Boston Harbor

As a complete landlubber, the thing that amazes me about outer Boston Harbor on a nice warm day is how crowded it seems. There are tugs and dredges and freighters and ferries and sometimes even a giant cruise ship, all somehow making their way around without crushing any of the sailboats and other small pleasure craft bobbing and tacking and just sitting there.

Oh, and whales! RDA was out on the Harbor this weekend, too, only got to see a whale, in addition to the Boston skyline and boats and docks.

Looking toward the Great Blue Hill (I think; somebody please correct me if I'm wrong) through a tunnel out of Fort Warren on Georges Island.

The fort is great for such framed views, given that it has zillions of slits and holes for cannons, guns and binoculars:

Maria Varmazis glides past a Boston Harbor buoy.

Massmoga photographs the little used bridge to Long Island in Boston Harbor.

No word if it's named Layla, though.

Greg MacKay takes a walk along the waterfront.

Rob Bellinger got some interesting shots as his plane approached Logan.

Boston 1775 begins the saga of Revolutionary War skirmishes over Boston Light, the lighthouse that basically controlled nighttime navigation into Boston Harbor.

I am surprised that this wasn't banned before!
Yuck

Toilet Dumping Banned In Harbor
Violators Could Be Fined Up To $2,000
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/16806915/detail.html

It so clean the Coast Guard has to stop people from swimming across the harbor's shipping lanes. The Coast Guard reports:

A local citizen notified Coat Guard Sector Boston that the man had jumped into the water from [Rowes Wharf] at about 9:15 a.m., and was swimming north, across the ferry channel, toward the John Joseph Moakley Courthouse.

Two Coast Guard vessels responded and pulled the unidentified man out of the water. Click the photo below for some video of swimboy:

Reuters interviews Sally Snowman, the keeper of Boston Light. She has Ted Kennedy to thank for her job - he got a bill passed 20 years ago that requires the Coast Guard to keep an actual lighthouse keeper on duty there.

Via MetaBoston.

Adam Belson watches the sun go down over Boston Harbor.

Today's best sunrise photo, taken toward Logan from Long Wharf.

Michael Ratty wonders what the deal was with the fireworks over Boston Harbor last night - the ones he and several of his North End neighbors actually cracked open their windows to watch.

Jason photographs a cruise ship leaving the Black Falcon terminal - from a plane about to land at Logan.

J.L. Bell recounts how Boston Harbor almost became the site of the first submarine attack in history.

Sad all around: Fatal accident at West Boundary Road and Washington Street in West Roxbury this afternoon. Not by somebody having a heart attack, though, but by a 20something in a mini-van.

Better news comes out of South Boston, where a man who fell in the harbor was rescued by a Massport police officer who heard his faint cries over the seagulls.

Lolita Parker Jr. chronicles her trip to Hull and back via commuter ferry.

Earlier:
Hull water view of downtown.

For some reason, people all across the country just love re-creating the Boston Tea Party and then putting their videos on YouTube. They can stop now; here is the best one ever:

Storm, lightning over Boston Harbor.

Flip recounts sailing on the Soling in Boston Harbor a couple days ago:

... Yes, normally a very pleasant experience, except we were dealing with 30 knot winds. And we didn't have storm sails. And the harbor traffic resembled a watery rush hour in New Delhi. It was kill or be killed out there, and I damn near was killed a few times. I lost my footing on the barney post at least four times, tumbling two and a half feet down because we were heeled over so hard, we were practically perpendicular to the water. On top of all this, I took three shots to the head with the boom during the multiple times when we were forced to dodge drunken power boaters. ...

WBZ: 2 ferries collide in Boston Harbor; no serious injuries reported.

Evan chronicles a trip to this island in the outer harbor:

... This is probably one of the best day trip deals in Boston...$12 weekend rate gets you a round trip on a high-speed catamaran out to Spectacle and Georges Islands, a good distance away from the city and near where Boston Harbor meets the Atlantic Ocean. ...

The New England steams into Boston Harbor this afternoon - that's the Deer Island sewage treatment plant in the background. Taken from Harbor Point.

Marilora lives close enough to the harbor to be able to take pictures of the giant LNG tankers from her bedroom window. So she takes great interest in reports on the damage a terrorist attack on one could do, like incinerating everybody within a one-mile radius:

Should I take comfort in the fact that I will probably just be incinerated instantly? ... I know that we need LNG and the terminals have to go somewhere, but to have one in such a populated area is just such a huge risk, especially considering the Homeland Security Department has basically done didly squat to protect our ports from the possibility of terrorist attacks. ...