The VI Fleet is lucky to continue to welcome new members as the season progresses and we did so on February 9 when Siggi and Johanne Kemmler joined us for a look at safety gear and sail repair and maintenance.

But not until we had volunteers for March (the Hiscocks) and April (Marina Steele & Rob Boeckh), and the Cooks dazzled us with 3 great items:

• The SeaWise Safety Checklist
• The NaviSafe Dinghy TriLight
• All In One (AIO) Offline Maps

Dan Bieler from Pacific Coast Liferaft showed the group the devices and services his company offers and took questions on the topic of life rafts. He has also committed to providing a raft we can deploy at our Fleet rendezvous in April, an event that will certainly be informative especially if we can coax some hardy souls to try boarding it from the water.

After a short break Paul Betts from Leitch and McBride lead an informative discussion on sail repair while pointing out the limitations of the virtual platform. Our usual procedure would see this as an in-person visit to his loft to get our hands on the materials and tools involved.

Al Kitchen then presented a Power Point with several useful links to other safety gear web sites and photos of a variety of gear available through different outlets.