Tag Archives: dock

Old Filming in SF

Making my way through old shots for other projects often results in finding stuff I had completely forgotten about.  Before we lived in the Bay Area, I was there for some other reason.  I was down near the water and there was a film crew working on a production of some sort.  The character was on a dock and was approached by some other guys at which point he falls into the water.  There was a diver that got set up in the water beforehand for safety purposes.  Then they filmed the sequence.  I don’t recall them doing it more than once which made it easier than drying the guy off and giving him fresh clothes, I guess!

Remains of The Woolwich Naval Base

As I explore the Thames further, I walked along the shore heading west from Woolwich.  I came across what is left of the naval base that used to be there.  I didn’t realize that a naval base had been there but a few signs explained my ignorance to me!  There was a gun emplacement facing the river that, judging by the guns, was clearly very old.  Not sure how an engagement would have occurred but it would have been messy.

Additionally, I came across a couple of dry docks.  They weren’t dry and they were permanently walled off from the river but they were a testament to what had once gone on here.  As an aside, I recently learned a little more about dry docks as a result of something at work.  I had figured that what I was seeing was a dry dock, and it is, but there is more than one type of dry dock.  Some are floating docks (of which I have seen a fair few) and this type is known as a graving dock.  Never too old to learn!

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.