Our encounter with Yellow Navy Maintained Permenat buoys and second night on the hook

Friday, October 12, 2012

Our encounter with Yellow Navy Maintained Permenat buoys and second night on the hook

We woke early - weather forecast said light winds during the early afternoon that they would switch and pick up again. We started down the Potomac doubtful that we would make Woodbridge but going full throttle against the tide and waves was slow going for first two hours - oh and you play dodge the crab pot if you stray outside the channel. We were doing fine until we were contacted by the Nave Range boat 4 and informed that were about to foul their live range test field and they gave us very detailed instructions how to avoid fouling their test range. Part of the problem is that were were out side the channel markers and in a crab pot field - trying to avoid them we strayed into the live fire test range and the boat quickly called us and strongly suggested that we return to the specified course. Oh there are muffled booms and occasional large splashes to our port side as an incentive to follow the prescribe course. - We listened as other boat were given similar instructions. We continued on resigned that we would spend another night on the hook and cold - so we started the search for a space - which we found off Fairview Beach in between crab pot markers. It was a restless night to say the least

Our path up the Potomac River

birds flocking around crab pots

buoys that mark the center of the river

a navy tug boat just anchored - ??

Navy Range Boat 4

spay from where something that went boom hit the water

Yellow Navy maintained Permanent buoy Oscar

another live fire spay

our wake after we left behind the Navy live fire field

The white paint on the abandoned research buildings is peeling. Overgrown grass entangles a chain-link fence that displays two ominous metal signs: “Government property — No trespassing.”

And the two radio telescopes — their towers rising more than 100 feet, with massive parabolic dishes that trolled the galaxy for evidence of exploded stars, hydrogen clouds, masers, quasars, black holes and a comet that crashed into Jupiter — are rusted now and used only by nesting ospreys.

Here at the Maryland Point Observatory, tucked amid towering oak trees in a corner of Charles County along the Potomac River, the Navy once conducted groundbreaking work in radio astronomy. The telescopes were built after World War II, and for a time they were among the largest, most powerful machines in the world for detecting radiation emitted by celestial bodies.

That time is gone. The telescopes have not been used since 1994, when astronomers relied on them to study the collision of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter, the first observed collision of two solar system bodies. By then, the technology had become mostly obsolete, surpassed by larger, more sophisticated telescopes that often worked in unison to multiply their powers of observation.

Since 2002, the 23-acre site has been owned by the Bureau of Land Management, which plans to dismantle the telescopes and convert the property into something else, perhaps an environmental education center, officials said. The bureau has hired an engineering firm but has not set a date to begin the overhaul.