The Greenport Boat Yard

I thought the Greenport Boat Yard would soon be a thing of the past.  I'd seen the same boats racked up into the air off their keels for years now...   rust everywhere.  The salt water and salty air hastens the demise of anything it touches requiring constant vigilance of all things metal.  The corrugated sheet metal buildings have a uniform patina.  The old steel I-Beams that formed the chassis of the original boat cradle turned the shore stones rust colored over the years.


I wasn't prepared to see new heavy-duty track emerging from the sea where the old railroad tracks had been along with a bigger new ship's cradle.  It looks as though they can pull much larger boats, 60 or more feet long, out of the sea and into dry dock for repairs to the hulls, keels, rudders and drive shafts.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Each link in the draw chain is a bit more than a foot long.

In this picture one can see the right side of the cradle with numbers inscribed in feet.  Any length of timber can be placed in the sockets as required for different hull shapes and sizes.  Near the center of the photo is a wire sculpture of an osprey, sometimes called a fish hawk.  This sculpture stands atop a steel beam that had once been part of the World Trade Center building 1.

The Mattituck

Salvage and repair yards everywhere have an unmistakable air.  I remember seeing farm implement salvage yards on my last trip to the mid-west.  I'm reminded of them when I look at this one for boats.

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Dawn Comes to Wickham's Creek

It was early and the birds hadn't yet risen to their song.   The long low rays of the sun began to appear over the ridge of Nassau Point to the east and painted golden edges on all before it.  A bit of breeze worked against an ebbing tide as a few leaves drifted by.  Let the day begin.  The stage is set... Act I.

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And from a drive last week that took us through Aquebogue, a photo of a mobile home.

A Fine Saturday - March 20, 2010 - Spring

 -- and then one dawn the sky is clear and blue forever...  the sun is not just light but warmth.  The snow drops hang their white blossoms as if a little ashamed of their precious beauty.


As our hemisphere comes out of it's hibernation in the timelessness of it all, what is the number of this some billionth Spring that is today?   I wouldn't have wanted to miss this one.   Happy Spring, Judy, and all my friends out there.

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Evening comes to the Mattituck Inlet

A low sun sets whelk shards aglow

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First Picnic of the Year

We stopped at a Sound Beach in East Marion.  The sky was so clear and blue.  The sun seemed to pick out every pebble and stone and gave each one it's own place.  Across the road on Oyster Ponds the little boat house and crab shack seemed to have settled more than we'd remembered while on the calm Sound gulls gathered by the dozens in a Saturday flotilla.  Before long an SUV pulled up near us.  A mother and her five kids got out, opened up the back and pulled out everything they'd need for a picnic on the beach.  It was still cold, in the very low 40s and there was some wind to add to the chill but none of that dampened their spirits.  The picnic basket was opened and they got right to it hunkered down in a bit of low place.  Soon done they chased each other around laughing for a few minutes then loaded it back in and were gone just like that.  What a wonderful way for them to make a memory of March 6, 2010.

The Quiet of Winter

 

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 All is still.  Now and then a fresh breath of wind... here, then gone again.  The call of a distant gull, the whisper of a wavelet reaching the sand is heightened by the surrounding silence.  Peace, perfect peace.

 

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