Infrastructure

Infrastructure.

 ... cranes on the dock ...

Mary has a name for what I keep looking at.

She claims that you have to be a bit nerdy to be interested in it.

But on the sail into a port and the sail out of a port, I find myself standing by the rail and watching all of these cranes.

And just typing that now that reminds me that in Toulon, they claim that they do an incredible amount of shipping and have the most containers for a European port.

more cranes on the dock

And that may well be true, for we saw containers long after we could no longer see the sea.

And these are the same containers that we see pass by us at the lake ... all with COSCO written on the side: China Over Seas Company.

There are certain rules of the sea, and one is that a pilot boat takes us in and out of the harbour.

The boat snuggles right up to our boat, and then when it is too close for me to see, the pilot hops from his boat to ours.

... one of many pilot boats ...

At one of the on-board ship lectures, the captain assured his passengers that he can do manoeurve the boat on his own, but old sea rules are in place.

Now the piloting mostly involves the exchange of some cigarettes and the transfer of a baseball hat or two.

Lots of lovely hours were spent on the balcony.

I slept out there for a few hours one afternoon and well into the evening.

... the evening comes and the light changes over the water ...

The sun would go down and all I could see was the pink of the sky and the incredible blues of the water.

A cruise.

An adventure I never dreamed I would have.