Dry dock

"What shall I photograph today?" I asked my assistant as we walked back from doing the bit of shopping along the seafront.
"How about the boats?" replied my 7 year old daughter.
I'd walked that way specifically hoping something caught my eye.
"Hmm..." I said, not wishing to reject the idea completely out of hand, (but ~ not feeling comfortable around the sea at all, except for paddling in it, sitting beside it and photographing it low level, creeping up the beach ~ boats are really NOT my thing), "let's go and have a look round the harbour, see what we can find".

And this is what caught my eye. It's the entrance to the dry docks, where I remember my father working sometimes when I was a child, privately contracted as an electrical and marine engineer to work on the engines of the big ships. And perhaps that's partly where my fear came from, for it was not here, but across the road in the harbour where he used to take me sometimes to board the big ships and see the noisy engine rooms he worked in.

The way he boarded, back then, was simply to leap across from shore to ship. He, of course, being 6' 2", had longer legs and the gap probably didn't seem so big... he was used to doing it. I was maybe 8 or 9, had much shorter legs and was as petrified of him as I was the leap across. Sure he'd reach out for my hand once he was across, almost pull me over, but it did nothing to ease the fear. Other times there'd be a single plank across, nothing as civilised as a handrail, no preventative measures to stop people falling in as they crossed... these boats were usually boarded only by those who knew the ropes (no pun intended).

So no, I can't say boats, ships or ocean are my favourite things in the universe, but I like this part, the dry dock area, closer to land.