ShipWatching

I have to confess that someone with my eyesight can't really read any of the ships' markings from out on my deck without binoculars. A Yang Ming container ship went by out on the Strait on Sunday morning, the lettering on the side is about as big as it gets (1) yet all I could read without help was that there weren't enough letters to be saying Hapag-Lloyd, and too many to be HanJin.

YangMing Fountain passing the bottom of the street on a snowy morning. (Click for larger image.)

It got me to hop in the car, though, and go see what there was to see.

Spent a long time trying to observe snow actually falling into the water of the harbor; but even in a heavy shower, by the time it touches the harbor surface it seems just to be a drop of water. I'd have had to get out of the car and down on my elbows in the wet mud with my eyes at water level to perceive it. Nah.

Of ducks, there were lots of bufflehead again and harlequin ducks and goldeneye and some little shorebirds I didn't get a look at; a great blue heron on a piling.

Bufflehead in the harbor (Click for larger image.)

On the Strait side, there were grebes and a surf scoter. And a lot of ship traffic. HanJin Berlin loomed out of the weather on the Strait, loaded tall and wide with containers; it dropped off its pilot, and headed west. (It's down by Portland now.)Thetis was already very close, eastbound, but the pilot boat came back in, dropped off one man (Berlin's pilot?) and picked up another, then went right back out to rendezvous with Thetis (who's in Tacoma now).

HanJin Berlin westbound and Thetis eastbound, passing Ediz Hook. (Click for larger image.)

Apparently ubiquitous, we shipspotters. Marinetraffic.com has pictures of Thetis taken later in the same day, after she'd passed on east into Puget Sound.

Great Blue Heron, with Polar Enterprise, Port Angeles harbor (Click for larger image.)