Probably should’ve said “ridiculously awesome!”.

Not to be that guy, but it looks like you got ‘fore’ and ‘aft’ backwards. (But, with this boat, who knows?) Anyway, you wrote “The FLIP is a 355 foot long boat that can fill the front 300 feet with water ballast. Once full, the boat will upend 90 degrees with the aft 55 feet of boat acting as a vertical platform out…

I’ve been on this research vessel!

My other half works for NOAA she’s actually spent time on the Flip.

That boat was built at Gunderson in Portland, Oregon. My father was the foreman for the electrical company that wired it. I didn’t get to see it but we talked about it a lot because the stoves, radios, toilets, everything had to work in two position at 90º apart. It is fun to see it now almost 60 years later.

That’s always been one of my favorite vessels. [sailor voice] I’m not sure it would qualify as a boat or a ship, though, as I don’t believe it can propel itself - it’s more like a ocean-going platform [/sailor voice].

Are you sure they fill the front (bow) with water ballast and not the stern (back)? having not watched the video it looks like the front (bow) is whats in the air.

I miss the days when the Discovery channel actually showed good content instead of shitty reality shows.

I am familiar with this boat. In the late 1980s I did anti-submarine warfare in the US Navy. I was trained to detect, localize and track (to destroy) Russian submarines.

First time I have seen FLIP since I saw it in a book I got in 1983- “First Questions About Transport”, the definitive beginning of my jalopniness.

I’ve been onboard that thing! I did a VMware implementation for Scripps on their other big research ship in San Diego and got a tour of it in horizontal mode - it was tied up on the other side of the pier. It is seriously freaky inside - like an M.C. Escher drawing come to life. It’s very, very cool. And so are the…

My next yacht is totally going to do this. I wonder if you could have dry compartments in the ballast end? With big ass windows.

Donnie probably saw a poster for this and the number got stuck in his head.

Side Note Observation:
He said “this hasn’t happened since 1917" referring the Spanish flu, aka the 1918 Flu Pandemic (it happened from Jan 1918 to Dec 1920)
Wanna know why he said “1917" instead of the accurate and accepted year 1918 - ya know, the 1918 that everyone’s been calling it since it happened? Because Trump…

Long time IWW here, former TST member, in Nashville TN, teaching my coworkers how to bake their own bread, and sharing info through the Fedi. Well said. If the rest of the USA doesn’t remember that it’s We The People, and roll up our sleeves and work together the way poor folks have always had to, we’re not going to…

Great piece. You’re right about local communities coming together to support each other. That’s the only way a lot of our small businesses, local restaurants, etc are going to survive this.  

What even more amazing is that I think this has better production quality than any F1 race I’ve seen lately.