I got back to the ship for a bit of a rest and to let the new cough syrup do its work. By “sail-out’ the skies had cleared and I felt well enough to go out on deck to watch us pass under the three Forth bridges.
The one closest to the ship was the newest, the Queen’s Ferry Bridge. It was opened by the Queen just the day before and the day we were there was closed to vehicles so people could walk across. It is a cable stay bridge. The second forth bridge is a suspension bridge modeled after the San Francisco Bay Bridge, it too carries vehicles, although it will handle the trucks while the new bridge takes on cars. The third forth bridge is the famous 1890 Forth Railway Bridge, the second largest cantilever bridge (The largest when it was built) in the world. In 2016, Scots voted it their greatest engineering achievement. It is red with two tracks on It and was difficult to build because when they drilled for the foundations the silt was more than 200 feet deep. But build it they did. Sailing under the three bridges, watching the way steel cables and steel lattice work play against each other and the light is a wonder. Prinsendam had to lower her masts to get under the Forth bridge. In this series of pics I am playing with lines, cables, girders and geometric shapes.
