What's Wrong With This Picture?

Don't believe everything your GPS unit tells you.
I know, I'm easily amused.

I still chuckle a little every time I'm out on Pier 39 or at the East Basin.

Feels like I ought to be calling out "Up periscope!"

Up Close & Personal

The JA Frontier is anchored so close to the breakwater at the East Mooring Basin that she may as well have been moored there. I'm sure the crew is probably thinking the same thing... they could probably smell the espresso at Coffee Girl earlier in the day.




All photos are full-frame (no crops), and the first one is at the equivalent of a 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera. This ship is CLOSE. Note the bow of the passing ship (the Iris Sky) just poking out from the port side of the Frontier as the stern is barely visible on the starboard side.

The second shot is a medium telephoto of the same ship... just showing the details on the aft end of a typical bulker.

It was a busy night. There are three ships riding at anchor in the third frame as another heads out to sea with the Arrow 2 alongside changing pilots. Two more ships are at anchor a little further upstream.

A Very Lucky Shot

At least for me.

The Hawaiian Chieftain and the Lady Washington are in local waters again, this time for a short stay.

I was preparing to go and see them in the mooring basin when I turned around to see them both plying the river just west of my house.

Once again I changed plan and made for the trailhead at the east end of the lagoon.

I got smart this time and set up the tripod at the outset so nothing fell victim to "the shakes" as the shooting session went on.

A really good move, as it turned out... I shot more than 150 frames, all with my longest lens.

This was one of the first. I didn't know in advance that there was a mock battle in store. I was merely setting up and testing exposure when I released the shutter on this one. The report didn't reach me for more than a second, and the smoke plume was invisible as I made the shot, as the mirror had just flipped up.

This is the first 320th of a second of the "battle" that would rage on the Columbia for the next couple of hours.

Luxury Shipwatching

Coffee Girl at Pier 39, Astoria.

The Visit of the Eagle, June 2008

Joanne mentioned the USCGC Eagle on the Ship Report the other day, which reminded me that I shot a lot of photos during her visit. That was all before this blog existed, though, so I thought I would throw some up.

The barque made her visit just about a year ago.

The lead photo here was just pure luck. As I was making my way back from my scramble out to the beach at the NW tip of Fort Stevens, I saw three Bald Eagles perched along the abandoned trestle bents. This was unusual enough, in my experience, but to have the barque Eagle passing at just that moment was something that I had to try to catch.

Since my viewpoint was limited to me, standing on tiptoes, I had to close the shot down to just one of the eagles, or the ship itself would have been obscured by the aging structures. Still... it was a once in a lifetime shot.

Technical Issue

This was supposed to be included in the post that follows. I have no idea why it wasn't picked up! Just one more aspect of that ship that just can't stay away.

Stalking the Wild Sammi Crystal

A while back I posted a note (see Revisit) about "that same ship" showing up in the anchorage almost exactly a year after it had appeared in one of my favorite shots from the breakwater. Since I wrote that, I realized that "that same ship" has been coming and going a lot more often than some of the absentee homeowners around here, and had likely been through town at least a couple of times between its registering in my cortex.

The first (and least interesting) shot was just the last one that I took. I was heading home just barely ahead of a rain squall and saw the now-familiar king-post rigging and deteriorating orange paint through gaps in the waterfront buildings. Unlike most of her other trips, she didn't stop in our waters this time. Her anchor stayed snugged up in the hawsepipe and she churned on upstream. I only made the photograph because by then I almost felt obligated to.

I've been living in Astoria for about two and a half years now, and from my front-row seat in Alderbrook, I've come to think of the ships stopping and passing outside my windows as itinerant neighbors.

The Sammi Crystal stands out because of her mix of structural features. She's probably not unique, but she's the only ship I've ever seen in our waters with three sets of king-posts. Put those together with her rust-streaked orange hull, slightly upswept sheer line and her canoe stern, and she's really hard to miss.

Some nautical terms are familiar to me... it happens by osmosis even in the "brown shoe" (Naval Aviation) community. I worked the flight decks of a couple of different aircraft carriers when uprooted from my "homeport" of NAS Miramar in the '80s.

For those features that I wasn't familiar with ("canoe stern", "king-posts" for example), Bobby L. Basnight and his book "What Ship is That?" have come in very handy.

And, of course, there's always the stuff you can pick up from listening to Joanne and her guests!