Tag Archives: Cruise

Cruise Ship Comparison

The cruise ships are back in Seattle.  A year of cruise travel didn’t happen while COVID was raging and no vaccinations were available.  Now they seem to have found a protocol to make cruises viable.  (Not something I would be trying but each to their own.)  When we were down in the city for a weekend, we got to the hotel shortly before one of the cruise ships sailed.  It belonged to the Norwegian cruise line and was a huge thing.  It was not an elegant looking ship but it clearly had plenty of capacity.

It sailed off on its trip – presumably towards Alaska – and a little while later the other end of the cruise ship spectrum showed up.  The National Geographic Venture is not a traditional cruise ship.  They have small vessels that are able to make more specialized trips into restricted spaces that the large cruise ships could never get to.  We have looked at their cruises to Alaska as something that we might want to do at some point.  The season is over for them now so it was not clear what the boat was up to but it couldn’t have looked more different than the Norwegian ship.

ALCM

The Museum of Flight seems to have two examples of the air launched cruise missile.  This is the Boeing developed AGM-86 missile.  One of them is hanging from the roof in the main museum complex while the other is in the restoration facility up at Paine Field.  I don’t know which versions of the missile they are.  Some were nuclear armed (this version remains in service I believe) while others had a conventional warhead (and I read that these were retired recently).  The missiles were widely deployed on B-52s and B-1Bs but I understand that only one wing of the B-52 now has them.

Cruising Out Under Lion’s Gate Bridge

Cruise ships are a regular feature of Vancouver Harbour.  Pacific Place has a terminal where two ships can be berthed at any one time.  One evening, as I was hanging out on Stanley Park, one of the ships set sail – presumably for a trip up to Alaska.  I watched it pass close by where I was and took a look at what I could see happening on the decks facing the shore (including one chap in a bathrobe on a rear balcony who probably didn’t think he was visible.  Then the ship headed out under the Lions Gate bridge as the sun was beginning to go down.

The Big Ships are Back

The return of summer means the return of the cruise ships.  We took a trip over to West Seattle when we had visitors to get a view of the city and there were cruise ships at both terminals.  One was side on to us while two more were stern on at the further terminal.  We shall have a lot of these big ships coming and going for the next few months as people head up to Alaska on a voyage.

Cruise Ships Being Turned Around

From the top of the Space Needle, you can survey a lot of what goes on in Seattle.  Cruise ships berth along the waterfront near the Alaskan Way Viaduct but they also come in further up the shore.  Two ships were in port up there while we were up the Needle.  I had got a shot of them at one point shortly after getting to the top but, as I walked around, the sun popped out and bathed them in light while all around them was still in shade.  Now they really popped so I figured another shot was in order before the sun vanished – which it did a minute later.

Stitching a Moving Ship

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!

They Both Float, But…

This is the cruise ship that our family had been traveling on when they arrived in Vancouver.  It was heading back out the same day and we watched it leave port and head out.  As it was turning to head back to the open sea, one of the local Otter floatplanes was making its approach to land (or whatever the correct word is when it is water rather than land).  It passed in front of the ship.  Both vessels are comfortable in the water but one is on a rather different scale than the other.