Your intrepid photographer gets grilled by the law.

Now I’m not the sort of person to flout the law. Except that I speed, now and then, just like you do, the better to avoid being rear-ended by some poorly endowed guy in the Hummer behind me, I have always believed that doing things the legal way beats the prospect of a stay in the local pokey. Which is why the request that I submit to interrogation, the other day, rather took me aback.

There I was in Morro Bay, a charming little seaside village in central California, wandering among the fishing boats with 5D, KingPano head and tripod poised for action. In as much, that is, that this combination can be poised for anything, tending to the clunky end of the ergonomic spectrum. It’s the nature of the beast. The local Coastguard had raised one of their rubber dinghies out of the water for maintenance and its bright colors and interesting shapes naturally drew me like a magnet. Thanks to the QR heads I have fitted to this kit I was set up and ready to rock in seconds. Until, that is, the long hand of the law intervened.

Now you must understand that the Coastguard exists to prevent Mexicans, seeking to work in the US, from swimming twenty miles up the coast in frigid Pacific waters, in search of $5/hour. True, two million of them elect the land route annually, and if you have ever dipped a toe in the Pacific, you will know why. These fellows are not dumb. Still, should any one of them so much as try the Mark Spitz thing, be assured that the Coastguard and its huge annual budget will be there to protect our women and drive up the price of our vegetables.

“Our captain would like to know why you are photographing one of our boats” the voice intoned.

“Well, I’m not exactly photographing your boat” says I.

“Sir, you are photographing a military vessel. Please report to the office with your camera”.

Let’s step back a moment. We are not talking about the US aircraft carrier The Ronald Reagan here, equipped with a crew of 5,000 and fifty F-14 Tomcats primed with nuclear weapons, ready to destroy any country of choice at a moment’s notice. No, sir. We are talking about a thirty foot rubber dinghy.

En route to the captain’s office I quickly swap the CF card in the 5D with a spare. It’s not that I have any snaps of the dinghy on it, I don’t, but I sure as hell am not having my Limekiln redwoods snaps from earlier in the day confiscated by someone with more authority than the Commissioner of the IRS.

Anyway, after keeping me waiting for what seemed like ages while he finalized the pleasure cruise they were putting on for a local reporter in another Coastguard craft (your taxpayer dollars at work) I am suitably grilled by El Capitano.

After first reassuring him that my tan was acquired in the local vineyard and not in the Middle East, I chose the Obfuscation Route. After explaining that I am an amateur photographer with no thought of gain, I give him five minutes on Virtual Reality and how his boat is but a small part, great grand vessel that it is, of the larger design. He begins to glaze half way through this and lets me go, not before reminding me that “….you can’t be too careful after nine-eleven” you know and “You are dealing with the Office of Homeland Security, here. After all, sir, you are taking pictures which include a military vessel”.

I leave trying hard not to laugh while thinking of that 19 year old German air ace Mathias Rust who landed his Cessna in Moscow’s Red Square in 1986, at the height of the Cold War. Yeah, we won that one, too. One particularly apposite cartoon the next day showed a technical drawing of the plane captioned “Stealth Bomber”. So now I think of the dinghy as the “Stealth Destroyer”.

Wandering back to the dinghy, excuse me, military vessel, I tell the chap who apprehended me that “I have security clearance, you know” (always wanted to use that line) and set up the tripod et al. I take my pictures, after promising the Captain a copy (he says he has QuickTime on the Coastguard’s PCs so that’s something, I suppose), and go on my way, thoughts of hot lights and pentathol still in my head, and deeply reassured that, were we to be invaded by sea, all would be well.

Too bad it wasn’t sunny. You can see the Coastguard Office, where I was brutally interrogated, in the distance, half way around the circle. What I’ll do for a picture. Now about that army base nearby….