Westsound

[Marin]

Took a quick four-day cruise this past weekend to Westsound on Orcas Island in the company of Carey (of this forum) and his wife and their 36' lobsterboat "Happy Destiny."* These are some photos from the trip.* There are some wonderful cars in the San Juan Islands.* Probably a bit like Cuba--- people take them there and then they stay there.* You can't drive very far so they don't get beat up.

The "Syrene" is teak planked over oak frames.* The topsides are all teak.* She traveled from England to BC on her own hull before WWII and served with the BC Forest Service from the 1940s through 1977.* Originally gasoline powered she was later repowered with a pair of Gardner diesels.* In addition to the engines she was originally fitted with two masts and a bowsprit complete with figurehead.

Purple martins are North America's largest swallow and they are relatively rare in the PNW.* Up here they nest almost exclusively in man-made boxes near open water.

There are a number of steam launches in the islands.* This is one of them.

Wasp Passage (second to last photo) has claimed more than one vessel on an "uncharted" rock (there aren't any but there are some very "uncharted" skippers up here).* The sunset was shot in Friday Harbor.

NOTE--- The weather was not like this on Monday when we came home.* It was overcast, spitting rain, and blowing 20-25 knots in some of the passes.


-- Edited by Marin on Wednesday 27th of July 2011 02:29:47 PM

 

[Marin]

Part of my job at Boeing involves the use of very sophisticated visual effects applications. The sort of stuff they use in movies like Lord of the Rings and whatnot. So it's very easy for me to have virtually any element of a photograph or video clip changed or created from scratch. The sky in all the shots above are from pictures I and my crew shot in New Zealand a number of years ago. The water has been extensively reworked as well, as has the appearance and direction*of the*sunlight, shadows,*and the*reflections on the water.

As a very simple example of the sort of thing I'm talking about, here are four HD frames I lifted from the end of a video I produced earlier this year about the painting of the first 747-8 Intercontinental. The scene shows the paint hangar doors opening to reveal the finished plane sitting outside the hangar in the spill light from the hangar, and then big spotlights come on sequentially in time to the music to light up the plane.

But--- the 747-8I was never parked outside the hangar in this way. In fact, we never park planes outside the hangar like this. Plus the 747-8I was completely wrapped in brown paper when it was removed from the paint hangar and rolled back inside the assembly building for the big rollout/reveal ceremony the following day. So this was a visual scene that never happened in reality.

The inside of the hangar is real as are the people opening the doors, the ramp outside, and the lights in the background.* But the plane outside the hangar doors in this sequence is a digital airplane. As are the shadows underneath it, the reflections on it, and the lighting that comes on sequentially to highight it.* (The fuzziness at the edges of the moving doors is from the field interlacing of the video frames--- when the video actually plays it's not there.)

And this sort of thing is child's play to a CGI guy who knows his stuff. So my PNW "sunny day" photos are pretty easy to cobble up. In fact they are a lot easier than doing the same thing with video/film because each one is only one frame.

Literally everyone at Boeing and everywhere else who has seen the video is absolutely*convinced the closing scene is real.* The only ones who know differently (other than the people we've told) are the Hangar 3 paint crew and the people in my department.

Which just goes to show you that these days you can NEVER believe that*any photo or video scene that you see is real.* In fact, you will probably be correct more often*if you assume visuals you see that impress you are, in fact, not real.* Because the reality is, the liklihood that they've been doctored is far greater than the liklihood that they haven't.* A prime example are car commercials.* Cars are very easy to define digitally.* So the cars in* the majority of car commercials are digital cars even if they are placed and driven in real settings.

*


-- Edited by Marin on Wednesday 27th of July 2011 05:48:31 PM

 

[Marin]

My wife, who has better eyes than I do, said the thing in the window is a stuffed bird (well, we assume it was stuffed--- it didn't move when I was looking at it).

The cross-bracing on the piling is, I assume, to help deal with the strong winter winds and waves that hit that particular dock from the southwest during the winter. The pilings are both leaning somewhat up-wind from the battering they've taken over the years. They appear vertical because of the way I framed the photo.* Ice is not a factor here.


-- Edited by Marin on Wednesday 27th of July 2011 07:47:47 PM

 

[Marin]

Mike wrote:
I don't have any way of enlarging the picture.

I'm guessing you mean enlarge it more than you get when you put your cursor on the thumbnail photo in the post and click, which enlarges the photo up to full screen or almost full screen.* I don't know of any way to enlarge it more either unless you click it up to full screen, save-as to your desktop, and then load it into a program like Photoshop.


-- Edited by Marin on Wednesday 27th of July 2011 09:03:08 PM

 

[Nomad Willy]

We bought a car that spent it's first life on San Juan Island. A low mileage 1989 Toyota wagon. Very good old car.

Does anybody know how those davits work on the 4th picture? Of course I know they rotate. They must first go one way and then in opposite directions. Anybody seen them operate?

A long time ago I got to borrow a friends MGTD for a date. It was green.

 

[Marin]

I didn't see these particular davits operate but I have seen a similar setup on another large yacht in operation. The davits rotate inward as the launch passes between them. The falls provide enough flexibility for this to happen. Very simple system--- the one I saw in operation was purely manual other than the falls themselves which were controlled with small electric winches on each davit. The launch was lifted off its cradle and simply pushed outboard. The davits rotated in and then out with it. I recall there was a locking pin that prevented the davits from rotating once they were in their inboard or outboard positions. But otherwise it was a dirt-simple system.

I had a girfriend in high school in Hawaii whose brother had an MGTD.* He'd let us borrow it occasionally for dates.* Back then it was just an old British sportscar.* Not much value in them in those days.* The one in my photo has been modified with louvers in the top of the hood like a Morgan.* All the other TDs I've seen did not have these.

I agree with your about the '89 Toyota.* We inhereted my mom's '89 Toyota Corolla wagon and it served us extremely well as our Bellingham "runner" until a couple of months ago when at well over 200,000 miles the transmission/differential locked up solid when we were doing 70mph on the freeway.* The cost to get the car running again far exceeded its value so we donated it and replaced it with a new Subaru Forester.


-- Edited by Marin on Friday 29th of July 2011 01:18:51 PM

 

[Nomad Willy]

I'll bet it got lots better millage than the Forester. Ours is a Camry 5 speed w 89000 miles so I spose we've got decades here on the rock to go.

 

[Marin]

When the Toyota was younger it got about 30-33 mpg on the freeway. But the last few years of its life its engine was getting tired and we were getting in the mid-20s at best on the freeway. Plus we had to run it on premium to keep it from knocking. The Forester gets 27-30 mpg on the freeway and 23-25 mpg around town and is very happy with regular.