Schooner or later*

Today was the Parade of Ships at Gloucester, part of the big Schooner Festival. D. and I went, arriving early so as not to miss the flotilla in action.

Lovely.

Sadly, the weather was not lovely: Overcast skies and and a high-humidity opacity to the air made photography problematic. I shot 99 photos -- D. took something like 120 -- and very few pleased me.

But the ships were great.

That's the old Tarr & Wonson Paint Factory (a local landmark) on the opposite shore left

The best of my pictures responded to the black & white treatment. I like this one, as it doesn't really look so much like 2011.

But the organizers put a bit of a damper on the picture-taking fun by not banning powerboats while the schooners were sailing around the bay. I deleted a lot of images simply because, for me, seeing those modern fiberglass lumps amid the sailing craft just felt wrong.

Yes, I did have little mental flashes of zipping through the ships with a WWII PT boat, all three big Packard V12 engines at full cry, but that's just me. Can't afford a PT boat anyway. And torpedoes are too expensive to fire off just for laughs....

A very enjoyable Sunday morning. I got to see -- and photograph -- some neat ships, came back with a handful of good photos, and D. came back with some better shots, one of which can only be called capital-A Art.

* Those who also read D.'s blog will notice she used the same title. I howled in outrageous outrage when I saw it, whining that I was going to use that title. It's a case of great minds thinking alike, as both of us left the event thinking of using it. Hmpf....