Otama Rusting Away
Posted on 12/19/2008 1:51:44 PM PST by naturalman1975
IT is the ultimate Christmas gift for the discerning sailor. Just log on to eBay, lodge any bid more than $4.9 million, and the 2000-tonne former Royal Australian Navy submarine, the HMAS Otama, could be yours.
The story behind the bizarre firesale of this Cold War warrior, a prized piece of the nation's military heritage, is far from festive. The forced sale of the Otama -- the first RAN submarine offered on eBay -- has broken the heart of the man who dreamed the vessel would one day restore the flagging fortunes of his home town of Hastings on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula.
Max Bryant, president of the Western Port Oberon Association, said: "I've put 11 years of work into this, and all we have had is disappointment."
Bought from the federal government in 2001 for $50,000, the decommissioned Otama was to take pride of place on the Hastings foreshore, providing an all-year tourist attraction for the small industrial town.
It was to be a noble end for the last of the Oberon Class boats, which spent much of its life from 1978 to 2000 conducting dangerous top-secret surveillance missions against Soviet targets off the coast of Vietnam.
Instead, Otama is fast rusting away in the waters of Western Port Bay, the victim of planning delays and false promises by Victorian government officials over seven years.
The local federal member, Flinders MP Greg Hunt, said: "These local guys just wanted to give something back to their community. Instead they have been caught up in a bureaucratic nightmare."
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.news.com.au ...
Hastings would be a great place for this sub to be displayed - it's very near HMAS Cerberus, where many Australian sailors began their naval careers.
What is perplexing about all this is that Otama is floating just off the coast of Hastings where they want to put it, and they can't get it ashore.
They managed to get most of one of her sisters to Holbrook in New South Wales - and that's hundreds of miles inland.
No doubt China will buy it through intermediaries.
Otama Rusting Away
4.9 million? I’ll give’m a penny a pound.
In for a penny, in for a pound...
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Had an old van that was rusting from the wheels up. Tacked on a zinc plate where a panel had rusted through and the rusting stopped instantly everywhere on the van.
I had a pecan orchard and the trees had a fungus on them...I put some zinc granules around them and the fungus disappeared.
Zinc is good.
Russian?
This one is not ten miles from my home.
USS Drum
I think that the Messiah should buy it with his leftover campaign funds.
I mean he only has to change one letter in the name of the boat to make it his!
Had an old van that was rusting from the wheels up. Tacked on a zinc plate
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/homework/s95524.htm
...and thus endeth our first chemistry lesson.
Say, the Foxhole could use a navy.
I am hoping that instead of decommissioning one of the Los Angeles class submarines, that it is converted into an undersea scientific platform. It would be as prestigious as the International Space Station, and could perform survey missions impossible for surface craft.
Among its unique abilities would be to deploy bathyspheres much deeper than is currently possible, entomb high grade nuclear waste in a mountain of underwater cement, and perhaps survey enormous undersea ore deposits.
All Holbrook has is the deck casing and conning tower. That can be shipped dismantled. The pressure hull and its contents got left behind. (except a short bit of the stern 
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