Thursday, October 16, 2008

Locks in Seattle

Continuing on about our Washington trip...

After Glen's wedding, after visiting the dam and fish ladder near Wenatchee, we said goodbye to the rest of the family and Greg and I continued on for a fun and beautiful vacation. Click to supersize these pictures. They are of BIG things, and you get a lot better feel for how it looks when you see the full sized pictures.


Here we are at the lock between a huge lake and the ocean in Seattle. The doors at the lake end of the lock are opening. They have a white railing along the top, because when they are closed they are a bridge to the other side.

The lock doors on the ocean side are closed.


When the doors are open all the way, boats enter the locke and are tied to the side.
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Many boats entered and were either tied to the side of the lock, or docked next to the big boats and were tied to them.

The doors on the lake side are closed now, and the water is lowering. The ropes that attach the boats to the sides have to be long and loose to allow the boats to sink as the water lowers.



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When the water has lowered to the level of the ocean, the ocean side doors open and the boats go out. As soon as they all leave, a line of boats who were waiting on the ocean side begin to come in. The whole process takes about 30 to 40 minutes.

It was very interesting to watch!

2 comments:

Marie said...

That looks really cool! What are the tires for on the side of the boat, are they used as a bumper?

Joyce said...

Yes, I think it is a tugboat.