Fleet Week Cruise with the Scouts

A couple of weeks back I spent a day out on the Bay with the Petaluma Sea Scouts.  I meant to post pictures and do a brief writeup, but it got lost in the mix of the past few weeks craziness.  So without further ado, here's some pictures.


First off, it was a gorgeous day to be out on the bay.  Here's a shot as the ship was approaching Angel Island:



Since we arrived with some time to kill before the air show started, the Skipper decided to take a quick jaunt out through the gate and into the Pacific.  Along the way, we passed this pretty little cutter:

I've been regularly tempted to have my next suit of sails made in that dark red color (called "tanbark").

Here's a shot of the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge as we left it astern:



Once we were back in the bay, we wedged the ship into the rest of the crowd of boats:



Not long after that, the air show started:



The best part was the low-level flyovers:



Then there was formation flying:



And of course, low-level flyovers in formation:



Much of the event was sponsored by United Airlines, so at some point in the airshow one of their airliners did a low pass over the bay:
I really was hoping that it would do something more interesting than just flying over, but I guess that wouldn't go over well with the passengers on board:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the fasten seat belt light, please return to your seats and hold on tight, we're about to do a barrel roll."

They also did some low-level flyovers:

(Note: I got some good pictures of the crew watching the show and some good pictures of the aircraft flying over.  The above photo is a photoshop amalgamation of two of them.)


Here's one of my better shots of the six plane formation:


And here's one of my better shots of the crew sitting on top of the pilothouse watching the show:



When it was all over, we headed back up the river to Petaluma.  Along the way I spent some time trying to capture a decent picture of the moonset.  Here's the best I came up with:


Not terrible considering the fact that it was shot in nearly no light from the deck of a moving boat.

So that's that.

Stay tuned for further adventures...

  .Once the passenger jet was out of the area the Navy's Flight Demonstration Squadron, aka the Blue Angels, arrived: