First Aid Reference

May 6-12, 2012, is Emergency Preparedness Week. Time to dig out the boat rations and check the expiry dates. The Alberta Emergency Management Agency (AEMA) theme for this week is “Who depends on you in 72?” They recommend preparing for a disaster with a 72 hour emergency kit, a “ready-to-go” kit, and an emergency plan. As I look around my apartment, I’ve got most of what I need for the 72 hour kit. Hmm except for water. Not quite enough water for two people. I’ll have to do something about that. Island Song is a different story, we have 100+ gallon water tank so as long as we keep it full we have potable water on the boat.

Fresh water is my theme for this week. AEMA recommends a backpack for the ready-to-go kit, which is easy enough to put together. Four litres of water for each person is a lot to carry. BUT fresh water is the first thing that runs out and can be hard to get in an emergency situation. When the fires hit in Slave Lake AB a year ago, people had to evacuate immediately and had many had no time to put together a kit. That’s something to think about.

AEMA “Who depends on you in 72?”   http://www.aema.alberta.ca/pa_emergency_preparedness_week.cfm

Get Prepared   http://www.getprepared.gc.ca/

Emergency Info BC   http://emergencyinfobc.gov.bc.ca/

Sea Trials - at the upper helm

The Semiahmoo Bay Regatta is on today and the bay was full of sails. I’m sure they would have liked a little more wind … but that’s sailing!

Semiahmoo Bay Regatta

Cheers!

Island Song in her slip

Another beautiful Friday – and another chance to go kayaking around the harbor. This weekend the International Yacht Club of BC is holding their Semiahmoo Bay Regatta. Boats will complete a distance race on Saturday and on Sunday race around the buoys. Already the boats are starting to sail in to Blaine Marina.

Outside the breakwater

Friday the 13th gets an undeserved bad rap. We’ve got sun, wind and waves: TGIF!
And 13 is a prime number.

ttyl

Scupper - aka cockpit drain

Now it’s time to tear them apart and re-seal them. Eww! Definitely wet wood and some sort of old goo that was supposed to keep the water out. It took me most of the day to get one apart, cleaned, and reinstalled with new boat caulk. (Ok I did stop to help Jeff with the engine.)

resealed scupper

Meanwhile, Jeff has spent much of the day in the engine crawlspace. He emerges excitedly, saying he can now pump fuel from the starboard tank to the port tank to the day tank.  :-)

It might sound like a simple task, but it’s a big deal. We have multiple fuel tanks. Moving fuel around means we can adjust tank levels and trim the boat. It also means we can “polish” or filter the fuel as we move it around. This is important as diesel that sits too long in the tank can accumulate water, algae and bacteria. Yep, stuff grows in it!

“Taking Charities out of Politics”
Christina Blizzard writes about charities that use donations for political purposes. A Canadian Senate Inquiry finds that certain organizations enable cash raised in the U.S. to be funneled to Canadian environmental charities, which then lobby our government.

If the article link above doesn’t work, try this one:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2012/04/08/19607741.html

Christina’s article raises several questions:
Is it ethical for charities to use donations for political purposes?
How can we find out what charities are REALLY doing with our donations?
Just because an organization is a charity - why do we assume that everything they do is charitable?
Should a charity that lobbies our government also receive government funding?
And is it ethical if a charity receives foreign money to manipulate Canadian public opinion?

April evening

It’s a beautiful evening at the marina. Part sun and cloud today, it’s wonderful to see the days getting longer. I missed the water … glad to be back near the ocean! Maybe we will see more sunshine this Easter weekend.

Cheers,
Lorna

This is one of the days when the axis of the Earth is neither tilted neither away from nor towards the sun. The day and night are almost equal in duration (this is a close as it gets).

What most of us here in Canada will notice is that the sun is once again setting in the west! Below is a graphic taken from the astronomy software Stellarium:

Stellarium sky view from Edmonton

The software is showing us what the sky looks like at approximately 19:56 (7:56 PM) on March 20, 2012, looking west from the city of Edmonton, Alberta. The ecliptic is the path that the Sun follows through the sky, relative to the stars, as seen from the vantage point of Earth.

[Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic view of the sky, similar to what you see with the naked eye. It has versions available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.]

South Lake Union

We had wonderful weather today and the weekend forecast looks great as well.

Island Packet Estero

We took a close look at the Estero, a 36′ sailboat made by Island Packet.

The show was great and ends this weekend. If you miss it, there is still the Vancouver Boat Show coming up February 8-12.

Cheers!