I have a thing about workboats. Whenever we're
near the ocean, I like to prowl the local harbor with a camera. Workboats are one of my favorite photographic subjects, whether they’re
pangas hauled out on a beach or trawlers tied to a dock. As a kid, I learned to paddle a canoe and row a dinghy on the
Delaware River in northern New Jersey. When I was a teenager, our family
vacationed on Lake Ontario where my father and I fished out of an aluminum
skiff with a small outboard motor, which he taught me to operate and let me run
it into town by myself. As a marine scientist, I worked on commercial fishing
boats and research ships from dories and seine skiffs to coastal and offshore oceanographic
vessels. While we lived in southern California, I co-owned a 24-ft Skipjack
with two diving buddies; we took it to the Channel Islands most weekends from May to October to hunt white seabass and yellowtail. Now I’m relegated to a sit-on-top
kayak that I carry on the roof of the truck. Maybe, when
we’re settled, there will be a bigger boat in my future.
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| Cruising yacht in Point Hudson Marina, Port Townsend, Washington |
