As predicted by the weatherman, Friday turned out to be a nice, sunny day, after a short morning series of disheartening rainshowers. Of course, my current visitor and I dashed out as soon as possible to catch the sun. Gleaming in the late afternoon sun, the fireboat Chief Seattle was putting on an inadvertant water display for tourists on the waterfront as it ran a check on all its hoses, and putt-putted happily around the harbor.

The good ship Chief Seattle puts on a water display. Background: Elliott Bay Marina

Also in the middle of the harbor, perched on one of those round metal platforms, a couple of lazy sea-lions basked in the sunshine, seemingly unfazed by all the attention they were getting. Aw, cute.

And speaking of water, over at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, they are halfway through cleaning the smaller locks (probably another 5 days or so, left). Although they act kind of blase’ about it (and so they should, since it happens every year), a lot of work goes into this spring cleaning. There’s all the barnacles to scrape off, and sludge to clean up, not to mention any miscellaneous repairs (the smaller locks have a little, teeny leak in them), and replacing about 150 zinc plates, installed to encourage corrosion away from all the other metal fittings in the lock.

If you want to see the bottom of a lock (and have I mentioned the awful fishy smell emanating from it? Sounds like someone needs to get several gallons of Febreze down there, stat!), why not head down there this weekend? I promise there are about a dozen herons perched in one of the evergreens in the garden that periodically fly back and forth over the locks in search of little goodies.