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Vancouver Island Fleet Report - March 2023

Al Kitchen - VI Fleet Coordinator

Wyndspree
Huntingford 53 Ketch
April 2nd, 2023

The 2022-23 Fleet season is winding down and Wednesday night, March 15 was the second last evening of the season. One of our new V.I. Fleet Coordinators, Campbell Good joined Daragh Nagle and I to lead our in-person V.I. Fleet Group of 14 sailors in a workshop addressing the use of MBTiles with Open CPN.

I started out by demonstrating how to access MBTiles from “The Chart Locker” (a web site created by Bruce Balan) and incorporate them into the groups of assets available to use with Open CPN. This library of Google Map and Bing satellite imagery and other navigational assets for questionably charted areas of the world can provide offshore mariners with helpful views to plan their travels while avoiding common hazards. Daragh then took on the heavy lifting by guiding Windows users down the path of creating these Tiles yourself for areas of specific interest to you by accessing the layers of satellite imagery available on-line. (Mac users are not yet able to perform these tasks with their operating systems)

This was after Daragh had scoured the bilge for his classic goodies for Show & Tell including everything from why your beer cans should be stored upside-down to his powered winch handle.

Our next (and last) regular meeting will be on April 19 and will start with David Mitchell’s Show &Tell peek at his boom brake. We then immerse ourselves in a discussion regarding insurance led by Sean Thompson from Dolphin Insurance and follow up with Daragh’s look at paperwork and bureaucratic concerns while offshore.

The year will wrap up on the following weekend with the Fleet Rendezvous, April 21-23 at Port Browning, where such adventures as heaving-to, life raft deployment, mast climbing, and boat visits will keep us all engaged, I’m sure.

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