June 4, 2010Although at first glance, they may look like bombs, they are not. Buoys 92 and 17 mark the entrance to the parking lot at the 17th Street Docks next to the Maritime Museum. The blacktop on the left leads in from Marine Drive, and the blacktop on the right serves as parking for cars, tour buses, and a venue for the occasional fair. The main Maritime Museum parking lot is behind and to the right. The River Walk passes through this area, and it's always a pleasant place to go because of the interesting things on the water, the docks, the friendly people walking, biking and sightseeing, and interesting decor such as the buoys. It's also one of the stops for the Riverfront Trolley. I wonder what it took to get Buoy 17 for the 17th Street location?
In the background you can see the Shallon Winery and Custard King, and towering above them are the Owens-Adair Apartments senior housing and care facility, which used to be St. Mary's Hospital. The tan or brown building is a furniture and appliance store where I once found this big drip on the other side.
This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.
5 comments:
They DO look like bombs don't they? I remember seeing them on a trip to Astoria some time back. I vaguely remember thinking maybe it was some kind of war memorial. I guess I should have got out and looked, yes?
I never realized how BIG buoys can be. Take something out of their usual setting and it takes on different dimensions... Is there a life lesson in that? :-D
They are really big b(u)oys! A good idea to mark something, even for distract people...
Are these still used?
Sorry, I'm a couple years late writing this. It was genius for the Maritime Museum to place these buoys as they did. Black buoys are always odd numbers (17) and red buoys are always even numbers (92). But that's not genius of the placement. The address of the museum is 1792 Marine Drive. Moreover, I'm sure 1792 was selected as the museum's address because that is the year Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River.
These are pretty old buoys. Modern buoys of this size for protected waters have a heavy flat ring that allows the buoy to stand on land. For ocean and river bars, the buoys have a long tube that extends into the water that makes the buoy about 26' overall. On the Columbia bar, the buoys are (I believe) 9' in diameter and 38' overall.
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