Darn it! The daily news is not getting any better. The entire world in financial upheaval… the world’s environment going goofy… politics, wars and confusion on all sides… and now this Seattle Times story about our Orca dying off. By the way, click on these if you’d like to listen to orcas talking, or watch videos of them in Puget Sound or learn more about them, or about Chinook salmon.

Here’s a trouble-below-the-surface story that ran recently in the Seattle Times about “derelict fishing gear” that is (sadly) killing our wildlife. While not too many of us use our GBs for commercial fishing (hey, a couple of people have!), we do pop those crab and shrimp pots over the side at regular and frequent intervals…like whenever we can! Turns out– a lot of this sort of stuff is still “down there” and doing no good for any of us, and our fantastic marine resource, whatsoever. Thank goodness some good people are doing something about it!

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Things aren’t going so well for the pleasure boating industry at the moment. One of our own local companies, and a major one at that, just declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And if you’re having trouble on your side of things…watch out for the guy cruising the docks in that little Livingston. He may just be “Repo Man”! Continue reading →

As sweet as our local cruising waters are, treachery is always just around the corner. In this case it was just around the northwest corner of Shaw Island which, a quick glance at the chart will show, is tricky territory. This sort of thing always happens just when you think you’ve got nothing to worry about. These pictures are from KOMO-TV’s chopper that was overhead minutes after the unfortunate boat-meets-rocks encounter.

Used to be that a gallon of diesel cost less than a gallon of gasoline. Last summer the two were about equal price-wise. Since then, a gallon of diesel has become 16% more expensive and poised to go higher still. Here’s what NYTimes has to say. Continue reading →

…given its low cost and its ease in arming and deploying”…according to a recent federal intelligence(?) assessment.

That’s why the Bush administration is now trying to enlist the country’s 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could be used to deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the country’s 95,000 miles of coastline and inland waterways. The Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office is arming harbor patrols with portable radiological and nuclear-detection equipment, starting here in the Puget Sound area. Continue reading →