Tag Archives: harbor

What is This Boat About?

Nancy and I were having lunch at a great pub on Spice Island called The Still and West.  I would certainly recommend it if you are in the area.  We were watching the many different boats as they came in and out of the Harbour entrance.  One boat was heading out which seemed curious.  It was a low profile vessel, looked like it was designed to look suspicious and, when you look closer, it has a FLIR installation on the bridge.  Since this is Portsmouth, it could well be a military vessel but that doesn’t preclude it being one for an overseas customer or just a company or individual with rather specialized interests.  I wonder which it is.

Container Terminal Evening

Evening light can make many things look better than they do in the middle of the day.  The warm evening light just makes things look better with the warm color and the softer shadows.  In those conditions, even a container terminal looks interesting.  From the roof of the hotel we were staying in downtown last year, we got a good view across Elliott Bay towards the terminal.

Everett Waterfront

I have seen a few articles recently about new developments along the waterfront in Everett.  Apartment buildings have been going up along with hotels and restaurants.  I decided to swing by one afternoon to have a look around.  This development is all north of the navy base and around the marina.  It was nice enough and I imagine it will continue to expand over time.  The buildings are much what you might expect.  However, I did get to see other things that I had not gone to before.  There is an old building out near the water which is nicely restored.  It appears to be open at certain times but wasn’t while I was there.  Any locals know the history?

Second Go At Old Ship Hulls

In this previous post, I had some shots of a ship hull in Anacortes that had become part of a harbor wall.  When I showed this to a colleague of mine, he looked at Google Maps and thought there might be one or two more hulls making up the harbor.  Once I saw what he was looking at, I could see what he was thinking.  I also couldn’t work out why I didn’t go down to take a closer look when I had been there.  A return journey seemed in order.

First I checked out the original hull and the one that is in the best condition.  It looked more impressive when down on its level.  I didn’t see any sign of a name which was a shame.  Then I went to see what the other areas were.  Sure enough, behind the first hull is a second one.  This one is much more broken down but the timbers are still there making up another part of the harbor wall.  I then realized that a third hull was part of the harbor which we hadn’t seen from Google.  That is because it is a barge hull and so square which meant it wasn’t conspicuous from the aerial photos.

The last hull was located within a shipyard and, since I didn’t have permission to enter their premises, I didn’t go closer to check it out.  A look from the access road above it did seem to confirm that it was indeed another hull.  I guess whoever created the harbor figured the easiest way to do so was to sink a few derelict hulls and then build up the land around them (or let nature do that for you).  I imagine that has been done elsewhere.  Not quite the D-Day Mulberries but something similar.

Whitby

In the early 2000s, Nancy and I took a trip up to Yorkshire for a long weekend in February.  We were staying in Pickering and we got there just before a decent snow storm arrived.  By the time the snow started, we were comfortably tucked up in the hotel bar but the following day, any chance of going somewhere was out of the question as the town had temporarily been cut off by the snow.  The day after, the roads had been cleared and we took a drive north.

We ended up spending some time in Whitby.  A historic port town, Captain James Cook first went to see from there.  It has the ruins of an Abbey on the hill overlooking the harbor and the town rises from the water in a style you would expect of such an old English town to do.  We went to a really nice pub for lunch as a recall where we had excellent fish and chips – formulaic I know but still bloody good!  I scanned these images when making a surge through my old film shots so I thought I would go back about 20 years to something from the old country.

Blue Bridge

A new Johnson Street bridge has recently opened across part of Victoria Harbour. It has replaced an old bridge that was apparently in bad condition. The new structure is a bascule bridge to allow larger boat traffic to access the inner areas of the harbor and it has a really cool design. While the bridge carries the road across the water, it has excellent access on either side for other users. The two sides carry both bike and foot traffic and they are wide enough to provide plenty of space for all users. There was plenty of foot traffic when I was there which might have had something to do with the Christmas Parade that evening.

In the evening, the bridge is well illuminated. The curvy nature of the structure provides lots of interesting details. The mechanism for raising the bridge is not concealed either so you can see the gear wheels involved in lifting it if you look below. On my walk back one evening I ended up spending a fair bit of time on the bridge because it provided so many possible angles to shoot it either to get the full bridge or to focus in on individual parts of it.

Fisherman’s Wharf in Victoria

While in Victoria we walked along the shoreline of the harbor and made our way to Fisherman’s Wharf. This are is a mix of houseboats, tour boats and commercial boats. It is clearly a real commercial port at one end but the houseboat end is a different story. The houseboats are real houses. The residents were in evidence while we were there but there is plenty of stuff for the tourists too. The houseboats are painted in a variety of striking colors and on a sunny day it looked pretty nice. The houseboats were quite small and I wonder whether they are a fun place to live, a bit inconvenient or a pain given the people wandering around every day.

Yachats Harbor

We spent a few days in Yachats, Oregon between Christmas and New Year.  It was a nice opportunity to have a break, see some pretty scenery and relax.  Yachats itself has a nice harbor and, as you drive around the south side of the harbor, you can pull off onto a smaller road that runs parallel to the shore in amongst the many houses that have been built there.  You are on the opposite side to the town itself and the view across the water and the sand flats looks nice with the low winter sung angles.

Vancouver Police RIB

The floatplanes may have been my main focus when I was at Brockton Point in Stanley Park but they certainly weren’t the only activity in the harbor.  Plenty of boat traffic was on the move.  The Vancouver Police were also on patrol.  They had a RIB that they were zipping about on.  I watched them head out towards Lion’s Gate Bridge without getting a shot but, when they returned, I figured they deserved my attention.  A speeding RIB is a cool way to travel and this one looked like it had enough power for plenty of speed!