Dock Lines...

The Shuttle flies again. This is great news and my prayers go with the crew as they conduct their mission in space.

I thought I’d share with you some of the things I encounter from time to time in my job as a Dock Master. I have some pictures of the United States Sailing Junior Olympics to show, but I’ll save them for another post.

More often than one might think, large pieces of debris end up in the marinas around here. This debris can take many forms from little pieces of garbage carelessly tossed in the water to big objects that have the potential to be deadly if struck by a boat out in the waterway.

Recently one of the big, deadly types of debris found it’s way into my small domain. As is so often the case, I did not see this large piling float into the marina. No, I came into work one morning only to find that someone had pulled this out of the water and deposited it on my docks for me to have to deal with.

Now, what amazes me about all of this is that these large objects get pulled up out of the river in the dead of night and put ON the dock. Trying to get rid of this stuff takes two, three, even four men sometimes to move it off of my docks. How do they get it up and out of the water in the middle of the night with no one around to help them? If you ever see any of these midnight debris movers, watch out, they must be huge!

So, I have put together a collage of what happens to this stuff when I find it. I’m the one in the hat just like in the picture in the "About Me" section of this journal.