I live for my first time experiences and had a good one last week. Better yet, it involved a boat.
Having grown up in oil camps in arid west Texas, i had very little experience with boats in my youth other than a handful of brief excursions on pleasure boats while vacationing with my parents. So it was quite an adventure for me when i crossed the Atlantic on a troop ship in 1964 although it was a placid voyage owing to the absence of Viet Cong U-boats harrowing the waters.
And even though i’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past forty years, i’ve been on boats on only a handful of occasions. I’ve taken the ferries to Angel Island, Tiburon, Sausalito, and Alcatraz twice each. I’ve given my mother and Rina bay cruises. I’ve been on two memorial services on yachts in the bay. But i’d never been to a wedding on water.
Enter Jeff and Hemn, who decided to tie the knot in a fascinating fashion and invited me to participate. Jeff’s quite an organizer, and he came up with an excellent way to make his marriage memorable.
He booked a dinner cruise on the Hornblower for a table of nine and then, between the entrees and the dessert, we went out on the deck for a brief ceremony conducted by his nephew, a US Coast Guard officer. Well, yes, we all knew that naval officers can conduct funerals, but they can also conduct weddings, and this one went off splendidly.
None of my photos of the ceremony came out well owing to a combination of darkness, the pitching boat, and my failure to elbow my way into a good vantage and shout for everyone to look at the camera, but at least here’s a shot of the two grooms at the table.
Although i got no good wedding shots, i did manage to shoot some bay icons. Like Alcatraz, which i stuck in at the end of the previous post. And the new east end of the Bay Bridge.
And although i’d sworn i’d never post a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge, it having been photographed to death by 1955, i’d never expected to get a shot of it from a boat at night.
And we know how i like detail shots.
