1976 - Sailing on Fine Feather and Antares

Deadly serious...  My first time at the helm of any boat.
Captain John keeping an eye on things.
Yacht Fine Feather, U.S. Virgin Islands

Ed brought his sextant on Fine Feather, to practice taking sun sights.
Here he is, calculating our position.  Of course, I could have told him
where we were.  That's Peter Island in the background.

Antares, a 90 ft. schooner from South Africa.  While staying on Fine Feather, the crew took us for a day sail on Antares.

Ed sitting out on the bowsprit (Virgin Islands)

Looking forward along the deck

Me, sitting with a young crew member

I wasn't going out on the bowsprit, so I passed the camera to Ed to get this picture

Campus Reflections

I worked at Carteret Community College from 1996 through this past January, when I retired. It's a beautiful campus, right on the water, and I still enjoy going there for evening walks. As the sun sets in the west, the light is often reflected in the windows of some of the buildings. The building in the picture above is the Wayne West Building. Please note the windows at this end of the building. This next photo was the one I took, at sunset, right before the battery in my camera died, and picture came out so dark, I figured it was a loss.

But when I worked with it in Photoshop, and applied "auto levels" I was surprised to see this color pop out:

I cropped the image and played with it a bit more and here's the final result:

While that looks like a moon or sun in the picture, it's actually a light in the stairwell that shows from the inside of the building! (You can see the light in the picture of the building at the top of this post.)

What had originally gotten me going in this direction was the following picture I took on one of my walks of a rather spectacular sunset:

The building is the Center for Marine Sciences and Technology, and the windows are located on the right in the picture:

I took the sunset window and cropped and widened the image.

I loved the way this came out! And do you think I could resist popping Antares into this picture?? Not a chance! Here she be:

If you're new to my blog and to Antares, and would like to see the earlier posts, here they are: first, second, and third post. Happy sailing!

Antares Revisited

In a previous post I wrote about the yacht, Antares, and created a picture in Photoshop using a photograph we'd taken of Antares.

I carry notecards and ACEOs in my two Etsy shops (Uncommon Cloth and Paper Press), and I wanted to make use of this image. Unfortunately, I'd done an 8"x10" picture, and the proportions didn't work right for either the notecard or the ACEO. Back to the drawing board.... My new image ended up being horizontal in orientation rather than vertical. Actually, I like it even better than the first image!

I've used "Silver Sail" for both a notecard and an ACEO.

Then I decided to use Antares' silhouette with a different sunset.

This one turned out "vertical" rather than "horizontal." While the reflection in the water looks anything but real, I liked the look of image, especially the rich colors.

I named this image "Antares Sunset" and again used it in both a notecard and an ACEO. If you click on any of those links, you'll see that I show the original picture of Antares, as well as the sunsets that I used.

Etsy is an online site for selling all things handmade and vintage. If you've never heard of Etsy, and are interested, here's a link to their main page.