Warning, this is a bit long. Not written to be a post- but on the off
chance that somebody might enjoy it......


**********


Bell Harbor Marina

It was a winter of discontent. In April of 1851, nine members of the
Denny family left Cherry Grove Illinois to seek a new life in the
Willamette Valley of Oregon. Arthur Denney led his three brothers, his
father and stepmother, his pregnant wife (who was also his
stepsister), as well as a younger stepsister and stepbrother (Louisa
and Carson Boren) on the westward trek. A man named John Low joined
them along the trail. The party split up in western Oregon, with
Denny's two older brothers and parents starting farms in the rich
alluvial soil in the Willamette flood plain. Arthur, his wife, his
younger brother David Denny, the Borens and Low wanted to found a
town. The group had heard that Puget Sound offered some promising
locations for such an enterprise.

The portion of the Denny party that chose not to farm near the
Willamette arrived in Portland on August 22. Arthur's wife, Mary Ann,
was too close to delivering her baby to safely travel any farther.
John Low and David Denny traveled north to Puget Sound to scout the
territory, while Arthur, Mary Ann and the rest of the group remained
in Portland. David Denny and Low were joined en route by Leander
Terry, and the three eventually agreed that the SW point of Elliott
Bay was ideally suited for a town site. By September 28, 1851, David
Denny, Low, and Terry had each staked claims in a community to be
called "New York Alki"; ("alki" was a Native word for "eventually").

Low returned to Portland to retrieve the rest of the party, to which
an emigrant farmer named William Bell as well as his wife and a
Leander Terry's brother, Charlie, had been additionally recruited.
David Denny began building a log cabin.

The party from Portland booked passage to Puget Sound on the schooner
"Exact" and landed at Alki on November 5. David Denny's cabin had no
roof, the November rains were falling, and the first order of business
was completing the shelter. The party of about a dozen pioneers would
spend the winter in very cramped quarters.

Arthur Denny was not pleased that Leander Terry, John Low, and his
younger brother David had claimed all of the most promising land
surrounding New York Alki prior to his arrival. Perhaps it was "cabin
fever" that inspired the Denny party to divide again in the spring,
with Arthur Denny persuading his stepbrother Carson Boren and William
Bell to relocate. The three staked claims on the eastern shoreline of
the bay near Piner's Point. The original shoreline of Seattle was
several blocks inland from its current configuration and long-gone
Piner's Point is now rarely mentioned. In 1852, a small stream and
meadow at Piner's Point would become the site of Henry Yesler's steam
powered sawmill, and the general vicinity is known today as Pioneer
Square.

So began the Seattle waterfront. Within a few years, Charlie Terry
bought out Leander Terry and John Low's interest in the New York Alki
properties and moved across the bay to Seattle. A devastating fire
followed by an optimistic rebuild, a frustrated attempt to become the
western terminus of the Northern Pacific railroad, a gold rush, and
the steady growth of maritime trade shaped City's destiny. Beyond a
fill comprised of garbage, sawdust, and the millions of tons of soil
sluiced down from "regrades" of the surrounding hills a mile of steam
ship piers and a railroad switch yard emerged along Railroad Avenue,
(later renamed Alaska Way). At the turn of the last century, most
passengers and freight moved around Puget Sound aboard the steam
powered ferries of the "Mosquito Fleet" but private yachts were
exceptionally rare. The waterfront of the largest city on Puget Sound
developed without any reasonable provision for mooring a small
pleasure boat.

Prior to the mid-1990's, the only moorage for pleasure boats along the
Seattle waterfront was some rickety old floats at the Washington
Street Pier. Boaters were subjected to constant ferry wakes. From a
vacant park to the immediate south, resident street drunks would
deliver a barrage of empty bottles and profanity. The air smelled of
rotting human waste. Few people ever docked there, and even fewer
would dock there more than once.
The Port of Seattle developed Bell Harbor Marina (named after nearby
Bell Street as well as pioneer farmer William Bell) at Seattle's Pier
66, and in 1996 Seattle finally had a top caliber downtown marina to
accommodate visiting boaters.

The entrance to Bell Harbor Marina is near 47.36.54 N and 122.20.81 W.
There are few hazards in Elliott Bay beyond the obvious presence of
some large commercial vessels and two busy ferry routes. Boaters
arriving in Seattle from the south will want to give the shoals at
Duwamish Head a generous berth, a task easily accomplished with the
aid of any appropriately scaled chart. NOAA chart #18450 is a good
choice when navigating in this area. Humongous cruise ships berth
along the outside of the breakwater every Saturday during the Alaskan
cruise season and will provide an excellent landmark. A tall sculpture
with a high spire is located at the access point to provide a visual
reference during the rest of the year. The entrance is a "blind
corner", so proceeding on a slow bell and sounding the horn are
reasonable precautions when entering or exiting.

Reservations are available up to two years in advance, and the marina
staff will place a red and white "reserved" sign on spaces that aren't
available for use by transient vessels. Bell Harbor is a favorite
destination for many yacht clubs located in the north and south sound
regions, and the Port of Seattle conducts annual drawings to award
reservations among the multiple cruising groups often seeking
reservations for specific holiday weekends. The dock nearest the
gangway is always reserved for members of the Muckleshoot Nation. Once
tied to the wide and stable floats, boaters should report to the
moorage office at the head of the gangway.

Guest moorage rates in 2007 vary from $1.00- $1.50/foot/day depending
upon the season of the year and the size of the vessel. (Boats over 50-
feet generally pay 25-cents/foot more than smaller craft). A lunch or
dinner stop of 0-4 hours is a flat $10 for any boat, regardless of
length. 30-amp shorepower is $3 per day, with either 50 or 100-amp
service available at some slips for $10 per day. Security is not a
major issue, even in this urban environment. No one can enter or leave
the marina without passing a check point with a locked gate, and banks
of cameras allow the congenial marina staff to keep a continuous eye
on the docks.

Bell Harbor is most definitely a metropolitan marina. The Highway 99
viaduct, with a 24-hour flow of traffic, seems to hover immediately
above the basin. Busy Alaska Way with a nonstop stream of tourists and
strolling locals overlooks the floats. The railroad tracks are less
than 200 yards away, and mile long freight trains thunder through the
district on a regular basis. Even the heaving metal plates suspended
under the cruise ship pier to form the marina's breakwater seem
compelled to join the discordant cacophony; they creak and groan as
would a rusted and riveted clockwork sea lion. Few boaters need be
unduly concerned about sleeping through all of this waterfront racket.
Anybody taking part in even a fraction of the scores of activities
within a 20 minute walk of the marina will be so joyously exhausted at
the end of the day that falling and staying asleep won't be much of a
challenge.

The Odyssey Maritime Discovery Center is located at Bell Harbor. The
museum and interactive exposition is easily worth the modest admission
as well as the allocation of 90-minutes or so to poke around among the
fascinating exhibits. Sandwiches, beverages, and convenience groceries
are available from the Bell Street Deli, while the Anthony's
restaurant chain operates three restaurants at this location.
Anthony's Pier 66 is on the upper floor of the restaurant building,
and offers above average food at above average prices in a reasonably
dressy atmosphere. Jan and I have often dined at the more casual Bell
Street Diner on the lower floor, where the above average food at about
average prices is apparently prepared in the same kitchen as the
supposedly more glamorous choices available upstairs. Boaters seeking
quick and tasty hot food might enjoy Anthony's Fish and Chips bar,
fronting the sidewalk along Alaska Way.

The Pike Place Market and Seattle Aquarium are easily accessible from
Pier 66. The waterfront street car line is temporarily out of service,
but a city bus stops at the marina several times an hour and then
follows the old street car route to the nightlife, galleries, and
bookstores of historic Pioneer Square as well as the exotic atmosphere
of the International District (aka "Chinatown"). Fans of the Seattle
Seahawks or Mariners can arrive in Seattle by boat, take a short bus
or taxi ride to the game, and return to (hopefully) celebrate aboard
the boat before cruising back to homeport the following day. The
countless upscale shopping opportunities in downtown department stores
and specialty shops are a moderate walk or short taxi ride from Bell
Harbor.

A climb up the stairs next to the Odyssey Maritime Center and use of
the pedestrian overpass to cross Alaska Way will bring a strolling
boater to the edge of Seattle's bohemian Belltown district. Belltown
is the approximate site of the land staked out by William Bell after
he left New York Alki with the Piner's Point portion of the Denny
party. Bell's original claim was on land that was sluiced away in the
"Denny Regrade" process that moderated the steep terrain immediately
north of the downtown business area. Bell surveyed his holdings
separately from those of the Denny family and Doc Maynard farther
south, naming Virginia and Olive Streets for his two daughters and
Stewart Street for son-in-law Joseph Stewart. During the 1980's and
90's, Belltown became a gathering place for avant garde artists and
musicians. Skyrocketing real estate values in Belltown have priced out
some of the former hipster art galleries, but the atmosphere remains
eclectic and some of the most interesting restaurants in Seattle can
be found in this community.

A significant and newly opened attraction sure to be of interest to
many visitors to Seattle is the Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park. The
park is located just beyond Pier 70, about 6 blocks north of the
marina and no more than a 10-minute walk for most adults. The saunter
between the marina and the sculpture park pulses with contrasts along
the century old seawall.

Across Alaska Way are the railroad tracks, and most middle-aged
Seattle natives will recall a time when each pier was served by an
individual spur line. Burly longshoremen would wheel or carry break
bulk cargo from the holds of ships and into the long warehouses on
every pier. Cargo is now either so specialized or containerized that
the warehouses became obsolete several decades ago and have been
converted to tourist malls or removed entirely. The 1950's viaduct,
originally constructed to elevate traffic above the long-gone railroad
spurs below, speaks for its decade. Offices for the Clipper Navigation
Company and relatively recently arrived Norwegian Caribbean Cruise
Lines are immediately north of Bell Harbor marina. En route to the
sculpture park a visitor also passes the Edgewater Hotel (a relic of
the early 1960's), and the classic façade of Pier 70 (which was
"yuppified" in the 1970's).

The sculpture park is open to the public and there is no charge for
admission. Installations include a variety of modern and abstract
shapes and forms, with some traditional forms expressed in unique
scale or intriguingly juxtaposed with other objects. My favorite piece
is a glass wall along the pedestrian bridge. Vivid colors swirl and
merge between panels of glass, suggesting both a sunset sky and the
biologically rich eddies of a shoreline tide pool. The entire piece is
covered with perfectly aligned rows of uniformly shaped clear spots,
and when one views the glass wall looking toward the south the skyline
of Seattle, (featuring a million carefully aligned clear spots we call
"windows") is colored by the flowing stream of random organic shapes
and hues. This glass piece almost had to be installed in this specific
location, and would be much less effective without the surrounding
environment. Where it stands, it can address the idea that Seattle is
collection of the works of man, yet still delightfully overwhelmed by
the influences of sea and sky.

The Olympic Sculpture Park places a visitor at a vortex where several
eras converge. Traces of industrial activity are still within close
proximity, while rectangular blocks of modern condominiums climb ever
higher around construction cranes almost like pea vines scale a
trellis. The wildly imaginary forms of the sculptures contrast
distinctively with the practical shapes of functional residential and
commercial structures.

A glance to the east will bring the Space Needle into view, now almost
a comic symbol of the predictions for life in the 21st Century that
were themes of the Seattle World's Fair held 45 years ago. Instead of
flying cars, George Jetson buildings on useless stilts, meals in a
pill, and robot butlers in every home we have the wonderful, chaotic,
enthralling, distressing, and still somehow promising mixture of
times, places, and especially people that constitutes our modern
reality. Perhaps it's my advancing age, but I'd rather live in times
as they are than in any of the fantasy environments we were promised
during the Century 21 Exposition.

There is no shortage of things to see and do in downtown Seattle, and
Bell Harbor Marina provides excellent access for visiting boaters.

Wow. 4000 words by my estimate. What do you say, Harry?
Florida Jim










"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...
Warning, this is a bit long. Not written to be a post- but on the off
chance that somebody might enjoy it......


**********


Bell Harbor Marina

It was a winter of discontent. In April of 1851, nine members of the
Denny family left Cherry Grove Illinois to seek a new life in the
Willamette Valley of Oregon. Arthur Denney led his three brothers, his
father and stepmother, his pregnant wife (who was also his
stepsister), as well as a younger stepsister and stepbrother (Louisa
and Carson Boren) on the westward trek. A man named John Low joined
them along the trail. The party split up in western Oregon, with
Denny's two older brothers and parents starting farms in the rich
alluvial soil in the Willamette flood plain. Arthur, his wife, his
younger brother David Denny, the Borens and Low wanted to found a
town. The group had heard that Puget Sound offered some promising
locations for such an enterprise.

The portion of the Denny party that chose not to farm near the
Willamette arrived in Portland on August 22. Arthur's wife, Mary Ann,
was too close to delivering her baby to safely travel any farther.
John Low and David Denny traveled north to Puget Sound to scout the
territory, while Arthur, Mary Ann and the rest of the group remained
in Portland. David Denny and Low were joined en route by Leander
Terry, and the three eventually agreed that the SW point of Elliott
Bay was ideally suited for a town site. By September 28, 1851, David
Denny, Low, and Terry had each staked claims in a community to be
called "New York Alki"; ("alki" was a Native word for "eventually").

Low returned to Portland to retrieve the rest of the party, to which
an emigrant farmer named William Bell as well as his wife and a
Leander Terry's brother, Charlie, had been additionally recruited.
David Denny began building a log cabin.

The party from Portland booked passage to Puget Sound on the schooner
"Exact" and landed at Alki on November 5. David Denny's cabin had no
roof, the November rains were falling, and the first order of business
was completing the shelter. The party of about a dozen pioneers would
spend the winter in very cramped quarters.

Arthur Denny was not pleased that Leander Terry, John Low, and his
younger brother David had claimed all of the most promising land
surrounding New York Alki prior to his arrival. Perhaps it was "cabin
fever" that inspired the Denny party to divide again in the spring,
with Arthur Denny persuading his stepbrother Carson Boren and William
Bell to relocate. The three staked claims on the eastern shoreline of
the bay near Piner's Point. The original shoreline of Seattle was
several blocks inland from its current configuration and long-gone
Piner's Point is now rarely mentioned. In 1852, a small stream and
meadow at Piner's Point would become the site of Henry Yesler's steam
powered sawmill, and the general vicinity is known today as Pioneer
Square.

So began the Seattle waterfront. Within a few years, Charlie Terry
bought out Leander Terry and John Low's interest in the New York Alki
properties and moved across the bay to Seattle. A devastating fire
followed by an optimistic rebuild, a frustrated attempt to become the
western terminus of the Northern Pacific railroad, a gold rush, and
the steady growth of maritime trade shaped City's destiny. Beyond a
fill comprised of garbage, sawdust, and the millions of tons of soil
sluiced down from "regrades" of the surrounding hills a mile of steam
ship piers and a railroad switch yard emerged along Railroad Avenue,
(later renamed Alaska Way). At the turn of the last century, most
passengers and freight moved around Puget Sound aboard the steam
powered ferries of the "Mosquito Fleet" but private yachts were
exceptionally rare. The waterfront of the largest city on Puget Sound
developed without any reasonable provision for mooring a small
pleasure boat.

Prior to the mid-1990's, the only moorage for pleasure boats along the
Seattle waterfront was some rickety old floats at the Washington
Street Pier. Boaters were subjected to constant ferry wakes. From a
vacant park to the immediate south, resident street drunks would
deliver a barrage of empty bottles and profanity. The air smelled of
rotting human waste. Few people ever docked there, and even fewer
would dock there more than once.
The Port of Seattle developed Bell Harbor Marina (named after nearby
Bell Street as well as pioneer farmer William Bell) at Seattle's Pier
66, and in 1996 Seattle finally had a top caliber downtown marina to
accommodate visiting boaters.

The entrance to Bell Harbor Marina is near 47.36.54 N and 122.20.81 W.
There are few hazards in Elliott Bay beyond the obvious presence of
some large commercial vessels and two busy ferry routes. Boaters
arriving in Seattle from the south will want to give the shoals at
Duwamish Head a generous berth, a task easily accomplished with the
aid of any appropriately scaled chart. NOAA chart #18450 is a good
choice when navigating in this area. Humongous cruise ships berth
along the outside of the breakwater every Saturday during the Alaskan
cruise season and will provide an excellent landmark. A tall sculpture
with a high spire is located at the access point to provide a visual
reference during the rest of the year. The entrance is a "blind
corner", so proceeding on a slow bell and sounding the horn are
reasonable precautions when entering or exiting.

Reservations are available up to two years in advance, and the marina
staff will place a red and white "reserved" sign on spaces that aren't
available for use by transient vessels. Bell Harbor is a favorite
destination for many yacht clubs located in the north and south sound
regions, and the Port of Seattle conducts annual drawings to award
reservations among the multiple cruising groups often seeking
reservations for specific holiday weekends. The dock nearest the
gangway is always reserved for members of the Muckleshoot Nation. Once
tied to the wide and stable floats, boaters should report to the
moorage office at the head of the gangway.

Guest moorage rates in 2007 vary from $1.00- $1.50/foot/day depending
upon the season of the year and the size of the vessel. (Boats over 50-
feet generally pay 25-cents/foot more than smaller craft). A lunch or
dinner stop of 0-4 hours is a flat $10 for any boat, regardless of
length. 30-amp shorepower is $3 per day, with either 50 or 100-amp
service available at some slips for $10 per day. Security is not a
major issue, even in this urban environment. No one can enter or leave
the marina without passing a check point with a locked gate, and banks
of cameras allow the congenial marina staff to keep a continuous eye
on the docks.

Bell Harbor is most definitely a metropolitan marina. The Highway 99
viaduct, with a 24-hour flow of traffic, seems to hover immediately
above the basin. Busy Alaska Way with a nonstop stream of tourists and
strolling locals overlooks the floats. The railroad tracks are less
than 200 yards away, and mile long freight trains thunder through the
district on a regular basis. Even the heaving metal plates suspended
under the cruise ship pier to form the marina's breakwater seem
compelled to join the discordant cacophony; they creak and groan as
would a rusted and riveted clockwork sea lion. Few boaters need be
unduly concerned about sleeping through all of this waterfront racket.
Anybody taking part in even a fraction of the scores of activities
within a 20 minute walk of the marina will be so joyously exhausted at
the end of the day that falling and staying asleep won't be much of a
challenge.

The Odyssey Maritime Discovery Center is located at Bell Harbor. The
museum and interactive exposition is easily worth the modest admission
as well as the allocation of 90-minutes or so to poke around among the
fascinating exhibits. Sandwiches, beverages, and convenience groceries
are available from the Bell Street Deli, while the Anthony's
restaurant chain operates three restaurants at this location.
Anthony's Pier 66 is on the upper floor of the restaurant building,
and offers above average food at above average prices in a reasonably
dressy atmosphere. Jan and I have often dined at the more casual Bell
Street Diner on the lower floor, where the above average food at about
average prices is apparently prepared in the same kitchen as the
supposedly more glamorous choices available upstairs. Boaters seeking
quick and tasty hot food might enjoy Anthony's Fish and Chips bar,
fronting the sidewalk along Alaska Way.

The Pike Place Market and Seattle Aquarium are easily accessible from
Pier 66. The waterfront street car line is temporarily out of service,
but a city bus stops at the marina several times an hour and then
follows the old street car route to the nightlife, galleries, and
bookstores of historic Pioneer Square as well as the exotic atmosphere
of the International District (aka "Chinatown"). Fans of the Seattle
Seahawks or Mariners can arrive in Seattle by boat, take a short bus
or taxi ride to the game, and return to (hopefully) celebrate aboard
the boat before cruising back to homeport the following day. The
countless upscale shopping opportunities in downtown department stores
and specialty shops are a moderate walk or short taxi ride from Bell
Harbor.

A climb up the stairs next to the Odyssey Maritime Center and use of
the pedestrian overpass to cross Alaska Way will bring a strolling
boater to the edge of Seattle's bohemian Belltown district. Belltown
is the approximate site of the land staked out by William Bell after
he left New York Alki with the Piner's Point portion of the Denny
party. Bell's original claim was on land that was sluiced away in the
"Denny Regrade" process that moderated the steep terrain immediately
north of the downtown business area. Bell surveyed his holdings
separately from those of the Denny family and Doc Maynard farther
south, naming Virginia and Olive Streets for his two daughters and
Stewart Street for son-in-law Joseph Stewart. During the 1980's and
90's, Belltown became a gathering place for avant garde artists and
musicians. Skyrocketing real estate values in Belltown have priced out
some of the former hipster art galleries, but the atmosphere remains
eclectic and some of the most interesting restaurants in Seattle can
be found in this community.

A significant and newly opened attraction sure to be of interest to
many visitors to Seattle is the Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park. The
park is located just beyond Pier 70, about 6 blocks north of the
marina and no more than a 10-minute walk for most adults. The saunter
between the marina and the sculpture park pulses with contrasts along
the century old seawall.

Across Alaska Way are the railroad tracks, and most middle-aged
Seattle natives will recall a time when each pier was served by an
individual spur line. Burly longshoremen would wheel or carry break
bulk cargo from the holds of ships and into the long warehouses on
every pier. Cargo is now either so specialized or containerized that
the warehouses became obsolete several decades ago and have been
converted to tourist malls or removed entirely. The 1950's viaduct,
originally constructed to elevate traffic above the long-gone railroad
spurs below, speaks for its decade. Offices for the Clipper Navigation
Company and relatively recently arrived Norwegian Caribbean Cruise
Lines are immediately north of Bell Harbor marina. En route to the
sculpture park a visitor also passes the Edgewater Hotel (a relic of
the early 1960's), and the classic façade of Pier 70 (which was
"yuppified" in the 1970's).

The sculpture park is open to the public and there is no charge for
admission. Installations include a variety of modern and abstract
shapes and forms, with some traditional forms expressed in unique
scale or intriguingly juxtaposed with other objects. My favorite piece
is a glass wall along the pedestrian bridge. Vivid colors swirl and
merge between panels of glass, suggesting both a sunset sky and the
biologically rich eddies of a shoreline tide pool. The entire piece is
covered with perfectly aligned rows of uniformly shaped clear spots,
and when one views the glass wall looking toward the south the skyline
of Seattle, (featuring a million carefully aligned clear spots we call
"windows") is colored by the flowing stream of random organic shapes
and hues. This glass piece almost had to be installed in this specific
location, and would be much less effective without the surrounding
environment. Where it stands, it can address the idea that Seattle is
collection of the works of man, yet still delightfully overwhelmed by
the influences of sea and sky.

The Olympic Sculpture Park places a visitor at a vortex where several
eras converge. Traces of industrial activity are still within close
proximity, while rectangular blocks of modern condominiums climb ever
higher around construction cranes almost like pea vines scale a
trellis. The wildly imaginary forms of the sculptures contrast
distinctively with the practical shapes of functional residential and
commercial structures.

A glance to the east will bring the Space Needle into view, now almost
a comic symbol of the predictions for life in the 21st Century that
were themes of the Seattle World's Fair held 45 years ago. Instead of
flying cars, George Jetson buildings on useless stilts, meals in a
pill, and robot butlers in every home we have the wonderful, chaotic,
enthralling, distressing, and still somehow promising mixture of
times, places, and especially people that constitutes our modern
reality. Perhaps it's my advancing age, but I'd rather live in times
as they are than in any of the fantasy environments we were promised
during the Century 21 Exposition.

There is no shortage of things to see and do in downtown Seattle, and
Bell Harbor Marina provides excellent access for visiting boaters.

Jim wrote:
Wow. 4000 words by my estimate. What do you say, Harry?
Florida Jim










"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...
Warning, this is a bit long. Not written to be a post- but on the off
chance that somebody might enjoy it......


**********


Bell Harbor Marina

It was a winter of discontent.



Sheesh...that would require me to look a bit more closely...I'd say
about half that...around 2000-2100 words.

I really don't know why anyone boats "for pleasure" up there, but I know
a lot of people do. Even where I grew up in New England, "boating
weather" was bathing suit weather, and the water temps in Long Island
Sound were not bad from June through Labor Day. Not so in Seattle. Rain,
cloudy, cold weather. If I lived there, I'd had a totally different hobby.

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Jim wrote:
Wow. 4000 words by my estimate. What do you say, Harry?
Florida Jim










"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...
Warning, this is a bit long. Not written to be a post- but on the off
chance that somebody might enjoy it......


**********


Bell Harbor Marina

It was a winter of discontent.



Sheesh...that would require me to look a bit more closely...I'd say about
half that...around 2000-2100 words.

I really don't know why anyone boats "for pleasure" up there, but I know a
lot of people do. Even where I grew up in New England, "boating weather"
was bathing suit weather, and the water temps in Long Island Sound were
not bad from June through Labor Day. Not so in Seattle. Rain, cloudy, cold
weather. If I lived there, I'd had a totally different hobby.

2322....

"Harry Krause" wrote in message
...
Jim wrote:
. If I lived there, I'd had a totally different hobby.

Onanism?

"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...
Warning, this is a bit long. Not written to be a post- but on the off
chance that somebody might enjoy it......


**********


Bell Harbor Marina

It was a winter of discontent. In April of 1851, nine members of the
Denny family left Cherry Grove Illinois to seek a new life in the
Willamette Valley of Oregon. Arthur Denney led his three brothers, his
father and stepmother, his pregnant wife (who was also his
stepsister), as well as a younger stepsister and stepbrother (Louisa
and Carson Boren) on the westward trek. A man named John Low joined
them along the trail. The party split up in western Oregon, with
Denny's two older brothers and parents starting farms in the rich
alluvial soil in the Willamette flood plain. Arthur, his wife, his
younger brother David Denny, the Borens and Low wanted to found a
town. The group had heard that Puget Sound offered some promising
locations for such an enterprise.

The portion of the Denny party that chose not to farm near the
Willamette arrived in Portland on August 22. Arthur's wife, Mary Ann,
was too close to delivering her baby to safely travel any farther.
John Low and David Denny traveled north to Puget Sound to scout the
territory, while Arthur, Mary Ann and the rest of the group remained
in Portland. David Denny and Low were joined en route by Leander
Terry, and the three eventually agreed that the SW point of Elliott
Bay was ideally suited for a town site. By September 28, 1851, David
Denny, Low, and Terry had each staked claims in a community to be
called "New York Alki"; ("alki" was a Native word for "eventually").

Low returned to Portland to retrieve the rest of the party, to which
an emigrant farmer named William Bell as well as his wife and a
Leander Terry's brother, Charlie, had been additionally recruited.
David Denny began building a log cabin.

The party from Portland booked passage to Puget Sound on the schooner
"Exact" and landed at Alki on November 5. David Denny's cabin had no
roof, the November rains were falling, and the first order of business
was completing the shelter. The party of about a dozen pioneers would
spend the winter in very cramped quarters.

Arthur Denny was not pleased that Leander Terry, John Low, and his
younger brother David had claimed all of the most promising land
surrounding New York Alki prior to his arrival. Perhaps it was "cabin
fever" that inspired the Denny party to divide again in the spring,
with Arthur Denny persuading his stepbrother Carson Boren and William
Bell to relocate. The three staked claims on the eastern shoreline of
the bay near Piner's Point. The original shoreline of Seattle was
several blocks inland from its current configuration and long-gone
Piner's Point is now rarely mentioned. In 1852, a small stream and
meadow at Piner's Point would become the site of Henry Yesler's steam
powered sawmill, and the general vicinity is known today as Pioneer
Square.

So began the Seattle waterfront. Within a few years, Charlie Terry
bought out Leander Terry and John Low's interest in the New York Alki
properties and moved across the bay to Seattle. A devastating fire
followed by an optimistic rebuild, a frustrated attempt to become the
western terminus of the Northern Pacific railroad, a gold rush, and
the steady growth of maritime trade shaped City's destiny. Beyond a
fill comprised of garbage, sawdust, and the millions of tons of soil
sluiced down from "regrades" of the surrounding hills a mile of steam
ship piers and a railroad switch yard emerged along Railroad Avenue,
(later renamed Alaska Way). At the turn of the last century, most
passengers and freight moved around Puget Sound aboard the steam
powered ferries of the "Mosquito Fleet" but private yachts were
exceptionally rare. The waterfront of the largest city on Puget Sound
developed without any reasonable provision for mooring a small
pleasure boat.

Prior to the mid-1990's, the only moorage for pleasure boats along the
Seattle waterfront was some rickety old floats at the Washington
Street Pier. Boaters were subjected to constant ferry wakes. From a
vacant park to the immediate south, resident street drunks would
deliver a barrage of empty bottles and profanity. The air smelled of
rotting human waste. Few people ever docked there, and even fewer
would dock there more than once.
The Port of Seattle developed Bell Harbor Marina (named after nearby
Bell Street as well as pioneer farmer William Bell) at Seattle's Pier
66, and in 1996 Seattle finally had a top caliber downtown marina to
accommodate visiting boaters.

The entrance to Bell Harbor Marina is near 47.36.54 N and 122.20.81 W.
There are few hazards in Elliott Bay beyond the obvious presence of
some large commercial vessels and two busy ferry routes. Boaters
arriving in Seattle from the south will want to give the shoals at
Duwamish Head a generous berth, a task easily accomplished with the
aid of any appropriately scaled chart. NOAA chart #18450 is a good
choice when navigating in this area. Humongous cruise ships berth
along the outside of the breakwater every Saturday during the Alaskan
cruise season and will provide an excellent landmark. A tall sculpture
with a high spire is located at the access point to provide a visual
reference during the rest of the year. The entrance is a "blind
corner", so proceeding on a slow bell and sounding the horn are
reasonable precautions when entering or exiting.

Reservations are available up to two years in advance, and the marina
staff will place a red and white "reserved" sign on spaces that aren't
available for use by transient vessels. Bell Harbor is a favorite
destination for many yacht clubs located in the north and south sound
regions, and the Port of Seattle conducts annual drawings to award
reservations among the multiple cruising groups often seeking
reservations for specific holiday weekends. The dock nearest the
gangway is always reserved for members of the Muckleshoot Nation. Once
tied to the wide and stable floats, boaters should report to the
moorage office at the head of the gangway.

Guest moorage rates in 2007 vary from $1.00- $1.50/foot/day depending
upon the season of the year and the size of the vessel. (Boats over 50-
feet generally pay 25-cents/foot more than smaller craft). A lunch or
dinner stop of 0-4 hours is a flat $10 for any boat, regardless of
length. 30-amp shorepower is $3 per day, with either 50 or 100-amp
service available at some slips for $10 per day. Security is not a
major issue, even in this urban environment. No one can enter or leave
the marina without passing a check point with a locked gate, and banks
of cameras allow the congenial marina staff to keep a continuous eye
on the docks.

Bell Harbor is most definitely a metropolitan marina. The Highway 99
viaduct, with a 24-hour flow of traffic, seems to hover immediately
above the basin. Busy Alaska Way with a nonstop stream of tourists and
strolling locals overlooks the floats. The railroad tracks are less
than 200 yards away, and mile long freight trains thunder through the
district on a regular basis. Even the heaving metal plates suspended
under the cruise ship pier to form the marina's breakwater seem
compelled to join the discordant cacophony; they creak and groan as
would a rusted and riveted clockwork sea lion. Few boaters need be
unduly concerned about sleeping through all of this waterfront racket.
Anybody taking part in even a fraction of the scores of activities
within a 20 minute walk of the marina will be so joyously exhausted at
the end of the day that falling and staying asleep won't be much of a
challenge.

The Odyssey Maritime Discovery Center is located at Bell Harbor. The
museum and interactive exposition is easily worth the modest admission
as well as the allocation of 90-minutes or so to poke around among the
fascinating exhibits. Sandwiches, beverages, and convenience groceries
are available from the Bell Street Deli, while the Anthony's
restaurant chain operates three restaurants at this location.
Anthony's Pier 66 is on the upper floor of the restaurant building,
and offers above average food at above average prices in a reasonably
dressy atmosphere. Jan and I have often dined at the more casual Bell
Street Diner on the lower floor, where the above average food at about
average prices is apparently prepared in the same kitchen as the
supposedly more glamorous choices available upstairs. Boaters seeking
quick and tasty hot food might enjoy Anthony's Fish and Chips bar,
fronting the sidewalk along Alaska Way.

The Pike Place Market and Seattle Aquarium are easily accessible from
Pier 66. The waterfront street car line is temporarily out of service,
but a city bus stops at the marina several times an hour and then
follows the old street car route to the nightlife, galleries, and
bookstores of historic Pioneer Square as well as the exotic atmosphere
of the International District (aka "Chinatown"). Fans of the Seattle
Seahawks or Mariners can arrive in Seattle by boat, take a short bus
or taxi ride to the game, and return to (hopefully) celebrate aboard
the boat before cruising back to homeport the following day. The
countless upscale shopping opportunities in downtown department stores
and specialty shops are a moderate walk or short taxi ride from Bell
Harbor.

A climb up the stairs next to the Odyssey Maritime Center and use of
the pedestrian overpass to cross Alaska Way will bring a strolling
boater to the edge of Seattle's bohemian Belltown district. Belltown
is the approximate site of the land staked out by William Bell after
he left New York Alki with the Piner's Point portion of the Denny
party. Bell's original claim was on land that was sluiced away in the
"Denny Regrade" process that moderated the steep terrain immediately
north of the downtown business area. Bell surveyed his holdings
separately from those of the Denny family and Doc Maynard farther
south, naming Virginia and Olive Streets for his two daughters and
Stewart Street for son-in-law Joseph Stewart. During the 1980's and
90's, Belltown became a gathering place for avant garde artists and
musicians. Skyrocketing real estate values in Belltown have priced out
some of the former hipster art galleries, but the atmosphere remains
eclectic and some of the most interesting restaurants in Seattle can
be found in this community.

A significant and newly opened attraction sure to be of interest to
many visitors to Seattle is the Seattle Art Museum Sculpture Park. The
park is located just beyond Pier 70, about 6 blocks north of the
marina and no more than a 10-minute walk for most adults. The saunter
between the marina and the sculpture park pulses with contrasts along
the century old seawall.

Across Alaska Way are the railroad tracks, and most middle-aged
Seattle natives will recall a time when each pier was served by an
individual spur line. Burly longshoremen would wheel or carry break
bulk cargo from the holds of ships and into the long warehouses on
every pier. Cargo is now either so specialized or containerized that
the warehouses became obsolete several decades ago and have been
converted to tourist malls or removed entirely. The 1950's viaduct,
originally constructed to elevate traffic above the long-gone railroad
spurs below, speaks for its decade. Offices for the Clipper Navigation
Company and relatively recently arrived Norwegian Caribbean Cruise
Lines are immediately north of Bell Harbor marina. En route to the
sculpture park a visitor also passes the Edgewater Hotel (a relic of
the early 1960's), and the classic façade of Pier 70 (which was
"yuppified" in the 1970's).

The sculpture park is open to the public and there is no charge for
admission. Installations include a variety of modern and abstract
shapes and forms, with some traditional forms expressed in unique
scale or intriguingly juxtaposed with other objects. My favorite piece
is a glass wall along the pedestrian bridge. Vivid colors swirl and
merge between panels of glass, suggesting both a sunset sky and the
biologically rich eddies of a shoreline tide pool. The entire piece is
covered with perfectly aligned rows of uniformly shaped clear spots,
and when one views the glass wall looking toward the south the skyline
of Seattle, (featuring a million carefully aligned clear spots we call
"windows") is colored by the flowing stream of random organic shapes
and hues. This glass piece almost had to be installed in this specific
location, and would be much less effective without the surrounding
environment. Where it stands, it can address the idea that Seattle is
collection of the works of man, yet still delightfully overwhelmed by
the influences of sea and sky.

The Olympic Sculpture Park places a visitor at a vortex where several
eras converge. Traces of industrial activity are still within close
proximity, while rectangular blocks of modern condominiums climb ever
higher around construction cranes almost like pea vines scale a
trellis. The wildly imaginary forms of the sculptures contrast
distinctively with the practical shapes of functional residential and
commercial structures.

A glance to the east will bring the Space Needle into view, now almost
a comic symbol of the predictions for life in the 21st Century that
were themes of the Seattle World's Fair held 45 years ago. Instead of
flying cars, George Jetson buildings on useless stilts, meals in a
pill, and robot butlers in every home we have the wonderful, chaotic,
enthralling, distressing, and still somehow promising mixture of
times, places, and especially people that constitutes our modern
reality. Perhaps it's my advancing age, but I'd rather live in times
as they are than in any of the fantasy environments we were promised
during the Century 21 Exposition.

There is no shortage of things to see and do in downtown Seattle, and
Bell Harbor Marina provides excellent access for visiting boaters.


Very interesting. Lots of familiar names. And, to those that don't think
the PNW has great boating, you're right. It sucks.
Don't even consider trying it. Please. Dan

Narrow POV.
JR

Harry Krause wrote:


I really don't know why anyone boats "for pleasure" up there, but I know
a lot of people do. Even where I grew up in New England, "boating
weather" was bathing suit weather, and the water temps in Long Island
Sound were not bad from June through Labor Day. Not so in Seattle. Rain,
cloudy, cold weather. If I lived there, I'd had a totally different hobby.


--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Home Page: http://www.seanet.com/~jasonrnorth

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 20:33:57 -0400, Harry Krause
wrote:

Jim wrote:
Wow. 4000 words by my estimate. What do you say, Harry?
Florida Jim










"Chuck Gould" wrote in message
oups.com...
Warning, this is a bit long. Not written to be a post- but on the off
chance that somebody might enjoy it......


**********


Bell Harbor Marina

It was a winter of discontent.



Sheesh...that would require me to look a bit more closely...I'd say
about half that...around 2000-2100 words.

I really don't know why anyone boats "for pleasure" up there, but I know
a lot of people do. Even where I grew up in New England, "boating
weather" was bathing suit weather, and the water temps in Long Island
Sound were not bad from June through Labor Day. Not so in Seattle. Rain,
cloudy, cold weather. If I lived there, I'd had a totally different hobby.

Harry, you have a totally different hobby now! Who are you trying to kid?
--
***** Hope your day is better than decent! *****

John H