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Vancouver Island Fleet Report – January 2023

Al Kitchen – VI Fleet Coordinator

Wyndspree
Huntingford 53 Ketch
January 25th, 2023

The January VI Fleet meeting began by extending a welcome to our new members, a past member Mel Finley, and one of our coordinators for next year, Campbell Good. Mel joined us before she heads off to join Morgan and their girls in French Polynesia. Unfortunately, Campbell’s assistant coordinator, Bill Eisenhauer, had a previous engagement and couldn’t join us this time. The usual announcements followed before Brent Alley reminded folks about the current Education offerings.

Shannon and Doran Jones then shared a look at three handy devices to have on board:

  • a lead line to sound out your anchorage
  • a range finder so your vision doesn’t fool you about how close that other vessel or the shoreline is, and
  • a Digital Inspection Camera to see what is really going on in that impossible-to-get-at hollow behind your whatever

Al Kitchen then presented a very short look at some of the safety gear available with sources to search out which device might work best for you. Some of these will be further examined at the Fleet rendezvous in April. This left loads of time for Jamie Cox to dig into his topic and share his onboard experiences from his many offshore excursions.

The ten sailors who attended our January VI Fleet meeting in person and the fourteen with us on Zoom experienced a unique opportunity to hear from this presenter. Jamie is recently home from his amazing voyage from Victoria up the coast via Haida Gwaii and Alaska through the Northwest Passage to Greenland. He took a detailed look at safety procedures on board based on his crew briefing documents including many topics from watch procedures to Liferaft boarding.

When Jamie finished answering questions from the group and the meeting broke up, the discussions continued with sailors sharing their cruising experiences with others planning to venture to the same locations. It was uplifting to witness the mutual support this group offers to like-minded sailors pursuing their dreams.

On February 15 we’ll have Debbie Warren talk about Weather Routing followed by Bjarne Hansen discussing Batteries and Charging Systems, two more topics of high interest to this group.

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