The Waiting Goes On . . .Patience is a Virtue

There has been some local progress with the hatching of new chicks.  On the roof of the shed across the pier head from the ship we saw a new chick walking around. One of the parents sits patiently by the nest to protect the chick from marauding visitors.

One chick walking around the nest on the roof of the shed next to the ship.

Claudia and Charles are getting impatient and testy.  When I stopped by the other day she about snapped my head off when I made a little joke about speeding up the hatching process.  She also has been very secretive about just how many eggs are in the nest.  Maybe it has been so long that she has forgotten.

The Last Battleship

This is the first trip of the year for the ship and we are going to be cruising around in the Bay looking for another ship.  It seems that an old Battleship has been fixed up and is going to be towed south down the coast to become a museum.

Things are looking up in terms of food, however, since we seem to have lots of people on board and it looks as though there is going to be a lunch served or something.

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream coming on board

This is pallet is loaded with ice cream. What are they thinking?  Gulls don’t eat ice cream!  Maybe there will be some bread or fish somewhere.

Well, it turns out that we left the pier after waiting for a bunch of sailboats to pass by on their way out toward the Golden Gate Bridge.  We fastened onto a tiny tugboat and they pulled us away from the pier and we headed north past the islands in the Bay.  We cruised around for quite a while until we found this narrow channel near a bunch of big round tanks.

Farewell Drydock Eureka

This is the control room on the upper deck of the drydock. There are numerous compartments in the bottom of the facility that allows selective flooding to 'trim' the ship as it is being lowered into the water.

After more than a month in drydock we are back home at Pier 45, and I am glad of it.  The people at the drydock were very friendly, but the pickings were poor in terms of food sitting around.  Pier 45 at Fisherman’s Wharf is such a gold mine in terms of stuff to scavenge that nothing else holds a candle to that spot.

When it came time for the ship to leave I was sitting on the rail up near the control room and heard the yellow suit guys talking.  They said that they were going to ‘pull the plug’ and flood the dock.  I have to tell you I was nervous because I had seen the big holes they cut in the side of the ship and I wasn’t sure it was going to float!  This ship is my safety net in terms of food and I am not happy about anything that puts that at risk.

The drydock is a big open kind of ship and it has no front or back or roof and big side walls.  It looks old, but it does do the job of getting the ship out of the water.