Sunday, September 14, 2014

Sail-a-bration!

So for a number of reasons I haven't been riding at all lately, other than schlepping around on the Linus.   But today I took a break for about an hour and got out for a quick spin around the Inner Harbor.  This weekend is the Sail-a-bration which is the 200 year anniversary celebration of the end of the War of 1812.   As you may or may not know, the National Anthem was written Francis Scott Key while watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry.   So to commemorate the occasion there was an airshow, lots of visiting ships both modern and tall ships, and lots of stuff happening around the Inner Harbor.   You may recall I got some pics of the ships 2 years ago when the celebration started.

At any rate, the Blue Angels were practicing for today's airshow yesterday, they were flying right over the house, so I went up on the deck to watch a little.






They were hauling around, and couldn't have been much more than 300' overhead most times.

So today's ride, I went around to see what I could see, in Fells Point I spotted this ship across the harbor, if I am not mistaken that is the FGS Niedersachsen.


Then at the Fells Point public pier was a representative of the Royal Navy, The HMS Argyll.   It's been like Fleet Week in Fells Point all weekend, lots of sailors out having a good time.


This is one of the several schooners that were in the harbor for the event coming in from a sail.


This huge catamaran ship was parked next to Pier 5, it's the USNS Choctaw County.


Here is a size reference, that is the USCG Taney in the foreground, it's utterly dwarfed by the other ship.


Down in the Inner Harbor proper there were these three tied up, from nearest to farthest they are The Gazela, the USCG Eagle, and the Kalmar Nyckel.





Across the way were another pair of schooners.


More of the three, I love the contrast of the old ships and the modern downtown behind them.


This is the Pride of Baltimore (sideways to me) and the USS Constellation which lives here all the time.


This is the NOAA Okaenos Explorer with the Choctaw County just astern of it.


The Navy had ships down at the commercial piers in Locust Point, but this was about as close as I could get with my bike.




Then it was back to the house to clean up and get back to work.   If you are interested there is a map of the Inner Harbor with all of the ship locations on it here.