:: eLise is me ::: Ahoy Sailor !

Friday, April 13, 2007

La vie est Belle <>

Ahoy Sailor !

Ever since I know of the existence of the Maritime Museum in Fremantle, I’ve wanted to visit it so badly. And today, my wish has been granted, with the company of a like-minded soul!

The weather was good, it’s the college break, and having set out bright and early, makes the day seems almost magical!

I left my college pass at home, but fortunately, the ticketing man was nice enough to still give me the concession rate. Yeah!

Purchased the tickets to the submarine tour too, and had an hour and a half to kill. So we toured the museum, and boy was it interesting!

Came across this rather hippie looking vehicle, and upon closer look, it has some really interesting bumper stickers on it!

I especially like the one that says “Don’t bother knockin’ if this van’s rockin’”.

We continued on and saw a variety of boats and ships. There’s even a buoy which is made to display as if it’s floating in mid air!

Then we came to this section where the tools used for building a ship are displayed. There’s even a miniature model of the structure of a bridge.

Interestingly, there’s a dummy hanging from the ceiling which fascinates me no end, and DB kept laughing at me. Bugger!

Moving on, we came to a section where there’s display of the tools used to catch fishes, lobsters and crabs, and even some models of the different kind of fishes.

One thing which really caught my eye was this old school goggle made of only the eye lens and had a tube tied to it. It’s brilliant how simple this device is. DB commented that it most probably didn’t work very well.

It actually baffles me that there is a section on the different spices, and even videos of men in weird costumes, playing the role of spice merchants and talking about some stuff which I didn’t really pay attention to.

We moved on to the second level and there’s a ship which you can step on to! DB was too afraid to join in the fun. Lol.

Further on, there’s a sailing boat which is used for competition and there are lots of dummies on it! Of course, being easily amused, I got real excited over it and became the butt of DB’s relentless teasing again.

We saw a display of the battery used in a submarine, which was said to generate 2 volts. And there are approximately 400 of such batteries on board, in order to generate 800 voltage. I can imagine how bulky it was as the battery is at least half my size!

Submarine time finally arrived and we were given a brief history of the submarine in question.

Standing high up on deck of the submarine gives a really good view of the surrounding.

In order to descend into the submarine, we had to go down a narrow flight of steps with our faces towards the step. It was kind of hard to get through and I was in constant fear of falling backwards and flat onto the ground!

The mess of tubing on the ceiling are the air supply, and the structures with the red tapes on them are the vents for the marines to plug their air tubes on the suits which they wear when the sub is in danger, or starting to get waterlogged.

The sub guide was explaining how the air supply in the sub works, and I switched off once I heard the chemicals involved cos it reminds me of chemistry! Haha.

The torpedo launchers reminds me of a space craft cos of its complexity and lighting. And do you know that sometimes the marines sleep on the empty torpedo beds when there’s not enough bunk beds?