Balclutha

When my old roomie came to visit a few weeks ago, we took a day and rode the train to San Francisco. Technically speaking, we took the train to Emeryville, and caught a bus there for the waterfront. The bus nosed through the financial district and I quickly realized that all my previous ideas of a "big" city had been rather small-scale. There is a lot of San Francisco, vertically, as well as horizontally; the open views of the waterfront would have come as a relief if they were only a fraction as beautiful as they are. The Hyde Street Dock, however, is a sight for sore eyes to beat even the comfort of fog on the Pacific; clustered around it are the vessels belonging to the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, most notably the Balclutha.
She is a fairly old ship, built in Glasgow in 1886, built for work, and certainly did it, as you can read at the site above.

Above, faintly on the lower left--yes, that does say "Ghiradelli". In the picture below you can get a glimpse of a few of the other vessels there, including a steamboat.

It was just after noon when we reached the dock, which tended to wash out the pictures a bit, and, as in the purple spot below, put manifestations in which were not there in real life.

Again, rather washed out, but there is the Balclutha in her entirety. (That spot between the two buoys in the middle is an intrepid swimmer braving the sea lion attacks, which were described in a warning poster on the shore, in case you were wondering). The two masts on the left of the Balclutha belong to a very lovely old schooner, the name of which I don't recall and which was docked in a location which made getting a good picture impossible (unless you wanted to swim out with the sea lions to get it.) Further to the left is the famous Alcatraz Island enshrouded in famous fog.