Boat ride

Today, we went on our first boat ride.  I loved it.  It was a fairly windless, 35 degree day. Enjoy the photos. 

The boat.  They said the walkway was floating, I did not fully realize this until I felt myself move up and down just before stepping up to get on the boat.  The feeling was similar to sitting at a stoplight in a car with a foot on the break and then witnessing the car next to you roll backwards a bit...  Which one is moving?  The same thing getting off the boat, did it lift or did the walkway sink?  It was an interesting sensation.

Inside the boat looking out. There was so much neat stuff in here. Beyond the dark space in the center of the photo was a restroom and sleeping quarters.

GPS, sonar, stats, etc.  I was wowed by all of the technology.  I also learned today that boats have "autopilot".  Up to this point in my life, I have never considered such a thing and really thought it made sense after the captain said, "Well, when you go out fishing, you go for hours, its not like driving, I just punch in what I want it to do and it does it."

Squaw Harbor.  It used to be an operational fish cannery and even had a school that only stayed open for six months.  The captain and his wife spoke fondly of dropping off shrimp on Saturdays during the days when it had been open.  Now this area is considered private property and there were large boats blocking any chance of us tying up and checking it out.  As we slowly went past, a person appeared atop an ATV and eyed us back.  Another thing that caught my eye was a single house with a satellite dish on it.  Even in the middle of nowhere people stay connected.

Jigger.  This device has a bunch of hooks attached to a line.  Put chunks of fish on here, slowly troll along, and this thing will automatically reel in when the hooks are full. There were three of them on the boat.

We're on a boat.  The sun reflecting on the front of the boat made it difficult not to be squinty.  To our left and right are the other two jiggers.

I was pretending to operate something here-I say this loosely as I have no idea what the wheel did.  The squares underneath my feet were large containers to store fish.  In each was a large net that could be filled with fish, then easily be lifted out when it was time to empty the tanks at the processor.  The blue object on the bottom left of the photo was a giant container that holds ice to aid in keeping the catch cold.

The view looking out of the harbor.  I snapped it as we made the final approach.

This computer (I am unsure of its technical name) even shows our position in the harbor.