The holiday weekend meant the San Juan Islands were definitely the place to be if you had a boat. We saw plenty of boats coming and going including plenty of sailing boats. Some seemed either to be racing or training together too. I just grabbed some shots of the boats when I could. The evening light on a spinnaker really looks very nice.
While boating across Lake Union, we saw a few of the sort of boats that you buy when you have amassed a decent amount of cash. Some of them looked quite elegant while others had a more aggressive look to them – perhaps the style is indicative of the owner? With the IT business being so large in the region, I suspect a lot of the boats are connected with people from that industry. I doubt I shall be buying something like this any time soon.
We took a walk along the beach at Shoreline one Sunday and the weather was lovely. Obviously plenty of people thought it was a good day too and there were lots of sailing boats out on Puget Sound. Some of them came in quite close to the shore before tacking away. The winds was obviously pretty strong as some of them healed over pretty hard as they caught the wind again. I love the look of yachts sailing in a strong breeze.
There is a very nice boat that seems to be parked up in the marina along the waterfront on Vancouver. I have seen it there on all of my recent visits. I think it is one that I need to be careful not to show off too much in case friends start asking to borrow it. Let’s say it isn’t really my boat – honestly!
I don’t go to airports to photograph boats. That would seem to be a bit of a poor choice but, in Renton’s case, you are right by the water and there are some boats. Still, that wasn’t the goal until I saw this sad sight. I am not sure of the story behind this but obviously something didn’t go right. Did it sink here for some reason or had it developed a problem and made it back to the dock before it was overcome? I don’t know. All I do know is that it looks like an expensive fix is required.
Two small boats came through the locks while we were there. One was just over 50m in length while the other was much smaller and just under 50m in length. Both of these boats looked like they might be quite comfortable. They were also both flagged in the Caribbean. A quick Google search on each showed that they were available for charter. Both seemed to have plenty of people on board but they looked like they might have been the crew rather than the guests as they seemed all business as they handled these tiny boats through the lock. If I decide to get a boat at some point, I might be tempted by either of these. I do prefer one over the other but I suppose I could make do with the less preferable one if the price were right.
A little while ago I posted a picture of a sailing boat that had wrecked on the breakwater at the marina on Coyote Point. The next time I was back there, I guess I had timed things well. The boat had been pulled ashore and a guy was busy breaking it up. He used the front scoop of a backhoe to break the hull up. Obviously it was beyond rescue. He would pull sections off and then drop them in a dumpster. As he broke it up, more of the interior would be visible. The fiberglass is quite flexible so he had to work to actually break it sometimes. However, there was only going to be one winner in this contest.
I 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!
As we were driving along the harbor in San Diego, I saw something odd in the marina area. We doubled back and found somewhere to park so I could investigate further. It was a sailing boat which had an airfoil style of mast as opposed to a normal mast with rigging for sails. The wing section appeared to be in multiple parts which, I imagine, would provide a greater degree of control. Since the boat was moored, we didn’t see it in action so I have no idea how well it performs but it certainly looked pretty interesting.
From where we were staying on Coronado, we could see some boats moored up on the San Diego side of the bay. One of them appeared to have a very large mast. When we took the ferry across to go for dinner, we ended up coming in past this boat. It was a huge vessel with a phenomenal mast. I only had the phone but compiled this pano from a couple of shots from the ferry. There was no way to get the mast in the shot too. I looked the boat up afterwards. It is apparently the largest single-masted sailing boat ever built. (It appears to have been built not far from where I grew up!) It used to be available for charter operations but now seems to be privately owned. It is called M5 and you can see more about it here if you are interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabella_V