Tag Archives: marina

Forklift for the Boats

The marina at Edmonds is a regular source of interest for me.  They have racks on which the boats get stored in multiple levels.  This requires a method for moving and lifting the boats and this is a bunch of specialist fork lifts.  They have very long arms to support the boats and a high extension to get the boats to the upper levels and also provide clearance over the racks when maneuvering the loads in tight spaces.  They must be pretty heavy to provide sufficient balance when picking up the boats.  Watching them wobble around is a little strange but entrancing.

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?

Putting Your Boat in the Water

While walking along the shore in Edmonds, we passed the marina and the loading area for the boats.  They had a boat lift for the smaller boats to be taken off trailers and put in the water.  A guy brought his boat along just as we got there so I had to watch the process.  The two guys running the lifts clearly knew what they were doing but the guy insisted on explaining it all to them.  They handled it with good grace.

The lift had a track system that turned through ninety degrees.  There were two lifts in parallel if the demand was there.  The trailer was driven into position and the lifting straps were brought around.  They were then passed under the boat and it was lifted up.  Once it was clear of everything, the whole assembly motored along the rails, around the corner and out over the dock.  It was then a simple process to lower it down into the water and then move it away.

This was fine for boats of a certain size.  If you wanted to put anything larger into the water, a far larger rig was required but that wasn’t needed while we were there so I didn’t get to watch it.  In my younger days living in Cowes, I got to see those lifts at work a lot.

Roche Harbor

B11I8533.jpgRoche Harbor used to be a lime production site.  A couple of the old lime kilns are still in place although no longer operational.  However, now the focus has been on transforming it in to a tourist and residential destination.  There is a hotel, shops and restaurants.  Plots of land are being developed into residences and there is a large marina.  The place is picturesque enough but it is a bit isolated from the rest of the island.  It had a bit of a feel of the sort of town in which everything is controlled by one company and the rules must be followed.  Maybe I am being unfair but that is how it seemed to me.  We walked around a bit to see what was on offer but we were soon on our way again.

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Shipwreck

AE7I0448.jpgI stopped off at Coyote Point in the Bay for a short while.  It hasn’t been so long since I was last there so the new addition I saw must have occurred pretty recently.  It appears that someone has had a little incident with their sailing boat.  I don’t know whether they had a problem making it into the channel to the marina or whether the boat broke loose from a mooring somewhere else in the bay.  Whatever the origin, it is now lying on the rocks just outside the marina.  I didn’t get closer to see how bad the damage is but I am guessing that it is not in great shape!

Marina City

When you live in a city that has a bunch of recognizable landmarks, you start out by taking a lot of pictures of them.  After a while, you figure that you have done all of that and move on.  However, you have never done everything you could and so, every once in a while, it is worth trying again with something familiar in case you come up with something new.

So it has proved to be with Marina City.  These two towers (also colloquially known as the corn cobs) are just a couple of blocks from where we live.  When we first moved here I certainly shot them a lot.  Recently, I was wandering back along the river and decided to pay them a quick visit.  I was going for a couple of shots when I got there.  One is to crop in close on the structures to turn them into something more abstract.  The other was to get between them and shoot straight up to turn them into something different.

I had a wide angle zoom and a fish-eye with me, both of which can have advantages with these types of shots.  The access to the buildings is very good so I had a lot of opportunity to mess around with variations on the theme.  In the end, the ones you see here are some of those that I liked the most from the effort.  I shall now ponder for a while whether there is something different I should try next time.