Clearer Photo of a Pond Boat

Just a clearer photo made at a different angle. 

Belated Christmas

This is a photo my sister, Stacy, made last year...errr the year before, at in my parents dining room. The lighted boat is known as a 'pond boat'....google it. My dad restored a few of these, and this is not the most detailed one. He has one with wood plank decking and lapstraking which he found in an antique shop in Maine, I believe, for about $50 which he completely brought back to life. I suspect it could sell for upwards of $1000 at auction. 

Pregnant Waterbed

This is what happens when you really get into that tie football game while filling your waterbed! It was actually my landlady's....I was just renting. Imagine if this had burst!

Actually, one day it was a freezing/slushy rain, and I came home early from work because I had the flu and needed to sleep. When I walked thru the door I noticed my kitchen floor under about 1/2" of water. I figured the slush had backed up the drainage somewhere and it was running in under the door. Nope....it was the water heater had sprung a leak. Luckily they cleaned everything up while I passed out on a bed upstairs for four hours. I didn't have an ounce of energy. In fact, I wasn't even going to go into work but they had scheduled some IT work on the cement plant....which got postponed so I drove home in that slushy, slippery weather, while under the weather. 

Searay 44'

This is a Searay 44' that I skippered for awhile. This is the first morning I arrived in Brockville, Ont where it was tied up. Sunrise about 5:30am. This boat had two diff stereos, builtin TV/VCR, builtin vacuum system, etc etc. And they paid me $100 a day too! hehehe! 

Russians at Sea

This is another photo of me taken about 10 yrs or more ago, while I was an International Fisheries Observer. Next to me is who I think is the 2nd refrigeration engineer. Heck, he might have been the 1st. Never really could figure much who was who....but never saw him do much so he must have been an engineer. This is about 3 weeks out to sea....no sight of land. I can tell because I usually only shaved once a month at sea. Can't remember the ship's name...might have been Luga again. Looking down over the rail to my left shoulder would be the trawl deck where they hauled back the fish. Silver hake is what they were fishing for....it's an oily fish, sometimes known as white fish. 

Icy Sunset

Taken from the wheelhouse of a 45' ice-reinforced trawler, this photo a sunset about 10 years ago in the North Atlantic off the coast of Cape Breton. The ice you see is called slog ice, or pancake ice. It's semi-hard slushy/mushy ice in 10-20' diameters. Since you sleep in the V berth of these boats, it an interesting noise as it slams up against the hull a couple of inches from your head. You're always wondering which one is going to be the one to open up a hole into your bunk. An interesting side note here is between the 4-5 day trips I stayed at a hotel, where reading the paper one morning I just happened upon the obit of a friend I had gone to high school with, along with being in the same basic training class for the navy a 7 years earlier. He had joined the regular navy as a diver, and while conducting hull searches in a foriegn port, he was sucked into a cooling intake of an American ship. Cause of death? Ineptitude, possibly drug use.....who knows on US ships. They aren't a well motivated military.....just blindly loyal. 

Russian Trawler and Frieghter Transhipping

This is a photo I took while I was an international fisheries observer working/living aboard Russian Factory freezers. Although this was a year after the fall of communism they stacks still showed the red, yellow, black of the Soviet Union, although they flew the new flag of the Russian Confederation. I'm standing on one of the after houses, looking forward on the factory freezer. I think the boat was named 'Luga', from Lativia. The freighter beside it is where they offload all the frozen product they've caught over the last few months. It also brings mail and much needed (although meager) supplies. The whole process takes about two days and it's a good break for most of the crew....and myself. 

Grounded Trawler

The tides in the Bay of Funday are about 20', and happen twice a day. It's not unusual to see these boats grounded between high tides. In fact, it's not unusual to see people out there painting the bottoms of their boats while they get a chance.

This photo, I believe I took somewhere near Digby, Nova Scotia. Home of the world best Scallops! 

TEST Only

This is a test to see if this works ok on a diff computer. Photo was taken at a fire on Hwy1431 in Marble Falls, TX. 

Atypical Firefighter

Structure fire tonight in Cottonwood Shores. Nothing much to photograph since the fire was almost out. Ironically, just as I was getting to THIS fire, another structure fire broke out at the opposite end of town, about the same distance from home. Nothing much of that one either....a admin building for a cemetery.

Anyways, I thought this guy had good character in his face.