Taking a sea taxi

Watching as the two pilot boats took up, what appeared to be, sentry duty to the recently emptied container dock, I concluded they were waiting for something to come in.

Indeed they were.

Accompanied by a large tug, a flat bed cargo ship came in with four clients destined for the marina.

On the front with an incredibly tall mast attached is a deep sea racing yacht, complete with extra long fins to elevate itself from the water, two wide bellied catamarans and an exceptionally posh (and probably fast) speed boat.

I hoped to spend a few, very contented hours watching the unstrapping then dismounting of these vessels. After all there's plenty of time and turn around on dock space as well as ship hire is in the thousands not hundreds.

It's only when I saw people standing on the racing yacht that I realised just how big it was.

It began to turn into a 'how many men to change a lightbulb' moment with six men going repeatedly to the bow of the boat and climbing inside only to emerge, stand and discuss, change something they'd just done and then disappear again.

So far the straps are off save one holding the nose in place, the body of the ship is attached to an on board crane, the sails have been positioned and tied down, but they are still wandering up and down the body only to disappear inside the nose area.

Meanwhile, life goes on; fishing boats chug past to go fishing, containers are loaded and unloaded ready for the next ship in and still we wait the lifting out of the yacht.

Finally! In what seemed a matter of seconds the boat lifted, twisted out and is now hanging next to the mother ship/taxi.

Wonder if all the boats are part of the same team (support vessels and the like)?

That's a question I'll never be able to find the answer to.