12/13 - Lake WA & Locks Cruise

timflan · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:38 pm Post subject:

Yeah, Julia was asking about the speed limits on the lakes and ship canals, and I told her we would observe them strictly, since with AIS we're CONSTANTLY BROADCASTING OUR SPEED! Smile

It's Big Brother's dream, for sure.

rogerbum · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 6:54 pm Post subject:

Well, it was another good event and forecast be damned the weather this year was better than last year. In attendance by boat:

Two Lucky Fish - Tim Flan, wife and two girls
C-Daisy - Karl and his two girls
Susan E - Tom and Susan
Sea DNA - myself and Joyce

By land:
R-Matey - Ruth and Joe
Sensei - Roger and Lisbeth
Dreamer - Pat and Patty
Anita Marie - Fred

Tim gave us a nice talking tour of Lake Union and we wandered on down to the locks and backed. We all met at Ivars on Lake Union for lunch. We had a table for 18 and good conversation was had by all. I'll PM Tyboo and Bill to ask for a photo album.

timflan · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 8:09 pm Post subject:

I think I revealed during the tour that I'm sort of a tugboat nut. Anyway, here are the links to the websites for the tugboat companies we saw today, in ascending order from smallest to biggest:

Campbell Maritime. Brian Campbell blogs about his almost-daily adventures aboard tugs Ruby VII, Driftwood, and Bandit.

Fremont Tugboat Co.. Still a small company, but with more and larger boats than Campbell. Mark Freeman is the son of ol' Doc Freeman (a name which may be familiar to Puget Sound boaters; Doc Freeman's was THE go-to chandlery for years and years), and his office is practically a museum of nautical photographs, paintings, boat models, and artifacts. Here's a quick profile on Mark Freeman written by C-Brat Dan Richman.

Western Towboat Company. This is a pretty big company, and you'll spot their distinctive blue/yellow/white tugs running barges up and down Puget Sound, or to and from Alaska!

Foss Maritime. If you don't know these guys, you haven't been paying attention. They're like a maritime Boeing or Starbucks or Microsoft; a local company gone global.

amy and karl · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 8:12 pm Post subject: Lake Washington Locks

Hi All,

The girls and I had a great time today. It was nice to see and meet you all. Thanks to Roger and Tim for the guided tour of Lake Union. See you at the next one.

Karl

JamesTXSD · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 8:58 pm Post subject:

Glad to hear Mother Nature cut you some slack... so, who won the wine and the soda? Very Happy

Happy Holidays,
Jim

TyBoo · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:05 pm Post subject:

hardee · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:08 pm Post subject: High tides here too

We just came back from a drive out to Port Angeles. Wanted to go see what was happening (wave wise) out on Ediz Hook, by the Pilot and Coast Guard stations. Road was closed at the paper factory tank farm, due to Water over the roadway. High tides and winds, big waves. Had to get a water fix and couldn't make it to Seattle for the locks cruise. Sorry we missed that.

Harvey
SleepyC Moon

Dreamer · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:24 pm Post subject:

Roger et al,
Good on you folks for doing the cruise despite predictions of bad weather! What a great group of Puget Sound area Brats. Hope we can make it next year.

R-Matey · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 9:45 pm Post subject: Lunch at Ivars

Many thanks to Rogerbum for putting together this December CBGT. So much fun seeing everyone again. Now we're looking forward to the SBS/CBC next month.

Ruth and Joe
R-MATEY

rogerbum · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:04 pm Post subject:

I just finished posting my photos from today's cruise. See the album (link above in Tyboo's post). Oh - and yes I realize I screwed up on the name of Pat and Patty's boat - should be Daydream (and Crabby-Lou). Also, Roger and Lisbeth now have Serenity.

That darn editing limit.... Wink

timflan · Posted: Sat Dec 13, 2008 10:24 pm Post subject:

Thanks, Roger, for setting up the trip, and for the photos. Two Lucky Fish's crew all forgot our cameras today!

Pat Anderson · Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 11:44 am Post subject:

Yes, I have been thinking about suing for an injunction against Roger using my trademarked darkred / large combo font, but I guess we can live with it!

Grumpy · Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 11:48 am Post subject:

Just added 4 screen shots taken from my computer monitoring two AIS web sites during the cruise yesterday, to the album.

Tim (Two Lucky Fish) was broadcasting on AIS B during the cruise.

Sorry for the quality but they have been transformed 2 times to get them in a format acceptable to the site.

Note that these "global" sites all seem to have differences of opinion about what traffic is where at any given time. If you run two in parallel you will see what I mean. I can only guess that it is becaue they are monitoring ground stations around the world and then they have their own update rate for what must be a large amount of data on top of the AIS update rate. Whereas a shipbound system only has to deal with targets in range and can do that easily within the AIS update time.

So now you know why that police boat was watching Tim for speeding !!!

Laughing

Merv

starcrafttom · Posted: Sun Dec 14, 2008 11:17 pm Post subject:

Well that was fun and a good lunch. Everytime I go down on the lake I get to thinking how nice it would be to live in floating home, then I get to thinking about how much I hate citys and I'm cured. Well Susan and I won both the soda and the wine because everyone else flaked out of the decorations AGAIN! I would like to thank Roger for the soda and wine. My dad will like the wine when he comes for dinner next week.

After we pulled the boat from the water Susan and I were going to re-launch in Everett and join the Everett yacth club christmas parade but on the way there it started to snow pretty good. So we took the boat home and went back to just watch the boat parade. The Everett yacth club puts on a go show with 40 plus boats all deck out and lite up. After they make a pass of the judges they park on the guest dock so folks can have a close up look at all of them. We got a inch of snow while walking up and down the dock. Again we had a good time and hope to see everyone at the boat show