Harbor Island

Thursday's brief field trip to Jack Block Park inspired me to come back on a weekend with more time and a boat. Of course, the sunshine and the unpleasant prospect of having to deal with the moss on the roof were also inspiration to get out.

I launched at Seacrest Park, in the midst of a crowd of hundreds of bicyclists/kayakers racing in the "Oyster Urban Adventure Race" and dozens of scuba divers.

Harbor Island and the lower Duwamish River can be a little intimidating from water level. The cranes are tall and the container ships are huge. But it's a neat landscape and one that being in a small boat helps you appreciate. You just have to pay attention.

I watched the low-level West Seattle Bridge open - from underneath - it's a cool modernist variation on a swing bridge. It's the one they built to replace the one the ship crashed into in the 1980s.

Outside the protected channels of the Duwamish the water was choppy from today's north breeze, so I didn't try to take the camera out in front of Todd Shipyard where that big military radar dome is in for repairs (photo in previous post, if not this one). Apparently it normally sits somewhere in the Aleutians, watching for stray aircraft and missiles from Asia. There were a couple security boats keeping an eye on me - I hope they kept the safeties on.