21 October 2006

Hawaii Earthquake

Last week we had a series of earthquakes here in Hawaii. I was on my ship that morning (24 hour duty) sitting in my office. Suddenly the whole ship began to shake as if we were running our engines at full power. When you are on a ship you become keenly attuned to all the ambiance noise and movements that happen. Tied to the pier not much is going on, so to feel the ship shake was quite an oddity. We had just come out of a maintenance period in dry dock a few days earlier and I personally thought that maybe we were taking on water or something. It took about 30 mins for the news to hit that we had a major earthquake.
I am still trying to figure out the physics behind feeling the shaking in the water. We do have mooring lines that are attached to the pier, but they are loose enough that they wouldn't have shaken the ship. The earthquake was side to side motion (not up and down) which may have moved the water enough to cause the shaking. I'll just add this to my list of things I have done that most people have not. Felt an earthquake while floating on the water.