October 8, 2017
My idea to have breakfast at 6:30 sharp and enjoy the silence was sabotaged. The restaurant was already full, Sunday at 6:30 am. If people could sleep in at least once a week... It emptied out a bit at 7 am and became more quite. Again only the continental option for me, but more then the day before. My plan was to skip lunch and have some more food for dinner.
At 8:20 am I started my walk from the hotel towards Pier 35. Both the Coast Guard ship and the second Navy ship were moored at that pier. Tours were supposed to start at 9 am, but actually started at 9:15. At the entrance, you were asked for your preference, Coast Guard or Navy ship. Navy ship it was for me and I received a green wristband. I now had to go through a security checkpoint and then a couple more minutes of waiting before boarding the ship.
First stop was the Forecastle oder Fo'c'sle.
View towards the superstructure.
Next stop was the quarterdeck. Lots of mine hunting and mine countermeasure equipment stored there. To help their task, the ship has a wooden hull, to avoid setting off mines.
One of the pieces of equipment is a remote controlled robot.
A small ship results in a short tour. I then continued towards Pier 15/17, where the Canadian ship was moored. View from the Forecastle.
The heraldic animal is a bison and there quite a few of them on board.
Very close view from the pier of the ship. A wide angle lens helps in picturing the ship completely.
I then walked back to the hotel. I had completed all my must-see's. At the hotel, I refueled on liquids and grabbed my telephoto lens. My plan was to climb Telegraph Hill again and get some better close-ups of the airshow. Unfortunately, oftentimes I was to slow adjusting the focal length for real good close-up. Truth be told, the sound of roaring jet engines is much nicer than the views anyways.
Nevertheless, I managed to take some pictures. The Canadian Snowbirds are operating the CT-114 Tutor aircraft, which cannot break the sound barrier.
Two days before, the demonstration of the privately owned Patriots Jet Acrobatic Demonstration Team was missing. They performed on Saturday and Sunday, though, and are operating 6 Czech build L-39.
Last day for the United 747 over the San Francisco Bay.
Bye bye Jumbo-Jet
And just for the record, a picture of the Blue Angels. Fat Albert was still thick and not participating in this year's San Francisco Fleet Week airshow.
With the airshow over, dinner was my next item on the agenda. I did some more research on the net and came across some 2014 reports of health issues at some restaurants in San Francisco and Yee was one of them. So I had doubts and looked for alternatives. The one I picked was
Brandy Ho's restaurant. There I ordered deep fried dumplings, beef with green onions in wine sauce, Jasmine rice and a piece of chocolate cake for desert for pick-up.
Food was yummy and
extra hot was pleasantly spicy. This helped in sweating out the absorbed sun screen. Since I enjoy eating hot, just a warning: extra hot does mean extra hot, so be careful.
My plans for Monday were that I didn't have any plans. Usually I use this day as a buffer. Typically, there are more than just two ships and they are open on Mondays as well. So in case I won't complete all of them on Saturday and Sunday, I still have Monday. Since I already completed my objectives, I had Monday off and time to spare. Well, I had one plan: sleep in.