Thursday, June 05, 2008

Shipspotting

Need a better camera. It's filling up with dim distant thumbnail images of cruise ships queueing up to drop off their Puget Sound Pilots at the end of Ediz Hook on Sunday evening, having all left Seattle for one-week cruises four hours before; and freighters and tankers and ferries and mystery ships. What kind of ship, if you please, was CSAV Rio Grande, which looks rather like a black helicopter of the sea and was inbound past the Hook Sunday evening? Oooh look, it arrived in San Francisco yesterday from Tacoma. Didn't take it long; into Puget Sound, out of Puget Sound, chug chug chug.

Alaskan Frontier, who came in a week ago, is still in port here. For several days she's been at the dock— no doubt it has a correct name— between the K-Ply plant and where Silverstar and Gemstone were parked. It's hard to imagine what kind of work or repair is being done to Frontier which could take so long that still it makes sense to do here instead of in some larger port.

MV HOS Gemstone and Silverstar were making their way back along the shore, and came back into port while I was out there this evening. I looked them up just now and whoa nellie!! Are they really still leased by the Navy as submarine escorts? What are they doing spending any of their their days docked at the bottom of Cedar Street off Marine Drive? I'm prepared to swear they had a handful of containers on them just now...

The tanker Sonangol Namibe is the only ship presently anchored out in the middle of the harbor, by far the most exotic name I've scribbled down lately.

There were half a dozen small boat trailers parked by the boat ramp. I asked some guys going out what they were going to catch, they said ling cod and sea bass. I asked some guys coming in. They said halibut (but they hadn't caught any.) There were mystery ducks. Black all over except some white bits on the wings. Beaks were wrong for scoters. Mysteries.

Norwegian Pearl and Holland America Westerdam queueing up to drop their pilots
Fisher guys, pilot station, Coho in background...
Frontier at the dock
Returning pilots going off duty. Click for larger image.

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