USS Nimitz

Yesterday was the celebration of the Golden Gate Bridge's 75th birthday.  For the celebration, the USS Nimitz made a visit.  Thus I tried to capture a picture of it going under the Golden Gate.
The weather was very hazy.  I also tried a different vantage point.  Probably a better place would have been on the San Francisco side but I was not wanting to brave the crowds.  (I also had a different birthday party that I needed to get to that I did not want to get stuck in traffic.)

If I was on the other side, I would not have been able to get this picture of the Nimitz with SF in the background.

On a side note:  This is the incredible story of an amateur photographer making history by documenting the Golden Gate Bridge construction.  This is the story of Ted Huggins.

USS Iowa departure

Very interesting couple of days.  First, the USS Iowa was suppose to leave the Bay Area to go to its new home in the LA area on the 20th.  That was cancelled because of rough weather along the coast.  (It is being towed, thus the safety of the tow vessels, doubt anything would affect the Iowa.)

Anyway, the exit was delayed until this Saturday.  It was a very nice day for pictures as it left.  Here is one taken from the Marin headlands with Alcatraz in the background.

Also a couple as it approached the Golden Gate Bridge.

And finally the Iowa going under the Gate.  Kind of sad since the Bay Area tried three times to get the Iowa here; twice in San Francisco.

USS Iowa

Interesting day, found out that the USS Iowa was pulled out of the mothball fleet and is being restored at the Port of Richmond.  I guess they have been working on it for the past couple of months with unofficial tours of the ship happening on the weekends.  Well this weekend is the last weekend that it will be at the Port of Richmond since they will be moving it to San Pedro, CA.  Read more at: USS Iowa.

This was also the first time the public was able to go inside the ship.  There was very little open and there was still a lot of scaffolding up, but the one thing that I noticed is the head room was lower then even the carriers or submarines that I have visited.  Really strange.

So here it is.  This is a shot of 3 pictures combined together.  (See the panoramic post earlier.)

I also wanted to see how well the panoramic software worked.  Here I zoomed in a bit and took more pictures.  This is a composite of 46 photos.  I still have to work on how the software works to see how to fill in the sky since I did not actually take pictures of it.  (If I did take pictures of it, there where no features for the software to line up.  But there may have been tricks to deal with that too.)

This is from the other side.  Single shot.

Now for the on deck shots.  Only a portion of the deck was open and temporary boards where in place to help walking.
Now for the sizes.  Those turret are big.

The rooms are small.  This looked like a triage room or infirmary.  The room cluster here was a small head, office desk and a small room with this room off it.  My daughter can hardly stand in the room.

Overall it was fun.  It will really be neat when more of the ship gets refurbished.  Heck the turrets above still had 'wet paint' on them.  They where just finished earlier this week.