The first thing that comes to my mind is distortion.


The closer the subject to a wide-angle, the heavier the distortions are. In this case, the boat is close to the lens and that means the boat will be stretched out due to distortion. It's called barrel-distortion and the 17-40 has quite some of that.


Since the background is much further away, it doesn't suffer that much and so the background looks relatively realistic.


With for instance a 50mm prime, you will see that distortions are way lower, even close to nothing and so your image will be more natural.


What I try to say is this: the effect of a wide-angle on close subjects []


I don't know if I'm correct here, but I truly think this could be an issue for you.


Good luck next time []


Jan