A Love Of Boats

Living on the coast of British Columbia means that a lot of our Sunday outings involve water. This summer, a bountiful salmon run led us several times to the pier at Steveston, where freshly-caught Sockeye were plentiful and relatively inexpensive.

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My husband and I love boats, but do not get out on them as often as we would like. We spent a lovely half-hour checking out this old sailboat advertised for sale. We pictured ourselves restoring it to glory, and running away from home to sail the world. Then we remembered that we spend more time out exploring than tending to chores, and the boat would look the same in ten years as it does now!

As well as being drawn to derelict buildings, ruined boats also pull us in. I photographed these old fish boats in Richmond's Finn Slough.

The listing Mermaid III, in the same slough, seems not to have moved for a very long time.

As a route from our outlying suburb into the centre of Vancouver, an alternate to the highway is River Road that follows the Fraser River for a considerable stretch. It is home to sawmills, log booms and wooden docks, some of which have been ravaged by time and reduced to skeletons of their former selves.

And of course there are boats, most still plying their trade up and down the river, and others like this beauty, abandoned and left vulnerable to the ravages of time.
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I caught only a glimpse of her through the trees as we drove past. A quick turnaround and we clambered down to the muddy shore to snatch a few photos. It is small detours like this that make it almost impossible for my husband and I to go directly from A to B.

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On another day, and another stretch of the Fraser River, we came across this wonderfully rusted barge. His size and upright stance imbue him with a sense of majesty as he seems to point upward to the Skybridge and the Patullo Bridge in the background that take people across the river from Surrey to New Westminster.

It is true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and these boats are indeed beautiful to me...

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I'm linking this post to Watery Wednesday! For more photos that are damp, doused and drenched check out the link below!

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http://waterywednesday.blogspot.com/

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