Listing Through Life

Berkeley

The Berkeley was built in 1898 to operate as a ferry on San Francisco Bay. The lower decks are used as a museum.

One of my favorite areas in the entire museum was the lounge on the upper deck of the Berkeley, perhaps because it was so easy to picture what it might have looked like full of passengers 100  years ago.

USS Dolphin

The only outside photo I took of this submarine is the one at the top of this post. The Dolphin was launched in 1968 as a diesel-electric research submarine and holds the record for the deepest dive ever made by a submarine. It was far more luxurious than the B-39, but it was still pretty austere.

The periscope and the view through it.

Medea

The Medea is a 1904 steam yacht owned as a private vessel by somebody with a lot more money than I have.

Californian

This is California’s Official Tall Ship. It’s a replica of the topsail schooner C.W. Lawrence, a revenue cutter used to enforce tariff laws in the mid-1800s. The C.W. Lawrence was the first government ship stationed in California after it became a state. It was shipwrecked in a storm near San Francisco in 1851. The Californian is the ship on the right in the above photo.

Mary Ann

The Mary Ann is a 32′ Monterey fishing boat built in 1930 and in use until 2002. Its owner was born in the Little Italy section of San Diego. Another fishing boat, the La Diana sits on the dock behind the Mary Ann in the photo below, next to the Californian.

The Butcher Boy

The Butcher Boy was built in 1902 to carry provisions out to ships. It was built for speed, since the first boat to reach an arriving ship would get the most business. She was so fast, that she raced in several local yacht races.

We looked at the ships and relaxed along the shore of San Diego Bay for a couple hours until it was time to think about getting lunch and getting to the airport.

We spent a couple hours on Thursday morning touring the ships docked along the shore of San Diego Bay.

Star of India

This is the oldest ship in the world that still sails regularly. It was launched in 1863 and served at various time as a cargo ship and an immigrant carrier.

HMS Surprise

A replica of a British frigate from the Napoleonic Wars, this ship was used in one of my all-time favorite movies — Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

The scenes in the movie that took place below-decks were shot in a studio and not on board the ship. There was an exhibit on the lower deck about Pacific exploration, and I could find nothing on board about the movie.

B-39 Soviet Attack Submarine

This is a diesel-electric attack submarine launched in 1974. It was used to shadow U.S. Navy vessels around the world during the Cold War. It occasionally carried low-grade nuclear missiles.

I was struck by how severe everything was. Very little or no effort had been expended to make things comfortable. If you enlarge the center photo below, you’ll see a circular opening at the end of the passageway. There were four or five of these — about three-feet in diameter — that we had to clamber through as we made our way along the sub.

Check out this cabin (left, below). I took this photo from the main passageway. To get into this bunk, you’d have to edge past the large metal bit on the right, climb onto the bunk from the end and extend yourself down the narrow space between the wall and the fan, or whatever it is — which would probably be making all sorts of racket. You can see more luxurious accommodations on the right.

On Wednesday, four of us coworkers decided it was time to eat some quality seafood. One of us knew of a place downtown, and the English-accented guy on the GPS knew how to get us there. He just didn’t know how to pronounce “eight.”

The place was Blue Water Seafood Market & Grill, which has been featured on Diners, Drive-in and Dives.

It wasn’t fancy inside — we stood in line to order — and it wasn’t large. And on this particular night, it wasn’t all that busy.

I’m not a huge fan of fish, so I ordered grilled shrimp. They may have been the best shrimp I’ve ever had. The salad was also very, very good.

We had a great conversation over dinner and came up with two great names for bands:

• Innocuous Theological Nuances
• Fairly Articulate Women

The food on this trip was great — if you leave out the soggy waffles at the hotel breakfast buffet (and I would very much like to leave them out), the worst thing we had was Corner Bakery. And I like Corner Bakery.

This all changed on Wednesday night. We finished packing up the booth around 11:30 and, as has become our tradition, we decided to go out for pie. Because it was so late, we settled on Denny’s. I hadn’t eaten at a Denny’s in probably 25 years and I was soon reminded why. But my boss entertained us with his anti-jokes and we laughed ourselves silly.

• What’s red and smells like blue paint?
• How do you make a plumber cry?
• Why did the blonde get fired from the M&M factory?
• Did you hear about the two cannibals who were eating dinner. One says, “I don’t like my sister, and the other one says …