Tall Ships Festival - 8.28.10 - Post 5 (Showing You the Ropes)

Okay, so I have this post and one more about the ships themselves and then one or two posts of the fireworks I took on the north side of the Pier. Overall, I took roughly 15 gigs of pictures.  Which, according to some quick math, turned out to be about 1200 pictures.  Now, this isn't *wholly* accurate because when I'm shooting in Av or Tv I'm getting both RAW and .JPG files, so when I add the number of files in the folders, I get 1200 but some of them are duplicates.  But lets say that even half are original images.  That's 600 pictures.  For those of us who are old enough to remember when film was our only option, can you imagine the cost of shooting and developing 600 shots for one day?  I really do believe that digital photography is the best invention of the last 100 years (regular photography being invented in the 100 years before that).  Not to mention the control you get from one shot to the next. When I was above decks I could shoot in ISOs of 100 and 200.  When I went below and it got quite dark, I pushed a button and was in 800.  Not an option when you're shooting with film.

So anyway... on with the show.  I was struck by the ubiquitousness of rope on a ship.  It's *everywhere*, and there's tons and tons of it and there are so many different kinds.  I think that anyone who doesn't work a Tall Ship for a living thinks of rope as a general 'one size fits all' thing. 

Not so much with that...

Lake Michigan through the Ropes

Thick black ropes hold up the ladder, thinner black ropes are the rungs.  Gray ropes cross and hang from the ladder.

All the Rope in the World

This was downstairs on the Bounty - yes the one used to film "Mutiny on the Bounty" back in the sixties.  Again, I was struck by all the different kinds and colors of ropes.

So Where Does This Rope Go?

I am honestly amazed that any one person can learn what all these different halyards do.  That they can unknot the one right rope to whatever job it is they need to do and fasten it off again when they've got where they want it, seems a little superhuman to me.

View Through the Ship

There's even rope on the outside.  I was shooting through an oar port (Can you imagine rowing a ship with a mast like the one in the shot above?) and there was a rope going across it. 

Ropes: Coiled and Bundled

Thick and thin ropes coiled and ready for use. 

Bounty's Bell

Even when there weren't ropes right in the shot, there were rope shadows, like these on both the bell and the housing.  (And technically there's ropes in the shot too... holding up the bell.)









Okay, I have one more post about things I found pretty interesting about the ships and shipboard life, then the fireworks and I'll finally have gotten done with this one outing. (Aren't you glad I didn't subject you to even half of those 600 images? :)