The Vancouver Fleet met on March 25 at the Scottish Cultural Centre with 10 people present and 11 on Zoom. As always there was good enthusiasm.
The meeting started with a show and tell where Duug presented a wire ‘Grabber Nabber’ which is great for retrieving objects from the bilge. He also spoke about a Facebook page to help identify random boat parts you don’t recognize. The ESRC team provided a snippet to remind BCA of the importance of being aware of protocol when navigating and anchoring within First Nations Territories. The two following links provide the boundaries of Indigenous territories, whether sailing globally or locally.
The main speaker for the evening was BCA lifetime member Guy Druce. Guy has sailed single handed around the world in 247 days and logged over 55,000 miles. Guy is not your typical sailor, preferring simple manual setups to the more complex setups in most vessels today. Key takeaways included the importance of learning and practicing good seamanship, which helps develop judgment, ensuring safe sailing. To this end, he emphasized that technology cannot replace knowledge, which becomes more intuitive and accessible with practice. Additionally, Guy discussed the importance of prioritizing essential equipment and the need for backups, keeping an eye on simplicity. Realizing that electronics are now a given, he emphasized the need to ensure paper charts and the knowledge to use them, as critical, not only for backup, but also to validate electronic information. He reminded the Fleet of the importance of power management and battery selection and emphasized secure handholds and tie down points for safety.
The next Fleet Meeting takes place on April 29. Guest presenter Rick Ellis (another BCA lifetime member) will review how the oceans and cruising are changing as a result of climate change and El Niño. He will discuss how to prepare in general for these changes and specifically how to prepare when sailing from the Salish Sea to Mexico and across to New Zealand. And he will also present the impacts of climate change and El Niño on the islands of the equatorial Pacific so cruisers are aware of the challenges these islands are facing and how that might influence cruising plans and destinations.
Rick holds a Masters degree (Ecology – UBC) and has worked on numerous wildlife, biodiversity and species at risk projects. He created and taught BCA’s first weather course while assisting cruisers with weather routing via SSB radio. Rick has developed at least three other courses for BCA, including the very popular, “must-do” course, The Psychology of Voyaging. He recently wrote an “Extreme Weather Adaptation Plan” for rural communities, and has given talks on climate change.
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