Oceanside
Sunday 21st September, until about 2pm, was spent looking around "Harbourdays" which appeard to be a festival focusing on the harbour area of Oceanside. As with other festivals we've been to here, there was free parking some distance from the festival and a free bus shuttle to and from was provided. The best bits were:
The Bolt Gallery, which is a young artist who welds scrap steel into sculptures. For those who have seen the tin artist at Salamanca Market, this guy similarly used scrap items but with a SciFi theme. Some of his sculptures were Star Wars, Alien or Predator characters and others were originals. We were so impressed that after walking around the rest of the festival we returned and bought a sculpture. See www.boltgallery.com.
US Coast Guard. The USCG has an auxillary (completely voluntary) at Oceanside and they had a USCG Patrol Boat open for tours. The young guy who took our group on a tour was excellent - he was very enthusiastic, knew a lot, and made all those on the tour want to join up! We saw just about every square inch of the boat. It was very new, and had all the conveniences including 6 speaker stereo in the bridge. Our tour guide was employed for his multilaguage skills, being fluent in Spanish and Portugese.
US Marine Corps. There is a USMC base immediately north of oceanside and they had a display on the beach. There were some jeeps and trucks, a dune buggy looking vehicle, and two Armoured Personel Carriers - one a commuications post and the other a standard APC. Jo sat in the drivers? seat and had her photo taken. The most interesting thing, however, was the hovercraft - is was quite large and could carry heaps of people and equipment. Really it was just a huge roll-on, roll-off platform with the engines and fans on the sides. The fans were huge, about 2m in diameter.
