Tuesday, January 17, 2017

A Bizarre Landscape


I went out looking for photographs today, and stopped at a yacht service down by the water.  I saw a classic sailing yacht among plastic covered motorboats and thought that would make a shot.  But it didn't.  And then I turned around and saw this!  These boats are shrink wrapped for the winter which protects them and keeps them clean.  The material is polyethylene and after it is stretched on the yacht,  heat is applied with 240,000 BTU heat guns, which causes the sheeting to shrink about 25 percent, forming a tight coating.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did your inquiring mind ask someone at the club about shrink wrapping? 25% sounds like a huge amount!
Joan

Anonymous said...

This made me laugh. I looked at it quickly and it reminded me of when we were kids and used to play "ghost" using sheets! Our hands would be stretched forwarded because we couldn't see in front of us! Mom wouldn't let us cut eye holes!

Ken Spencer said...

I didn't think to ask the owner of the marina details about the process. He saw me standing on the lawn, near the sidewalk as he was driving into his marina. He asked what I was up to, and I showed him the shot. I said I loved that the scene looked strange. He said that to him it looked like money! The cost of shrink wrapping, when I looked it up, is between $40 and $60 PER FOOT of boat length. So for a mid price guess of $50 a 40 foot boat would cost $2000 to wrap!
Anonymous: I laughed at your story - I can imagine why your mom wouldn't let you cut eye holes in the sheets you were sleeping on! Thanks for posting this!