A More Serious Post, Possibly By Way Of Apology For Speaking Out Of...er...

tern.

AUUUUGHHH! I'msorryi'msorryi'msorry! one last leetle pun, ees waffer theeen!!!!

Anyways - it was a busy but sort of chopped-up day at work and I have to apologize for not being able to resist throwing up (and I use that term specifically) that awfully silly post there in the midst of things. Sometimes I just have to.

There were plenty of terns divebombing the bunker in the bay. I did actually get a couple of decent tern shots - like this one was kind of cool (click for a better view) -

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but for the most part trying to take pictures of them was mostly an idle exercise that I wasn't expecting to work too well. Small, fast-moving, erratically-swerving targets being shot with a much zoomier zoom than I've ever tried using before, from the deck of a moving sailboat? Couldn't quite resist sharing the splash (you can actually see a wingtip in there if you go to Flickr and look at a larger size) but 90% of the tern pictures were the junk I'd expected them to be. Fun to try, but my idea for the bird photography involves putting the camera in a drybag and paddling somewhere where I can quietly sit on a log and wait for the birds to decide I'm not that scary. I'd mostly taken camera and the new lens on Saturday with the thought that it would be good for other boats. That actually went well & I thought I would give you a few of those in full size here. All were in from the "First Sail" post so if you already looked through that, this is a repeat - but if not, here were a few telephoto highlights. Click on any for detail. Enjoy!

The first boat that send me scrambling down below to switch out lenses was this beautiful catamaran - I nearly missed it because I was fumbling with switching out the lenses and the various covers and making sure the short lens was stashed away safely. By the time I finished Vicky was calling "Hurry, hurry, you're going to miss it, it's going away", but I made it back on deck just in time. Isn't that pretty?

Next I went after the Parachute Jump. This is SUCH a Coney Island icon, and you can see it for miles, but I don't think I would have ever thought about taking A Picture Of The Parachute Jump from here - on the Optio, it's such an insignificant little part of the skyline you hardly notice it. So this was fun.

I liked the sparkle, it was a very very sparkly day - weekend, in fact, until the clouds came rolling in just in time to produce that beautiful sunset I posted last night. And I like the silhouetted buoy. You all know how I am about

buoys, right? Here's another shot with the Parachute Jump - this time with a little more activity - a few sailboats, probably out of either the Miramar Yacht Club in Sheepshead Bay or the yacht club out on the Rockaway Peninsula, plus an ocean liner, bound for the Atlantic - another thing I wouldn't bother even trying to shoot with the Optio unless I was several miles further west along Coney Island.

And then I looked back towards the Marine Park Bridge and discovered that I was going to get to try for some shots that Tugster Will might actually enjoy - the tug Crystal Cutler was approaching pushing the barge Patricia E. Poling. Sweet!

 Distance shot:

Closeup of the Crystal Cutler. I like the livery - I always think it looks nice when a tug-and-barge unit has a coordinated paint job, and this is actually close to the color scheme I would choose for my kayak and assorted gear if I were to pick a color scheme based purely on aesthetics - I would be all in teals with a white hull. Of course then I'd be invisible, which is why my boat and my lifejacket (and now my drysuit) are all bright yellow. Tugs don't have to worry about being invisible, though.

One more shot as the tug headed past the "castle" (actually a sewage thing, I'm afraid - people are always disappointed when we paddle out to Breezy to go surfing, they want it to be something romantic like an old fort or the footing of a vanished lighthouse, blown away in the great hurricane of 1938 or something and maybe with a good ghost story - "And to this day boaters passing by in the dark of night still hear the moans of the poor lost soul" -  but it's not, it's a sewage thing) out towards the Lower Harbor.  Norwegian Gem headed for the Atlantic in the distance - same ship as earlier, but in this shot the ship was less backlit and you can actually see the painted gems. Vicky was happy, they enjoy the occasional cruise & she'd especially loved this one.  In keeping with the "sparkly" theme of the day, too - here they are, the Crystal and the Gem! 

Vicky was very very happy being on her own boat, but she enjoyed watching "her BIG boat" heading out. 

Those were pretty much my favorites from the day's telephoto take, and I'm still very happy with the new toy - and I hope that my sharing those makes amends for the afternoon's pun-ishment!