More Around Patos Island

Laura Domela — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 21:06:37 +0000

We took the quadcopter and hiked out to the lighthouse on Alden Point for some more fun aerial footage.

Oh hey seals!

In this photo, there's one seal looking straight up at the copter. You might have to click for an enlargement, but it's pretty cute.

Another cove-side campsite (Patos Island is a Washington State Park):

The remains of an old car or truck, beside the trail out to the lighthouse:

Kind of funny to have a car on a very small island where there are most definitely no roads.

Hey! The new mooring buoys match the boat's paint job:

Earlier today Kevin did his first from-the-boat launch and it went great! Can't wait to see the footage he got out here!

Taking off from Airship's top deck:

Smooth, successful top-deck landing:

Sunset looking out of the cove:

How to Replace a Mooring Buoy

Laura Domela — Tue, 02 Dec 2014 17:19:36 +0000

This morning as we were working and having coffee, I noticed out the back window what looked like a pretty big boat heading toward the cove. This is a pretty small cove (only two mooring buoys), and this boat seemed, um, large. It showed up on AIS as a vessel called Thunderbird, and it was designated a pleasure craft. I don't think so. Pretty soon the bow of the boat dropped, drawbridge-style, and we could see that it was filled with mooring buoys.

Ah! Time to replace the mooring buoys in Active Cove.

A couple of guys were soon suiting up in what looked like wetsuits and then drysuits (because, you know, it's like 30something degrees out there). They got in the water and went down and hooked the crane line onto the concrete block on the bottom.

Divers in the water:

Succesfully hooked the line, divers back on deck:

Pulling up the old buoy (and a bunch of kelp):

And here's the new (larger) concrete weight heading down to the bottom. They have some other corkscrew anchoring things, but they said they don't work in all this rock out here, so they use big concrete blocks to anchor the buoys:

And there ya go! Shiny new mooring buoy:

It was our turn next, so we moved over to the new buoy for a little bit while we watched them replace ours. Pretty cool to see the whole operation!

Thunderbird (not a pleasure craft, unless you REALLY like replacing mooring buoys):

See ya later guys. Thanks for the morning entertainment:

Washington State Marine Park – Riveted

More Around Patos Island

How to Replace a Mooring Buoy