Boat Ride

We 'won' some tickets for a boat ride in the school silent auction (won in the sense that we paid $20 for them, which was more than anyone else was willing to pay) but they would have cost $30 if we'd paid with cold hard cash, so in one sense of the word bargain, they were a bargain.

The ride was on the Ocean Racer, in Redondo Beach. Last time we went to Redondo Beach the Ocean Racer wasn't racing, it was going very slowly, with black smoke coming out of its exhausts. But this time it seemed to be at least moving without creating excessive pollution.

While we were racing on the ocean, we saw things like dolphins and seals and pelicans diving in the water and stuff. When we saw dolphins and seals everyone did everything they could to take photos of dolphins (particularly dolphins) and seals. They didn't try to watch the dolphins and seals, they just tried to take photos to show that they'd watched the dolphins and seals. I was exactly the same, but at least I thought about it more than they did. (I like to think).

Photographing dolphins that are jumping out of the water is kind of tricky. Mostly because if you wait for a dolphin to jump out of the water and then try to take a photo, it's usually back in the water. So you need to take photos of where dolphins might be, and hope that they are, when the crappy digital camera that you have actually gets around to taking the photo. I have 119 shots of splashes and waves and things that might be dolphins' noses, or might be shadows. And one photo of jumping dolphins, which is here:


No one bothers to take photos of pelicans. We were pretty blase about pelicans.