I had recovered from my slight illness by this morning, so we set out for the U.S. Sand Sculpting Challenge and 3D Art Exposition, held on the cruise ship terminal pier where our Panama Canal cruise ship docked this past February. No cruise ships this weekend – the pier was covered with mounds of sand being sculpted into amazing forms before our eyes.

Professional sculptors and sand artists came from places such as Latvia, Singapore, The Netherlands, Portugal, and Canada, as well as from the U.S. I heard one of them being interviewed on the radio, and she said she particularly likes sculpting in sand as opposed to hard materials like marble because it’s so warm and responsive. There were all sorts of themes, not all of them nautical: one was of a truck, with the actual truck it was based on parked behind. I liked this one, an homage to the local metro bus service:

They’re short-lived, though: one we saw had a serious crack that was being patched, and it looked as though cracking is a hazard that comes with the sand drying out. Some of the artists hadn’t even started their sculptures yet, probably for that reason. The judging will take place tomorrow, but this one was my favorite:

We wandered up the Embarcadero and came next to the Festival of Sail, a tall ship festival hosted at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. A street fair was going on in front of the ships, and we found some yummy lunch: a gyro for Carol, tri-tip barbeque for Patrick.

The Maritime Museum is housed in the Berkeley, one of several ferryboats that for sixty years operated on San Francisco Bay between the Oakland pier and the San Francisco ferry building.

In 1958 ferry service on San Francisco Bay was ended and she became a gift shop docked in Sausalito. In 1973 she was towed to San Diego and restored for service as the main “building” of the Maritime Museum. Berkeley was notable for having been the first propeller-driven ferry on the west coast, and at the time of her launching in 1898 she was the largest commuter ferryboat in the United States with a 1700-passenger capacity. She was also remarkable for being one of the earliest ferries to be powered by a triple-expansion steam engine; we went below, and the docent there started it up and turned it over for Patrick to watch.

The Maritime Museum preserves one of the largest collections of historic sea vessels in the United States. The centerpiece of the museum’s collection is the Star of India, which we went aboard. She was built in 1863, a full-rigged iron windjammer ship.

After a full career sailing from Great Britain to India and New Zealand, she became a hauler on the Alaska-to-California route. Retired in 1926, she was restored in 1962-63 and is now again a seaworthy vessel, the oldest iron-hulled merchant ship still floating. Unlike many preserved or restored vessels, her hull, cabins and equipment are nearly 100% original. We went almost down to the hull and Patrick had me listen to hear the sound of snapping shrimp on the outside of the hull. The captain’s stateroom was very fancy compared with the sailors’ berthing spaces, and the toilet areas were dreadful. I would not have wanted to live in any era before modern plumbing.

We also crawled through the research submarine Dolphin – no chubby sailors could have worked there!

We went aboard the HMS Surprise, not a restoration but a 1970 replica designed to look like a 1757 20-gun Royal Navy frigate. It looked like a pirate ship and in fact appeared in the movie “Master and Commander” and one of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies. Costumed docents explained how various things on the ship worked, and Patrick got detailed instruction on shooting the cannons.

From the deck of the Surprise we watched a spirited cannon battle between two sailing ships, anachronistically staged in front of the nuclear aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), docked at North Island Naval Air Station.

After all this walking and battling under a hot sun, we were pretty tuckered out and hired a pedicab to take us back to our car.