Bouys, a boat and a bulker

And, I might add, an ever-present bridge.

Some calm between storms in the new year.

Shot 1/2/2009.

The "boat" (as opposed to "ship") is Astoria's own Arrow 2, the Columbia River Pilot vessel.  She may look like "Little Toot", but this is a very task-oriented craft.  Very little wasted movement, and occasionally some astonishingly balletic moves when traffic is heavy.

Christmas Morning

With all of the fun of holiday travel (and not travel) and intermittent power outages over the last several days, I didn't really get a chance to get anything updated when I'd hoped to.

Christmas morning began with a pre-dawn deluge of snow that didn't let up until close to noon. I've lived in lots of places, and some where a white Christmas might even have been a reasonable expectation, but I think this is the first time that I've actually gone through snowfall on the actual morning.

I was supposed to be in Portland for the holiday, but with the valley under a sheet of ice, travel was not a smart idea. So, I went for a long walk from my own place instead.

The ships are pretty average, the river relatively calm, but the heavy dusting on the trees and hills on the Washington side of the river made for some unusual (for this area) shots.

Bounty

Taken over the summer. This is the replica HMS Bounty used in the film. She was docked at the 17th St. Pier in Astoria for a few days. I almost wish the bridge wasn't in the background, but if you've ever been here before, it certainly helps identify the place!

A Busy Evening

Almost calm, near sunset. Not typical, but not unusual, either. Ships stacked in the anchorage abreast the breakwater and upstream with outbound traffic. How better to describe ideal ship-watching conditions?

The Shangor was letting out extra anchor chain, and the rattle was loud enough to make an observer on the East Basin breakwater flinch.

Sea lions barking in the background, gulls fighting in the fore... ships sitting idle, slipping chain, heading to sea... pilot boat scurrying to and fro, sun slinking slowly over Young's Bay.

Autumn in Astoria.

Revisit

I glanced out the window this morning and thought "That's the same type of rigging that was on the ship in the moonset picture from last year."

I didn't think a lot more about it until I just heard Joanne Rideout mention that the Sammi Crystal was in the anchorage today.

Sure enough, same ship. I checked the date on the photo file from last year and found that it was just shy of a year ago that I shot that moonset over her.

This morning was gray, foggy and cool. A year ago it was clear and cold. Very clear... the structure just to the right of the intersection of the anchor chain and the bridge is the Cape Disappointment lighthouse, 13 miles distant. It's always there, of course, but it's usually obscured by haze, rain, fog or occasionally the sun's glare.

Howling Sunset

The Oriente Sky at anchor, Astoria. A little bit of everything here: bright sky, heavy wind chop and and incoming tide.

Peacetime Games

Shot from the front porch. The Fir's home moorage is just a few hundred yards off her bow here, but the Jayhawk from Air Station Astoria has been hovering off the stern for several minutes. Shot August 11, 2008.