Hello there :
If you can , try to imagine looking down the length of the ship when she's Not moving . If you have poor eyes the bow gets fuzzy after half the length . If your eyes are good it looks like two football fields , maybe three or more to the bitter end .
The problem that came up concerning their size was not their length at first . It was the width ! If you are in a port that has piers on both sides and a in /out channel in the middle with a turning basin at the end , well you got problems ( Big Ones ) .
The ships going up or down have to stay clear .That means going to the wrong side of the channel to get by you . It is an experience to see one , much less be aboard one .The sheer size in one human construct is staggering .
Many wonder how you can go to sea in something that rides lower than a carrier , Has a slightly bigger footprint and yet doesn't break apart in the first bad storm it gets into . I don't put it down to modular construction either .
The one thing that always was in back of my mind as I watched the " Orion " twist and bend was that she would break at one of the module joints . She didn't , But water coming over the bow was so tall at one time we got a dented deckhouse .Yes , I said dented !
Depth of the dent was two feet deep , four decks high , and some broken windows later we knew what high seas mean . " G " I bet could tell us what a gallon of Pacific seawater weighs . Then multiply that by sixty seven feet x fourty four miles an hour The water was traveling at 26 mph toward us and we were doing , give or take a knot or two , ten knots .
That's a lot of steel and oil going a little over 11 and an eighth miles and hour . We would need , even in those seas at least nine or ten miles to come Dead in the Water ,getting pushed backwards at the same time by the winds that topped fifty - five mph. at times .