OpSail is underway in New York for the next week. I love boats and planes so I had to check it out.
I persuaded Mr. Weebles to play hooky with me yesterday morning so we could watch the Parade of Sail, which featured sailing ships and military ships from around the world. There was also a military flyover by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels, a C-130 cargo plane, a pair of Osprey helicopters, an AWACS plane, and a few others I can’t recall at the moment. It was pretty cool. I was hoping there would be more planes and more ships but I’ll take what I can get.
I took a lot of photos—we were on a boat on the Hudson so we had a great view of everything. I thought I would share some of the highlights with you. Some of the images aren’t as clear as I would have liked, but between the bizarre weather and my digital camera, there was only so much that could be done. Each image has hovertext info, and you can click on each thumbnail to see a full-size photo. Enjoy!
Really great, I love new york.
Maggie, my WP is telling me that your blog no longer exists. Are they messing with me???
yes they are, I’m working on a blog right now but the rest should be there.
Okay, I figured out why. I was mysteriously getting routed to the older version of your blog name with the “onthewayto47″ in there. Phew.
Phew!
I was up there was 1976, Bicentennial. We went to the Ft Hamilton restoration under the Verrazano Bridge. Was up there again in 1985 and went to Tavern on the Green. I pretended I was a D’Agostino from the D’Agostino grocery stores and they treated us like I was the king of the world. I was born Pt Richmond, Staten Island in 1949 but have been in Miami since I was 5 years old.
I guess I never even thought about there being an actual D’Agostino from the supermarket chain but I suppose there must have been one at some point. Good ruse!
Wow! nice photographs!
Thanks!!
I think that weather combined with the subject matter give the pictures an old, eerie feel. Maybe it’s because I just got done reading Mrs. Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and it uses old, strange, almost creepy, photos to tell a story, that I think that about your photos. Nonetheless, I like the pictures and the way they turned out.
Thanks Adrienne! I do like the creep factor of them, the weather definitely helped there. Meanwhile I’ve heard about that book, but now it sounds like I may have to read it.
SCHWING! Love these! Especially good to see the Osprey Tilt-Rotor in the air. They have that pesky habit of falling out of the sky unexpectedly…
I hate it when helicopters do that, don’t you? Yeah, military aircraft and ships are pretty much as good as porn for me.
i am still trying to figure out how to have sex with an SR-71 blackbird. the folks here at the museum are on to me, however…
LOLOLOLOL That’s one of my favorite planes!! “sr71″ is actually part of my email address, I love it so much. You’re going to have to find a way to sneak into the museum after hours for sexy time.
come visit me. we can break in after hours. those two big ol’ engines ain’t gonna do themselves….
I you.
It is fleet week already. Thanks for the pics. We want to get into the city and see these. Have you been to the Intrepid? Great pics and post, MW.
A lot of these ships are docked in Brooklyn and Staten Island for the weekend–so you can see a lot of stuff without dealing with the crowds in the city if you don’t want to! I’ve been to the Intrepid several times but not in a while. However, when the space shuttle arrives I’ll definitely be paying a visit!
My husband is in the Navy. When he first started, he got angry at me for calling them boats. “They’re SHIPS,” he would rather irritatedly repeat. After ten years, now he calls them boats too. Also, he was a Navy helicopter pilot for a long time, but he didn’t fly Ospreys. Look! I know things! I feel smart.
Ha! Yes, I can imagine that Navy guys can be somewhat sensitive about that sort of thing. But sometimes I guess it’s just easier to call them all boats as a catchall thing. And that’s really cool that your husband was a helicopter pilot. Sexy!
What a fine day! And great pictures. Some of the pictures with the sails look like paintings.
It was a very fine day. Thanks SCB!!
Cool photos. Nice to be able to combine boats and aircraft into one show. I wonder why no one has thought of that here in the middle to Texas? Thanks for sharing.
Cheers!
Maybe they could dig some sort of canal from the Gulf for the occasion. That would be nice.
Might help with the job situation, too!
awesome! let’s go fly a kite!
Kites and Beggin’ Strips for everyone!
Great ship shots! My tongue would probably end up flapping wildly outside my pie-hole if I tried to say that aloud. I dig ships more than planes, but those were very cool shots, too. You have a good eye, Madame W!
Well thanks, lady! “Great ship shots” would be a good tongue twister–I’d probably spit all over the place. I dig planes more than ships, but I’ll take them both!
Well, we all have a little Daffy Duck within (keeping things aquatic with that great American mallard).
Very very true.
I LOVE those tall ships. When I lived in Boston in the late 70s I got to go down to Newport to a boat show and the trials for the Americas Cup were going on. I remember standing on the cliff above the harbor as The Eagle sailed in while one of the 12 meters was sailing out for a practice run (might have been America 2). What was amazing was the mast on the 12 meter was almost as tall as those on The Eagle. Great pics. Thanks so much for sharing!
That must have been something! I would have loved to have seen that, the Eagle plus the America’s Cup trials. Good good stuff!!
It was! Those were the days when Ted Turner and Dennis Conner were duking it out for the right to defend the Cup. Very exciting! And I still love the beauty and sleekness of the 12 Meter boats.
I remember those days. And yes, those boats are beauties.
Wow, that looks so cool! So far I’ve only made it to New York the one time but I just love it! thanks for sharing the photos
And thank you for visiting and viewing! And you have the coolest blog name ever. I’m going to be spending a lot of time there, I think.
Beautiful blog I like it .
Thank you so much for visiting!
I love that so many Navies keep up the tradition of having tall ships as training vessels. I learnt to sail on a 60ft steel ketch in the North Sea off the Moray coast; loved sail and sailing ships ever since. Great pictures!
I love that too. Apparently they do it because it helps sailors get in touch with sailing and the sea in a way that they wouldn’t get from training on modern ships alone. It’s a great tradition.
Love these!
The thing about C-130′s is that… well… they’re so TINY! I don’t know how they manage to fit ANYTHING in those things!
They really are small planes, relatively speaking, aren’t they? But they can carry an awful lot of weight for their size, and they’re workhorses. I just wish I had been able to get a better photo of it as it was passing me.
There is nothing better than a perfect formation of jets. Thanks for letting us experience it through you!
My pleasure. This stuff really is like porn to me. If I smoked, I’d have needed a cigarette after watching that flyover.
Hahahahaha! Love it.