Ok, I'm finally getting around to this.

Andrew Toppan, mechanical engineering student at WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute), Worcester, Massachusetts (USA). No military experience. Hometown is Scituate, Mass, a small coastal community. If you want to read more about that, visit my personal web page (http://www.wpi.edu/~elmer/index1.html).

My interest in things naval comes from the fact that I've spent my entire life around ships & boats & the ocean. I am a historian of ships, although "historian" includes the present day and the future in this case. Tactics & general history are nice and all, but my real interest is the ships, the shipyards, the weapons, etc. I'm also a very detail-oriented person, which explains my constant nitpicking :)

I do not play Harpoon. I don't have time -- running a web page that now requires some 30 meg of web space takes a lot of time. Most of you have probably seen my web page; I shall not bore you by telling you all about that.

I am a volunteer at the US Naval Shipbuilding Museum, operators of the world's only preserved heavy cruiser, USS Salem (CA 139). I was aboard Salem for her July 4th cruise in Boston Harbor this year. We took the cruiser to Boston, where she and the DD Cassin Young saluted USS Constitution during her annual turn-around. You probably don't want to hear my opinion on that little operation, this being a family-oriented mailing list and all.... ;)

Beyond the naval interests, there is a side of me that is not often seen. My background is in traditional sailing craft, both small craft and the Tall Ships, and those craft remain my true passion. My parents own a traditional sailboat, and I spend a considerable amount of time working on, and sailing on, the boat. Currently I'm working on a major overhaul of said boat due to damage sustained during a storm in October.

I sailed in Sail Boston '92, the most recent major Tall Ships event in the US. Sometimes contacts established through the world of traditional sail can have benefits in the naval world -- I managed to get a tour of drydock #1 in Boston while USS Constitution was in the dock in '94.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough...

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