Judges Unleashed

Certain vacationing judges have consented to publication of these intimate shots as they took turns at the helm in no particular order on a misty morning on the West Penobscot Bay aboard the sailing vessel Unleashed.  Name that lighthouse!
Slideshow HERE

Night of the Blue Crabs - NYTimes.com

Crabbing on the Great South Bay, not far from where I gew up on South Oyster Bay. - G
Night of the Blue Crabs - NYTimes.com:
by Lawrence Downes

Midnight on the Great South Bay. Smudgy clouds, a stiff wind, a full moon, now hidden, now in the clear, gloriously bright, high beams on rippling blacktop.

On a pier at the end of Blue Point Avenue, a dozen people are doing what they do on the South Shore of Long Island on summer nights: catching the blue-claw crabs that swarm the muddy inlets and dock pilings every July and August.

The boat fishermen are in bed. The night surf-casters are out on the barrier island, flinging bait chunks into the ocean. The crabbers are on the inland side of the bay, a few feet from their cars, with nets, buckets and flashlights.

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Perseverance - Elwyn's Wharf

Perseverance, Salt Pond Road   click pic to enlarge

I've photographed  Elwyn's wharf in many lights and conditions, summer and winter, high tidelow tide.  Yesterday, on a summer Sunday morning he was loaded up with new lobster traps to be set the next day.

Launch of the Sanaa

Back River, Friendship, Maine, July 7, 2013

Launch of the GeorgiaBel

Thomaston to Friendship

Young Men and Fire - this time in Arizona

Nineteen firefighters died fighting a blaze in Arizona. The writer Norman McLean told the story of thirteen young men who died fighting a fire on a ridge above the upper Missouri River in Montana. His classic , spare reconstruction, Young Men and Fire told the story of thirteen crosses on the ridge above the river. Richard Shindell's beautiful song Cold Missouri Waters captures the tragedy. I hope someone of equal commitment and eloquence tells the story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, the men who died yesterday in what appears to be a similarly pointless firefight.

The Future of Sailing is a 137-Year Old Concept, Reborn by the 2013 America’s Cup | gCaptain ⚓ Maritime & Offshore News

N.G. Herreshoff, designer   Herreshoff Marine Museum – Amaryllis II, 1933 (Amaryllis – 1876 – replica)

The Future of Sailing is a 137-Year Old Concept, Reborn by the 2013 America’s Cup | gCaptain ⚓ Maritime & Offshore News:


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Philip Conkling: The view from offshore | PenBay Pilot

Brimstone Island, Gulf of Maine - photo by Peter Ralston

Philip Conkling: The view from offshore | PenBay Pilot: 

"PENOBSCOT BAY — This past spring, a close friend who turned 60 invited us to his birthday destination celebration at the remote end of one of smallest Hawaiian Islands. But feeling penurious at the end of a colder than average winter, we suggested we would instead organize an island birthday adventure closer to home, which we held this past weekend.
It was a reunion for three of the principals, with assorted wives and children and a pair of dogs that are apparently too sensitive to be boarded ashore. The three of us had known each other for all of our adult lives. We had helped each other through the death of a spouse, child-rearing, several divorces, career changes, and a life changing illness; in short, through all the really critical times of our lives and had emerged, if not wealthier, hopefully a little wiser"...

Seal Island - photo by Peter Ralston

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On Keeping the Log of a Ship - the search for the wreck of Shackleton's ship Endurance

Shackleton's cabin - The Endurance

The Report of Mr. Duffus Hardy, Assistant Keeper at the Tower of  log books  on deposit at Somerset House, October 11, 1847 shows the importance of 
The Ship's Log (Admiralty Records No 12).
Frank Worsley in his workbook and captain's log kept meticulous records of the doomed voyage of the Endurance.  Using them teams are competing to find the wreckage in 10,00 feet of water in the Weddell Sea.  The Daily Mail reports.