A Days in the life

  

Strap in....

Editor’s note one: after starting, I find I will have to break up “day in the life” into a couple of volumes.  Don’t want to waste your time and energy

Editor’s note two:  Okay, I give up.  Have you ever starting something and keep finding things you wanted to do?  I have been waiting for three days for a lousy picture of a “commercial” head boat. But I’m not going to wait for that… off to press.

Editor's note three: a  LOT of pictures...

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Here we go:

We are very lucky to be living here on the (Patuxent River) water, we get a show every day.  As someone (MFO) always says, “there’s always something going on on the water!”.  So an album of the passing scene. 

The day usually begins with a “between the toes/bed posts” view of the sun; this was taken on the 7^th (of September) as I track the autumn march of Old Sol as he marches south from Drum Point to Cedar Point – very close to half way.

Of course, being “on the water” means (duhh) you see lots of water craft, from

Big Boys in the bay

Grandeur of the Seas Cruise Ship

Hong Jing Bulk Carrier

Spain to Baltimore

Grand Phoenix Vehicles

Jax to Baltimore

More Vehicles to Baltimore(note Towboat US)

Grimaldi Lines

Chesapeake Coast (tug)

Norfolk to Philly

And now that the LNG plant at Cove Point is “up” we see lots of these now (not my picture)

And thus a need for a whole fleet of “support” boats

I have no idea what their mission is, but they go back and forth a lot

Staying  in the “commercial” side of things there’s many “Triple A” type boats for boaters with dead engines etc.

Often referred to as the “ride of shame”

The Calvert Marine Museum runs the William B. Tennyson for a short ride in the river and bay

And also operate the Dee of St. Mary’s a renovated Skipjack that once belonged to our beloved waterman “Capt. Jack”

While in their day, Skipjacks were used for “oystering” and then would unload their haul to a “buy boat”.   Always kind of represents a dichotomy to me, that a lowly “working boat” has such beautiful lines.  Wonder if the watermen who made their living on one ever stopped and said: “Gee, that’s pretty!”

Another Level Down

Speaking of “working” it was apparently a good year for “Callinectes sapidus” aka beautiful swimmers, or blue crabs.  Many mornings we awake to “crabbers” working just out in front of us, some more elaborate than others

Toward the weekend, there’s always some so called ”head boats” with hopeful fishermen paying to use the fish finders in such boats to locate dinner.   Side note, I’ve never been on one, but they endure.  A lot of people enjoy having somebody bait your hook for you, take it off the rod, and ultimately clean and filet it for you.. and look like this in a converted crab/oyster boat

Others prefer to do it on their own:

Looks a little precarious to me

Or  a group of people get together in somebody’s boat from smaller to larger

Then there’s the whole universe of “pleasure boats”, sometimes with sail(s)

Extra Credit:  what type of rigging is this?

Or, sometimes without, or “motoring”

Or, if you prefer to get over there just by pointing the boat and going " over there" (instead of tacking 50 times) you have your “power boats”

Some faster than others

And there are those rugged individuals who generally come out when the weather is bad

Or those with “personal water crafts”

Which were known in my day as “jet skis”

Then there are those poor souls who like to be on the water, but can’t afford anything but a small powerboat

Had enough for Volume 1? I promise you the next volumes will be shorter.   Just wanted you to see the incredible variety we’re treated to. As yogi said “you can observe a lot just by watching” and I do!

End Papers

We had a brush with Dorian last week, here’s a record of the impact at the digs

If I enlarge it more, the formatting goes nuts, so to save your eyes:

Dark blue = barometric pressure (minimum was 29.70)

Green = wind speed in mph 9(maximum sustained 23, saw a gust near 40)

Black bars = rainfall in inches (max 0.09)

So all in all, not much – not that we’re complaining, mind you

English Lesson:

Palindrome: A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of characters which reads the same backward as forward, such as ‘’taco cat’’ or madam or racecar or the number 10801.

For somebody who used to pay a lot of attention to such things, I had to be reminded that we’re in a period of Palindrome dates:

  9-10-19; 9-11-19; 9-12-19; 9-13-19; 9-14-19; 9-15-19; 9-16-19; 9-17-19 ;9-18-19; and 9-19-19

   and guess what? here's another:

   DFD

   Thanks for hanging in, that was tough! are these how your      eyes feel now?

Caption: Not only have my eyes glazed over - they have turned completely into cinnamon rolls