enough business from private boats to keep them profitable?
Fresh water, fuel, food, & drink from just the basics to luxury levels
could be offered at various stopovers. Overnight or longer docking of
course and various entertainment (casinos, theaters etc.). Maybe in
addition to boats they could have a series of barges strung together
with a flat surface to allow a landing strip for smaller aircraft also.
What are the chances it will happen sometime in the future? Any ideas?


Who knows...lots of wacky people on & around the Atlantic. Why, just
this weekend, a couple of whacky Brits left St. John's Newfoundland in a
small boat planning to row to England.
They tried it a year or two ago and had to be rescued.

"twoguns" wrote in
oups.com:

From: "twoguns"

I guess from Nebraska on Road Runner this sounds pretty good. Ever been to
sea? Ever see a 15' swell? Ever watch a rescue on CNN where the rescue
ship couldn't get within 200' of the distressed vessel it would CRASH INTO?

If you can get the ocean to just stop and go flat as you come near the
barge....we'll go for it. I've seen it once or twice since 1966....

The rest of the time, the barge would be upside down surfing what was left
of it.

Larry W4CSC Jun 1, 6:03 pm show options

Newsgroups: rec.boats.cruising
From: Larry W4CSC - Find messages by this author
Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 18:03:30 -0400
Local: Wed,Jun 1 2005 6:03 pm
Subject: Has anybody done this yet?
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I guess from Nebraska on Road Runner this sounds pretty good. Ever
been to
sea? Ever see a 15' swell?
************************************************** ************************************************** *****************************
Not too many 15 foot swells in Nebraska Larry. My only offshore
experiences have been on oil rigs and fishing trips. However I grew up
in Colorado and did some whitewater stuff when I was in my teens &
twenties. With the exception of one trip on a 30 foot Salmon fishing
charter it was always fair weather. On that one trip off the Fraser
River inlet there were three of us from Nebraska and Oklahoma plus the
skipper and a crewman. We were out a few miles and a sudden storm came
up. The skipper gave us life vests and told us to put them on. I was
having the time of my life going up and down those waves. I didn't
realize how much danger we were in until we got back to the dock and
some of the locals started talking to the skipper telling him what an
idiot he was for being out there. I guess ignorance is bliss but I had
a helluva good time.

In the North Atlantic within 200nm of Newfoundland , the big rigs have
to be prepared with safety precautions if icebergs threaten them.
see: http://www.hibernia.ca/html/about_hibernia/index.html
hit on: 'Ice Management'

"twoguns" wrote in
ups.com:

We were out a few miles and a sudden storm came
up. The skipper gave us life vests and told us to put them on. I was
having the time of my life going up and down those waves. I didn't
realize how much danger we were in until we got back to the dock and
some of the locals started talking to the skipper telling him what an
idiot he was for being out there. I guess ignorance is bliss but I had
a helluva good time.



I love it out there, myself, in a well found sailboat. I sail with an
Englishman I'd follow anywhere on a French-made Amel Sharki 41 ketch.
She's not fast, but very solid with watertight bulkheads 2 fore and 1 aft.
Plenty of diesel power if she needs it from a Perkins 50hp 4-cyl diesel
with 90 gallons of fuel. Her rigging is very heavy, made for ocean
crossings, as is her hull and fittings. With 200 gallons of water tank in
the keel, she also has plenty to wash the stink off out there.

I think we were in 15-18' seas in a storm about 250 miles off the Georgia
coast, last year. Most seas here are in the 5-10' range. She feels very
safe in her deep center cockpit under a fiberglass hardtop to deflect the
spray. Sometimes we sail just the two or three of us....others we have a
nice crew of 6-8 which makes watchstanding much easier on everyone being
able to actually sleep 4 hours straight.

I've equipped her with all the electronic toys. All of Icom's best radios,
Raymarine radar/color chart plotter/gyro compass, B&G sailing instruments
and electrohydraulic autopilot directly on the rudder post, Yeoman
electronic paper chart plotter for backup, as is the Garmin 185 backup
GPS/sonar/chartplotter. Primary Navigation is The Cap'n running on a Dell
Latitude notebook....everything networked through it, or switchable for
backup if it fails. Cap'n Geoffrey loves the toys...(c;