Final Boat Trip?!

We had yet another boat trip to Saikung today,  perhaps the last one of the season....  after some bad luck w/ the weather the last month,  this one turned out pretty good:

も一度船パーティした。今回天気はファインでしたね：

This was actually from the Star Ferry on the way over. 

We left from Pier 9 by IFC,   got on our boat and headed east.  This boat was through Julie who works for the Mouse.  They have a company boat (or two) that senior people can check out on weekends...  sweet!　今回友達の友達は企てた、この人は香港ディズニー会社で仕事するから、会社の船をレンタルできる。すごい！

On the way out we passed a few visiting naval vessels anchored in the harbor. This time they were Australian:

  Apparently thats the Anzac class Frigate HMS Parramatta ( wikipedia).  its interesting to notice that they've appearently added missle launchers to the front since this picture was taken in '05.　オーストラリア海軍の船は香港湾に在った。

This time we didn't go out to the normal area of Saikung Bay, instead we went to nearby Clear Water Bay ( google map), which as you can see from the map, has some nice public beaches.

今回「清水灣」へ行った。 地図から見える、この所全然悪くない！

Here's a short video compilation to give you an idea of what it was like:　もちろんビデオを撮った！見て：

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IDRKD3ys3c

And here's a few of my stills (taken w/ my new Canon)　-新カメラで写真も一杯撮った：

  Yes Pat wore his loud floral clothing again...  A lot of other boats came out to the same spot.

Oh yes, Steamboat Willie runs this boat.... 蒸気船ウィリーを知って居る？一番有名なディズニー制作のアニメーション作品ですよ（ 写真）

They're way too into the flotation rings...

We swam and as you can see in the video lots of people did the jumping off the boat thing.  Swang and I brought my snorkel and fins, so we swam into the beach.  I tried my hand at diving down to the bottom w/ only the snorkel too.  It turns out the bottom isn't that deep around these parts (all the way out to the shark net, it was only about 10-15 feet deep).

It turns out there are tons of fish that swim around the bottom of the rafts and shark nets... if you stay still long enough they come right up to you (but the water is so murky that w/o goggles you probably can't even see them).

僕はシュノーケルを持て行った、それからたくさん泳ぎました。浜まで行った、一寸素潜りもした。楽しかった、運動も良かった！

This boat came w/ the speed boat option (which usually we don't order),  so I couldn't pass up the chance to try Wakeboarding...  it was pretty frickin' hard the first few times...   lots of seawater up my nose and having the rope yanked from my hands...

今回もスピードボート有ったから、水上スキー(実Wakeboarding)するの機会が有った。難しいよ！5-6回ワイプアウト(九天直下)した！

but eventually I got the hang of it. でも最後ヤッタ！

Ha,  ok well only the last two times...  I think the 2nd time I stayed up a grand total of 10 seconds...    and my forearms are super sore now... (it feels the same as after you go rock climbing) :-P

でもとても短間だけょ！~10秒だけ!

Now my friend here really hates having his picture taken,  but I couldn't resist putting this one up on the blog because I think it looks really cool:

Look at the cool pattern on the splashing water.  I'm impressed w/ my new camera's high shutter speed abilities!  この写真すごい水を見た。新カメラ悪くない。。。

After all the swimming and what not we were all pretty wiped out by about 5:30:

We enjoying the sunset view as we sailed back towards downtown.　午後5時半ぐらい帰って行った.

I got some cool pictures of the sun passing behind this new 70 story office tower they're building in Taikoo ( One Island East).  Damn they're going to finish by March '08?

夕映えがすごい！

As you can guess, today was a good chance to try to get the hang of my new camera.  I was pretty happy with it for the most part, but some of the best 'bestshot' modes I like on my casio aren't here (like 'sunset' for example).   

Also took me a few tries to figure out how to get the flash to work w/ a good sunset shot:

新しいカメラが有ったから、作る方まだ勉強している：

This is not what I wanted... let's try again...

this time with Patrick:

Ok, thats better.  It turns out you can't force the flash to come on in 'Auto' mode for some reason.  But you can if you switch to a 'scr' mode...    Casio cameras definitely have better software. :-P

カノンは撮ったの写真悪くないけど、カシオのソフトの法が好き。。。

As we got close to IFC the hazy sky got super orange:

There's the beloved Shun Tak center... 　上灣のサンセット景色。綺麗よ！

A great trip!  I wonder if we can squeeze one more in before the end of the season. :-P

(well there's always hawaii!) ;-)

もすぐ10月から、多分今回今年の最後船パーティ。残念！でも来月ハワイへ行く！