Two week summer cruise

[Henk]

This time of year (and for the next six months) here on the west coast of British Columbia it rains and rains and rains and rains and ... But it's not always like that. The summer months are quite nice thank you very much and just to prove it here is a video of our two week cruise around the Southern Gulf Islands. OK, we did have some rain but most days were beautiful. Gorgeous sunsets, lots of safe and quite anchorages and the bio-luminescence was in one word spectacular. A million stars in the sky and a million green specks of light in the water. One night I'm coiling a line that fell in the water when I thought I'd better sit down; I'm seeing stars, must be light headed. Then I realize all the 'stars' I'm seeing before my eyes are the bio-luminescence on the rope. Even my hands were twinkling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvRt2cHsryc

[galleywench]

Looks like a great time, and your Islander is in great shape. I haven't seen too many of them that still look that great.

[Rachel]

Looks like a great time, and your Islander is in great shape. I haven't seen too many of them that still look that great.

It's actually not quite "still" looking that great, as it's the result of a huge amount of work, vision, and and perseverance on Henk's part.

It's uplifting to see one that was saved so nicely :)

(galleywench, I realize that you didn't necessarily mean the "still" exactly, but I just had to give a cheer for Henk's nice re-build.)

Rachel

[Henk]

Thanks and I am still very happy how it turned out. Now I find the trick is to keep her looking just as nice. (which is not easy.) As you all know, salt water and UV is a terrible combination.
Now that the weather turned cold and damp we no longer go out for a weekend but I just day sail. And just go to the marina for fun.
Just fiddling around, cleaning, checking, repairing and upgrading. And so I bring the camera along for a few pictures. I've been getting artistic lately and here's a good example of that.
Cool eh? Nobody's up the mast, I taped the camera to a halyard, hoisted it up and used the self-timer option to take the picture. Turned out pretty good. Even made a video going up and down. Great stuff!

Buoyed by this success I decided to take this fancy camera work one step further... I would now take pictures of the underwater body of our yacht. But the camera is not waterproof so I, in my infinite wisdom, concluded after long thinking that a 'ziplock' bag would work... I proceeded to place the camera into the bag, tape the bag to a long stick, press the video record button and submerged the whole contraption. Waving the stick back and forth where I thought the propeller would be, I expected to get some awesome shots. What I got was a camera full of water! The idea was sound but the bag was not. So really it was the bags fault. Bad Bag. Bad bag! When I sheepishly told my wife what happened she just shook her head. Nothing surprises her anymore. Know any good camera deals out there?

[Rachel]

I like the "camera up a halyard" shot - great idea!

The Zip-loc bag.... well, that one makes a great story ;)

I bought a (used, on eBay) Canon A630 last winter, after doing some research, and I love it as a boat/work camera. The feature that made me choose it was the articulating screen. A friend had an A620 with that feature, I tried it, and it was love at first awkward-made-easy shot.

A couple of examples of times I love the articulating screen:

1) Getting a photo of an engine serial number, or some other place that is generally inaccessible -- I can turn the screen so that it is easy for me to see, while the camera is in some really hard to reach nook or cranny.

2) Taking photos of people. I'm seemingly minding my own business, off in another direction looking at my camera's screen, when in reality I'm taking a photo of someone who's out of my line of vision. :cackle:



Two other features that I happen to really like are that it has a viewfinder, and that it takes AA batteries.

I bought it used because I wasn't sure how I would like having a "big" camera (not that it's really big - it's considerably smaller than the typical SLR - but it's not one of these super-slim pocket sized ones). When I bought mine, it was around $150 for one that was used but virtually new, in original box, etc. - I imagine they are cheaper now.

I also thought about one of the really small cameras, or one of the newer, relatively inexpensive waterproof cameras, but in the end I decided I really wanted to try the articulating screen, and I do really like it.

There is also an A640 which is basically the same camera, but with another megapixel or two, and also with some fancier video function (if I remember correctly). It's also black instead of silver. And there is an A650IS, which has a stabilization feature. These all have the viewfinder, articulating screen, and AA batts.

Looking forward to some more "artsy" shots............ when you get a new camera.......

[Clint]

2) Taking photos of people. I'm seemingly minding my own business, off in another direction looking at my camera's screen, when in reality I'm taking a photo of someone who's out of my line of vision. :cackle:

I have needed a camera to do this SOOOO many times but I thought that would be against the law somehow. Like this weekend I so wanted a video camera to videotape these 2 guys that took 3 hours to get an anchor to set because they only had 15' of rode out in 10' of water.

lol