Life's a beach. A dozen photos from Coney Island plus bonus B&B video!

As usual, click on pictures for better views.

Early afternoon at Grimaldo's Chair (I went to swim, I swam a mile and change and then came back and got out my camera).

Met Life Blimp out for a cruise

Looking down Brighton Beach towards Coney Island Beach.

Brighton Beach

Coney Island Beach with Coney's 3 iconic old rides (Parachute Jump, Deno's Wonder Wheel, and the Cyclone) visible in the distance.

Sailing by

Italian ice vendor and low-flying child

Tribute in sand to our local minor-league team, the Coney Island Cyclones

Further down Coney Island

Shepherd keeping watch (that's one of the lifeguards out there on the yellow paddleboard, keeping an eye on things from the outside). 

Parachute Jump. Haven't seen the new light show yet, hear it's pretty fancy!

B&B Carousel - just opened on the Boardwalk after a five-year renovation. Have to come back with my better camera to do this justice.

B&B Carousel in action!

 

Imu Hao

Waikiki Surfer (fka GregandKris from Love and Coconuts, they moved to Hawai'i - well, mostly, it seems like poor Kris is doing a lot of shuttling back and forth to Portland but Greg's all settled in and doing lots of surfing, water kind not internet!) got me all envious (even more than usual) yesterday when he posted on Facebook "Kalua pig, straight from the imu!". A little bit later he admitted that he had named his slow-cooker "Imu". Story now on his blog.

So I figured that he can name a crockpot "Imu" (would that be "Imu Ui'la", electric imu?) then I can call my Dutch oven my "Imu Hao" (iron imu). 

Whatever you want to call the pot - this is pernil, and I think it's gonna be pretty onolicious (tasty)!

REAL imu (in case you didn't already know and hadn't guessed). Vintage Hawai'ian postcard, 1950's, found on ebay, still for sale!

More pictures from Red Hook

Just a few more pictures from the trip over to Red Hook tonight - I took a lot and I'm starting this post too late to really feel like writing (sooo sleepy).

Our original destination was supposed to be Hoboken, but then our actual destination in Hoboken suddenly wasn't in Hoboken anymore -- something about Homeland Security, didn't get the full story but with a little less than a week's notice, we were going to Red Hook instead. Unfortunate for our hosts that they had to move so abruptly, but dealing with such things is rather sadly something that our local caretakers of antique vessels get to be fairly good at dealing with - it happens, quite literally, to the best of them. Personally, the change of venue made things a little tricky for me as the new departure time and place was 5:20 at the Wall Street ferry terminal, a little earlier and a little farther away from the office. I was going to leave the office at 4:30 but ended up gambling with my transit time to finish a project for the boss -- said to myself, "OK, I know where the ferry terminal is, if take the time to look up the contact number and the actual address in case I miss the ferry, I'll almost certainly miss the ferry, might as well just bolt and see if I make it".  Fortunately both trains I needed to turn up right away both turned up right away (boy did I feel lucky, that NEVER happens) and then after a bit of broken-field running through the tourists on Wall Street I got there with a whole 5 minutes to spare. Woohoo!

As usual, click on the pictures for a nice full-screen view. 

On the ferry - Tug Cheyenne

Tug Cheyenne, northbound on the East River, heading for the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. 

On the grounds of the Gowanus Bay Terminal.

Glad to have a chance to get some up-close photos of this old grain silo. I've seen it from a distance a lot but never made it down to the area (and wouldn't have been allowed to enter even if I had). 

Repurposed bulk carrier the MV Loujaine.

Not our destination but also a neat thing to have a chance to take some pictures of.

More to come, probably over the weekend. 

Click here to read an interesting Waterwire article about the Gowanus Bay Terminal, the old silo, and the MV Loujaine. 

little kitty, BIG KITTY. Scenes from a mini-adventure, part 1.

Hello, little kitty...

Hello, BIG KITTY!

Just a couple of preliminary shots from a bit of an adventure I went on last night with the Ship Lore and Model-Building Society, an organization I joined up with over the winter when my friend Richard Hudson, owner of the schooner Issuma and a true sailing adventurer, emailed me to let me know he was going to be in town for a few days and was going to be giving his presentation about sailing the Northwest Passage for the Society. He'd given the presentation once before, I don't remember why I couldn't make it but there was something completely inflexible that kept me away and I was tickled to hear that he was doing it again. Turns out the Society meets at a studio that's about a 10-minute walk from my office and the time the monthly meetings start work well with my work schedule, so I've been going ever since. They have some very interesting speakers - since then I've heard Rick Spilman, the maritime architect and author behind the Old Salt Blog talk about the future of commercial sail (assuming that the price of oil does not magically plummet the way it did after skyrocketing in the 70's, which seems unlikely, Rick predicts that it's going to be a lot more than windjammers using wind power), and then another gentleman who'd spent a lot of time travelling on non-luxury ships and boats all over the world gave a wonderful talk with slides about some of his favorites, and then last night...

we all got on an actual boat (hey, it's the Bowsprite!), 

And we crossed over the river,

And we went to IKEA for Swedish meatballs and pressboard furniture! Yowza!

No, no, no. I'm lying. We were on our way here.

To Be Continued.

Robin and her nest, Jonesville, Michigan (plus baby robin from 2009 )

At my Aunt K and Uncle B's home in Jonesville, Michigan. This small octagonal window is next to the side entrance to their home and looks in on the family room. My aunt had noticed the bird trying to build her nest there, she kept bringing twigs and the twigs kept falling on the ground until one day they didn't. It turned out that my uncle had decided to help the robin out a little and had driven four big nails in along the front of the windowframe. My aunt says he gets to clean the window when the robins are done, but they're really enjoying having her there.

There was a lot of coming and going close to the nest with all the visitors in town for Uncle B's 80th birthday. The slamming of the screen door would send her away, but some of us started using the front door more to give her a little more room and she was still sitting tight on the day that we house guests were all leaving. Very neat to have a chance to take pictures like this!

Reminds me of another robin encounter at the same aunt and uncle's place - from Summer 2009.

Water Lily, Baw Beese Lake, Michigan

Hope everyone had a happy 4th!

Why yes, I Do Like Sailing, And Pina Coladas Too.

The Sunfish smile and the tropical drink -- those were the bookends of a really great weekend. 

Saturday was our 2nd monthly Sailing Committee cruise of the season, and it was absolutely splendid. I don't know who at NOAA John D. Our Cruise Director paid off, but bravo, sir, bravo.

I think we had 10 boats and 13 sailors. The wind at the beginning was not heavy, but enough that we got pretty strung out as we launched. I took my usual over-the-bow shot sailing down the basin, and then after that I didn't do a lot of picturetaking because there weren't really any other boats close enough to try to shoot. 

 That's why I ended up doing the self-portrait, it was very easy sailing heading out around Ruffle Bar and I just got silly.

The breeze freshened up beautifully as we got down towards the Rockaway Inlet. John and Sherry had caught up with me and there they are with the Marine Park Bridge in the background - John had suggested a slightly different course than usual and that was fun. 

John had also suggested a slightly different lunch spot than usual but we ended up at the usual Ruffle Bar lunch break beach because the sandbar was pretty much underwater. 

The first cruise of the season, the water was still a little nippy, but this time it was perfect for standing in the water. 

David C's son Ben (who was about to head off to sailing camp) decided to do a capsize drill with the club's new Vanguard in which his dad had brought him and his little sister. 

One, two, three...

 HEAVE! And up she comes. Ben's been a regular pretty much since his dad joined - I think this was his little sister's first appearance at one of our SailComm events (and I'm terrible, I forgot her name :-( ). Really nice having kids along!

We did see quite a bit of wildlife...hello my prehistoric baby!

Yep, lots of horseshoe crabs around, investigating the amorous potential of our feet. Always a little weird having these guys investigating you, they don't bite or anything but they do wander around checking out anything that will hold still for checking out. Good to see so many, though, especially after the poaching incident we had in May, which was doubtless just one of at least a few more -- like roaches, if they caught one, there have to be more.

We left Ruffle Bar in a much tighter group than we'd arrived in so I got in a few more nice shots before the wind picked up enough that I had to put the camera away and use both hands to sail. Really a wonderful day out there, and the watermelon that John and Sherry had left in the refrigerator for an apres-sail treat was the perfect finish to the day. 

And I was going to go on to pictures of the swim support that I did the next morning, also terrific - but I've posted so many sailing pictures now that I think I'll leave it there for the blog -- but if you'd like to take a look, there is a brand new Flickr set! Another fun, fun event. Pina colada was on the boardwalk after that swim was over - it was only 11 am or so but we were feeling too festive to just go home.  

Do I Like Sailing?

Maybe a little bit.