Sunday Stills challenge theme this week and next week is ‘Your 2023 Year-in-Review.’ See more responses here. As before, I’m going with a favorite photo from each month of 2023, with a caption and link to the post the photo first appeared in. This week, I’m posting favorites from January through June. See the rest of the year next week.
A sailboat glides over the water off the North Kohala coast, an image that doesn’t look much different in color.
Recently, these two yachts were anchored off Mauna Kea Resort. I couldn’t make out the name of the blue boat but the other one is the Anawa, a Dutch built superyacht owned by a Brazilian billionaire. I confess my first thought on seeing this yacht was that it might be the ugliest boat I’d ever seen. Perhaps it was the angle. Perhaps not.
A sailboat heads down Alenuihāhā Channel, between the Big Island and Maui.
Back in May, I saw this orange boat a fair distance from shore, off the South Kohala coast. I knew it wouldn’t be a good photo, but I thought I’d be able to identify what it was from it. I was mistaken. I did some searching but turned up nothing. I put it to the side and kind of forgot about it.
Then, late last month, I was on the BBC website and there was a photo of a craft so similar, it had to be connected. The article (here) was about how seafaring drones are being used to collect data to help scientists figure out why some hurricanes become so dangerous, so fast. These drones operate without crew and are equipped to gather data from both the ocean and the atmosphere.
The company making the drones is called Saildrone, and I emailed them to ask about what the vessel I’d seen was up to. I received an unbelievably prompt response saying that the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa was using three drones around the state to collect information about climate change and ocean acidification and its effect on the health of the waters around Hawaii (here). It was also pointed out that since the drones carry no cargo or crew they are more properly called vehicles rather than vessels!
I saw this ship moored in Kawaihae Harbor recently. It looked unlike anything I’d seen there before, so I stopped by to take a look. I found the ship’s name on the stern, between the twin hulls.
According to Wikipedia, the City of Bismark is a Spearhead-class expeditionary fast transport, operated by the United States Navy’s Military Sealift Command. It was built in 2017 and entered service at the end of that year. Ironically, when I first saw the ship, I thought it looked a bit beaten up and wondered if it was an older ship that someone had bought and was planning on fixing up!
A tug and barge enter Kawaihae Harbor around sunrise.
An old anchor fluke, that has been in the ocean well over a hundred years.
Graham's Island 