If you want to get to the mainland from the Cowes area, Red Funnel are your main option. They have two services to Southampton. The car ferry operates from East Cowes while a fast catamaran provides a passenger only service from West Cowes. Both types of ferry came by while I was on the seafront. The car ferry headed out while the cat waited outside the harbor. I guess the strong winds meant they were looking for a bit more space. Once the ferry was gone, the cat came in to the harbor.
Erickson’s facility at Medford was the home for this Skycrane while I was there. A team were working on it and, I imagine, they were getting it ready for the coming fire season. At this point, though, it was still in need of a few parts. It looked a bit lacking but I suspect the process of adding the remaining elements to get it back into an airworthy condition was not going to take that long. Hopefully by now she is back in the air and working hard.
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!
A short drive north of Whistler brings you to a town called Pemberton. It is a little town and right in the center is a public barn structure. It is a modern structure and it has been built to provide a venue for the community to use. It has open sides so anyone can walk in from any direction. An event was being set up while we were there. It looked like it might have been a wedding. The wooden structure is very attractive and it appears that it gets a lot of use. What a great focus for the community.
A trip to Green Lake, a short distance from Whistler, was a chance to see the floatplane base. We had heard a few aircraft in the area so I was keen to see what was going on. We started out at the base where a Beaver and an Otter were both just getting ready to leave. I didn’t realize the direction of the wind so I didn’t make any effort to get out to the lake. I thought that they would be long gone. In fact, they taxied down the lake to take off back in our direction. I would have had plenty of time to get out to see the departure if I had left when they headed out.
Instead, I was walking through the trees when both planes took off. I got a couple of shots through the trees but missed the main opportunity. I understand that Whistler Air is a subsidiary of Harbour Air in Vancouver. They are clearly locally branded though. There was a bit more movement before we left with planes making their approach along the lake. They tended to land a little away from us but then keep up on the step as close in as possible to minimize taxi time. This meant they were still moving well as they got to us.
I suspect that every town has a hospital that was known as being the place that people went with mental health issues. Where I grew up, it was called Whitecroft Hospital but the hospital was always dropped in common usage. The original buildings were Victorian, and I suspect in its early days the place was called an asylum. In common with many similar places in the UK, a change in policy meant that it was closed down and patients were to be cared for in the community. The outcome of that is a topic for a different day.
Whitecroft is now entering a new phase in its existence. It is being redeveloped as a housing project. We decided to visit it and see how things were looking. Whitecroft is not close to any other population so it has a remote feel to it. Even the road access is a bit narrow. The redevelopment is still underway, so some parts are blocked off. Some of the houses are new builds but they weren’t particularly interesting looking properties. Other developments are in the old buildings. Given the things that must have happened in those buildings over the decades, I’m not in the least interested in living in such a place!
The setting is attractive though. As we drove down towards it, the sun was lighting up the buildings and they looked great. The old clock tower provides a focal point and the old chimney from the boiler house is still standing. On the way back out, I wanted to get a shot with the sun on the buildings, but the clouds had rolled in. The wind was strong, though, and I figured a gap in the clouds was bound to come along before too long. Less than five minutes was all it took but the gap only lasted 30 seconds. I got the shot and moved on.
The seafront at Cowes moves from the Parade to Princes Green via a path that runs around the Royal Yacht Squadron. During the races, the cannons that signal the racing are mounted here (along with a lot of ceremonial cannons that don’t get used much. At this time of year, everything is gone. With the high tide, that path was a bit gone too! Th water level was high enough to mean that the path was underwater most of the time. It might have been possible to run through during the gap in the surges but no one seemed to think it was a good idea.
This is less of a technique post and more about the capabilities of modern software. In a previous post I discussed a visit to Vancouver to meet up with family members that had come off a cruise ship. We were down on the waterfront when the ship that they had come in on departed. As it got further away, I shot a few frames with the longer lens to try and stitch together in a panorama. The problem with this type of shot is that the ship is moving so the background is not consistent between the frames, even if you try and do them quickly. However, I handed them over the Lightroom and it did its stitching thing and the attached shot resulted. I think you would struggle to know that there was an issue based on the output. Quite impressive software performance!
Waterfalls seemed to be a popular part of our trip to Canada. We did a short hike to the Nairn Falls, a short drive north of Whistler. We chose a rainy day to make our walk but a combination of the right clothing and the tree cover the trails enjoyed for the majority of the walk meant this wasn’t a problem. The rain certainly didn’t hurt the amount of water flowing over the falls.
The falls themselves are in stages. The first section drops down into a gully which then reverses the flow out in the opposite direction. This flow seems to involve going under some rocks so floating objects like logs get stuck whirling around on the surface but never getting downstream. You can head down to a lower level to see more of the falls. The rocks down to this level were a bit slippery given how much it was raining but there are some handrails for old geezers like me to stabilize myself with. It was worth the trip. The bottom of the falls had some strong flows crashing down and they really got your attention.
The downside to exploring the falls was that you were out in the open and the heavens really seemed to deliver while we were there. Even with the rain gear on, there was only so long I wanted to be out there getting hammered on. I made the climb back up to the top. The interesting thing was how many people we saw on the trail out and back but how few seemed to explore the falls themselves. Maybe they didn’t want to get too wet in the rain or perhaps they didn’t realize how far down you could get. I’m glad I checked it all out.
The tide was very high when we got the parade in Cowes. The water level was just below the street level. Naturally, there was some swell, even though we were inside the harbor wall. This meant the water was pushing back up through the drains that normally take water from the street down to the sea. The water would force itself back up through the drains. Sometimes it was just a small amount of water but the bigger waves resulted in a bit more flow back out of the drain. Video is the best way to show this. The metal of the drain cover had the level of corrosion you would expect for something with this proximity to the sea!