Setting a New Course

January was named for the Roman god Janus, the protector of gates and doorways. He was pictured as two-headed, with both heads bearded; one head looked forward while the other looks aft, with a retrospective view.


A few weeks ago fellow boaters and friends came ashore for dinner with us. As the evening drew on, and being faithful readers of this blog, they asked, "So, what is this blogger's block you last mentioned all about?" As I stumbled to come up with an appropriate response, John added, "What I really like are the comments and the ideas you mention, not necessarily the 'how to' stuff" (or words to that effect). Gives one pause. Not being an editor of Chapman's Piloting I may well be burned out on the 'how to' stuff.


So a new course is set as we look forward like Janus, one which continues nautical matters, but also veers at times to touch on other interests, as the description of the blog at the top of the page suggests. A new course with a new name: "Aft Deck Musings . . . ." A new course with a new name and now more folk joining this cruise as new addressees join  greatly increasing the current 400+ viewers currently receiving (and hopefully, reading) this blog.


But, and this is very important, our well respected CruiseMasters Boating Instruction program is still very much alive and on course. Almost 600 boaters have taken this program since it started thirteen years ago; that's 1,252,100 client/hours of instruction! Click on the web site to the left to find out a lot more about CruiseMasters.


So, Happy New Year, and here's to our new heading!


I hope you enjoy it.

Photo: moored at Ganges, Salt Spring Island, B.C., 2006

It's Been A long, Long Time

A six-week cruise (on asphalt, not water this time) covering 6,999.0 miles port to port (too tired to go around the block for that final mile) and covering Yellowstone, Grand Tetons and Jackson, WY; Steamboat Springs, CO; Lincoln, NE; Nashville, TN; Santa Fe, NM; Sedona and Grand Canyon, AZ; and Bryce Canyon and the Great Salt Lake, UT.


An equal time catching up at home and decelerating, plus jumping in with patient new clients for CruiseMasters Boating instruction.


 And the world goes on and happenings happen since my last posting on June 4th.


The disastrous Gulf Oil leak has been stopped, but the disaster, easily forgotten beyond the Gulf, lingering on for how many more lives and years . . . People for Puget Sound's wonderful and dynamic executive director Kathy Fletcher announcing her retirement next year as that influential public advocacy group celebrates it's 20th  . . . that organization's efforts to have Smith and Minor Islands (off the west side of Whidbey Island) named as a state aquatic reserve made official this week with a signing ceremony in Coupeville, with Protection Island now in their sights as a next aquatic reserve designation . . . the boat brokerage business struggling upward but still very soft . . . the Salish Sea designation becoming more popular with boaters and cartographers . . . Loran-C officially dead, we were one of the last areas closed down . . .


A new Orca calf born in August to L pod, part of the southern resident population which makes the San Juan's their home . . . new federal regulations on the horizon to further protect the whales, with fines likely to be 30 to 40 times those of the state . . . for the 2011 boating season boats also may be banned from within 200 yards (currently 100 yards) of the whales . . . the entire west side of San Juan Island (where the 87 resident whales spend the majority of their time) possibly off-limits in the near future to all boaters . . .


Apple's iPad and iPhone4, bought in Nashville and Salt Lake City, respectively, now integral fixtures of this Mac-prone family . . . a second iPhone 4 making its appearance when the first went (groan!) overboard into Poulsbo's Liberty Bay . . .

Argosy Cruises' venerable MV Kirkland, a restored 1924 wooden-hulled car ferry with a fine history on the Columbia River and later on Puget Sound before being converted to a tour boat plying Lake Washington, caught fire last month and is now beyond restoration . . . the large chamber at the "Locks" opening and closing (on a very limited scale) by hand after being struck by lightning . . . US Navy's statement that "a confluence of factors" apparently came into play although "we cannot definitely say that the USS Port Royal caused the incident", explaining the ship's wake that destroyed thousands of oysters that were washed up high and dry on Hood Canal beaches two months ago . . .


And most recently, and personally very frustratingly: "blogger's block"; How do you restart a blog after almost a half year's silent absence from the pathways of cyberspace . . .


Yes, we're still here, enjoying this unusual warm weather while awaiting La Niña . . . Are you still out there?

Photo: At the Red Valley, on the way to Bryce Canyon UT

World Environmental Day, or is it?

Random thoughts from the aft deck.


Tomorrow, Saturday, is World Environmental Day.

But it is also a day of downers with the big oil gusher in the Gulf still spewing with little promise of an end in sight, at least not right now for the sea creatures and the birds and the coastal marshes and lands, let alone the folk who live and work on those shores. Irresponsible criminality doesn't even come close to describing what lies behind (underneath?) this. Perhaps corporate hubris on a giant scale comes closer.

Looking at charts of the spill in far away waters, with little reference to scale, doesn't quite carry the devastating impact.

Want to make it closer to home?


Thanks to People for Puget Sound's Facebook posting, "Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster" you can do just that. Click on Location (just above the chart), enter Seattle (or anywhere else you'd like), then click on Move The Spill and you'll get a sense of what this would mean if it happened here (or elsewhere).


To be sure, a downer of a way to end a week. But for many Gulf shore folk, not to mention all those Gulf critters who use to fly and swim and crawl, this week has been their end, literally.


Wonder when we'll learn . . . 


Photo: A seabird covered in oil wades in the surf at East Grand Terre Island along the coast of Louisiana, June 3.

A Memorial Day

The honoring of those who were killed in our wars has a special place for me, as it must do for countless others. Though frankly, I have some difficulty in saying that "they gave their lives"; I'm not sure that was their intent when they joined and went to war. Going into action was a way of defending values and causes, and if this meant that you were injured or killed, that was the cost. But of all the men (there were no women in combat then) I've served with, I can't say that they joined the Forces to "give their lives".


Which is all the more the reason to honor them.


For many years the time of honoring was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the day that the Armistice was signed ending the so-called Great War in 1918. As a youngster growing up in California years later, that was the day the Legion handed out poppies (remember Flander's Field?) and solemn ceremonies were held at the town's cenotaphs as wreaths were laid and vets remembered their chums and toasted them well into the night at  Legion halls across the land.


Memorial Day has an interesting history, staring in the mid-1800's as a remembering of the Confederate soldiers who died in the Civil War. And it well may have started with formerly enslaved blacks who created a Confederate cemetery from a mass grave to individual grave sites in Charleston, North Carolina, and marked May 1, 1865 as the first memorial, or 'Decoration' day. It wasn't until 106 years later, in 1971, that Memorial Day became a nation-wide observance and a federal holiday, reaching beyond the South to all of the USA, to be observed on the last Monday of May each year.


An unique side-bar, at least for Canadians, is that Newfoundland and Labrador also have a Memorial Day. During the First World War Newfoundland was a largely rural Dominion of the British Empire with a population of 240,000,  not yet part of Canada. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment was deployed first in Gallipoli, and at the end of that campaign the regiment spent a short period recuperating before being transferred to the Western Front in March 1916. In France, the regiment regained battalion strength in preparation for the Battle of the Somme. The infantry assault was to began on July 1, 1916 and at 8:45 a.m. the Newfoundland Regiment received orders to move forward. All the officers and slightly under 658 other ranks became casualties. Of the men who went forward only 68 were available for roll call the following day. For all intents and purposes the Newfoundland Regiment had been wiped out, the unit as a whole having suffered a casualty rate of approximately 90%.


The province of Newfoundland and Labrador observes Memorial Day during the morning of July 1 (now Canada Day) at the National War Memorial in St. John's and at the cenotaphs around the province, flying the Union Flag at half staff, and in the afternoon and that evening celebrates Canada Day with the rest of the Canada, of which they became a  province in 1949.


Be it an Army of the Confederacy memorial, a memorial of the United States forces in the Great War and World War II, a memorial of those who fell in Korea (which was my war), in Viet Nam, in the Middle East, and in all of those conflicts small and large of recent memory, we do them a grave injustice if we do not remember their dying. We perhaps do ourselves an even greater injustice if we do not remember, humbly and not with noisy and hollow bravado, what those thousands and thousands of deaths meant.


For many, Monday will be simply part of a three day weekend, and three day weekends play an important part in the our  hectic and oh-so-busy daily lives. But it would be good for each of us if we but took a moment to reflect what this Monday is really about, to center in for a moment of time, to reflect on why we even have this particular Monday and what it may, what it can mean for each of us and our common humanity on this fragile island planet we call our Earth.


Lest we forget . . . . .


Photo: the National War Memorial, St. John's, Newfoundland

BP's Gulf Oil Spill

Thanks to Mike Sato, People for Puget Sound's great director of communications, for passing on this web site that is up to the minute on the Gulf oil situation:

http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com/go/site/2931/

How It All Started

From today's delancyplace daily email, a bit of history to enlighten your “Tax Day”. 

Faced with the unprecedented cost of the Civil War, the U.S. implements an income tax:

"With steady news of the Union's defeats in 1861, public confidence fell sharply. ... Adding to [Abraham] Lincoln's concerns, the Treasury secretary [Salmon Chase] reported that he had underestimated the cost of the war for 1861-62. Rather than $318 million, Chase now put the figure at $532 million. And only $55 million in taxes was expected.

"The Union army's defeat at Bull Run in July 1861 cooled the desire of banks to lend to the government. Chase and congressional Republicans decided they must raise taxes aggressively to produce more revenues to reassure investors. They first considered a property tax, a method last used in the War of 1812 ... [but] the suggestion evoked a sharp reaction from populist and agrarian interests ... [and] intense congressional opposition led to a search for a tax that would be considered fairer by rural constituencies. Legislators were aware of the various features of the British income tax, which had first been proposed by William Pitt the Younger in 1798 to pay for weapons and supplies in preparation for the Napoleonic Wars with France. Implemented in 1799, the tax featured graduated payment rates, with the lowest set below 1 percent and the highest at 10 percent.

"The idea of a federal income tax was widely regarded as radical and nearly inconceivable. Those suspicious of any increase in federal financial power considered it another attempt by the federal government to undermine the power of the states. Wealthy Americans deplored it as an unjust and heavy-handed federal intrusion. ... [However,] in need of revenues and anxious to offset grumblings that low-income farmers and workers were bearing the brunt of the war's cost due to high tariffs, the [Congress] passed legislation levying ... a 'flat' 3 percent on incomes above $800 signed into law by President Lincoln on August 5, 1861. Most Americans made far less than $800 - the average annual income that year was $150 - so the vast majority did not have to pay the tax. ... Interest on mortgages was made deductible ... Congress attempted to increase tax fairness further, as well as obtain additional revenues, by including in the bill an inheritance tax - the first in U.S. history - on estates in excess of $1,000.

"To improve tax collection, Congress adopted another practice from Britain called 'collection of revenues at the source.' ... It required federal agencies to withhold taxes from the pay of civilian and military employees and railroad and financial institutions to withhold taxes before distributing dividend and interest payments to investors."

(Robert D. Hormats, The Price of Liberty, Times Books, 2007, pp. 63–69)

So now you know how today all started. Have a nice day!

Duwamish Alive

DUWAMISH ALIVE!

RESTORATION DAY MARKS 40TH EARTH DAY ANNIVERSARY

Earth Day celebrates its 40th anniversary this April and Seattle celebrates with its 5th annual Duwamish Alive! Earth Day Restoration on Saturday, April 17, at multiple sites along Seattle’s ‘hometown’ river.

Duwamish Alive! brings together  over 30 conservation groups and governmental entities organizing over a thousand volunteers to work at 12 work sites in the river’s lower watershed.

Work sites include a river cleanup by kayak and canoe, shoreline salmon restoration, and forest tree planting. Families, company groups, clubs and fraternities and sororities are encouraged to participate, and no experience is necessary.

These volunteer restoration projects complement government efforts to clean up the contaminated sediments at the bottom of the Duwamish River.  Improvements in the health of the river will benefit people, wildlife, and runs of threatened salmon on the Green/Duwamish River.

“The restoration of the Duwamish depends on community, non-profit, government and corporate partners working together to restore the urbanized environment,” said Dhira Brown, project coordinator for People For Puget Sound.  According to Brown, the Duwamish River Estuary has less than three percent of its original habitat remaining and the project’s goal is to help bring back at least 30 percent of the river shoreline for wildlife habitat.

At the North Wind’s Weir work site, volunteers will be planting thousands of marsh plants and spread mulch around the sapling trees and shrubs at the newest restoration site on the river.  A ribbon cutting ceremony and a ‘run of wild salmon’ will celebrate the official “opening” of the North Wind’s Weir Estuary Restoration Area.

Working at the North Wind's Weir site are People For Puget Sound, King County, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, and the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle.

The workday at all the sites begins at 10 AM and concludes at 2 PM.  After the workday, volunteers are invited to attend a free Earth Day Festival at Pathfinder School in the Delridge neighborhood. The Festival will feature food, kids' activities, informational booths, music, and special Earth Day surprises.

More information on sites, volunteer signups, sponsors and participating organizations is found at DuwamishAlive.Org. To volunteer, email da@pugetsound.org or call (206) 382-7007.

Late-March Three-dot Meandering

Remembering way back when Sweet-Sixteen was this young man's dream and not a tournament, but go Huskies!! . . .   celebrating the passage (finally) of a health bill and recalling my posting last August 9th which resulted in one lost blog addressee yet surfaced lots more affirmative comment, including docs, plus new blog followers. . . hearing a senior very conservative pol in England state, "Well, today the States finally joined the rest of the industrial nations . . . when tea was a positive and enriching daily parental activity (five times a day), not a crude bashing-prone party . . . musing that a small piece in the health bill requires restaurants to now post calorie content of menu items (enough space on a Big Mac wrapper?)   . . .


Wondering how mongers like Beck and Limbaugh and their ilk get sponsors, let alone listeners, and if the good ol' mayor of Mt. Vernon is still handing out keys of that fair city to those likes . . . if words like "nigger", "faggot", "baby killer" will continue to trump civil discourse, spittle included. . . if race-baiting and fear-mongering will be the language of tomorrow's body politic . . . if the "loyal" opposition will ever admit their complicity in fermenting all this extreme nastiness . . . trying to figure what renagades Washington's Attorney General to suddenly become oh so-constitutional threatening to block (with some other state AGs) the health care legislation. . .


Remembering yesterday marked the 30th anniversary of El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Romero's assassination, a true champion of human rights and economic equality in a country that tromped on both, and a witness to what real faith is really all about . . .


Musing if there is a more spectacular scene than taking the ferry from Port Townsend to Keystone last Friday . . . not counting the Skagit Valley's lush vibrant yellow carpet of daffodils . . . and the wild rush watching thousands of snow geese swarming the valley's fields like excited teenagers at a rock concert  . . .


Remembering the late San Francisco Chronicle's late Herb "Bagdad by the Bay" Caen's signature three-dot column-style (which daily delighted my mother and thousand others), so admired and blatantly copied here . . .


And finally wondering how this posting can possibly be justified as "nautical", perhaps calling this all jetsam and flotsam?

Kilochan II

I don't always highlight a particular brokerage, but a recent email twigged some warm nostalgia.


It was the Summer of 1986, July 11th to be exact, that I took ownership and command of the 1962 37' ChrisCraft Tri-cabin, the "Angel Witch". I had bought it from a young broker (who rushed his check to the bank, probably to make a first payment on his new house!) The vessel had been moored in Eagle Harbor, Bainbridge Island as a live- aboard for 1-1/2 years.


The name didn't appeal, and we soon renamed her after my grandparents' British Columbia coastal homestead and my grandfather's work boat, "Kilochan". The original Kilochan (c. 1911-12) puttered from North Vancouver, BC, up the BC coast servicing and repairing the many lumber camps' equipment. No one was ever sure of the exact spelling of Kilochan, derived from a coastal Indian name. Anyway, I recall my Dad's stories of Kilochan heading out from NorthVancouver to head North, having to time the First Narrows current off Stanley Park so that at maximum throttle the stout vessel would go forward, not backward, with the flood current.


The day after gaining her new owner, the newly named Kilochan II made her first new-owner voyage from Lake Union to Jackson Cove on Hood Canal, home of the BSA Camp Parsons, with the intrepid crew son David Jackson and good-friend Mike Evans (avid scouter and Group Health doc). That was the start of many glorious cruises and a whole rediscovered life for me.


One of my favorite yarns was a three-generational cruise with David and my Dad (aged 87). We had spent a delightful, quiet evening at anchor in a deserted bay just off Port Ludlow. No one around, nothing but primitive shoreline, supping good single-malt scotch, not saying a word, gently watching a sea otter, a kingfish and a heron working the shore line. Of course there was the friendly seagull hovering in hopes of another helping of cheese-wiz. He was there, patiently waiting, the next morning. Tide was low so we eked out with Dave at the bow with a lead line. Today that quiet bay is wall-to-wall homes noisily cluttering the whole shoreline.


Sometime later, leaving Shaw's Blind Bay and then Friday Harbor, we made for Cattle Pass and a return home. Weather clear, minimum wind, going with the current, right at the narrow we passed an incoming tug going full bore. Our first "rock 'n roll" experience on the Kilochan and stuff went everywhere. I had the helm, Dave at my side hanging on, Dad with his perpetual lit pipe standing in the companionway to the wheel house exclaiming, "Marvelous! Marvelous!", probably bringing back memories of WWII days on tankers sailing the North Atlantic. The galley sole was covered with Grape-nut-Flakes, Dad's favorite, and which he'd forgotten to stow when we left.


On that same run I made like a seasoned navigator. We were to close on a buoy just off Smith Island. I make it easily, feeling quite smug, only as we closed on it to have it turn, look haughtily at me, and then gently submerge. So, no longer relying on very large sea lions as a way points, we quickly replotted our way home.


Kilochan II was a marvelous vessel. Not only was she my live-aboard home for many years, she also brought back many, many boating memories. I loved her, and she taught me a lot. 


So, back to July '86.


The broker was a Bruce Ramon, now president of Wolfe Marine. Bruce just announced that Wolfe Marine was moving April 1st (no April Fool's joke implied, I assume) a few yards west into the Bob Picot building.  The move doesn't mean Wolfe is closing shop. Far from it. The new look will no longer have on-site brokerage-moorage. Boats for sale will be at the boat's own moorage. A wise, perhaps risky, move in these tight times? But then, boats always look better in their own slips rather than huddled together in a broker's corral. As Bruce puts it, "a greater focus on listing and selling, rather than the catch and release of marina operation."


Take a visit to Wolfe Marine. 

O Canada

Before someone brands me as a male chauvinist,  there were really TWO Team Canada vs Team USA gold medal hockey games. We all saw the spectacular overtime Canadian win Sunday afternoon. But did we forget the women's game three days earlier, when Team Canada shutout Team USA 2-0? I think we did.


So, here's to Canada's gold medal women's hockey team . . . . .

WAY TO GO, CANADA, EH?

Vancouver 2010

A spirited non-nautical musing.


This morning I mentioned to a group of folks that having dual-citizenship, I could root either way at this afternoon's Gold Cup hockey game, but that I did have a bias, which I wouldn't expose to them.


But now? 

OH, CANADA !!!!!!!!!!

YES !!

Oh, yes. Please excuse the shouting.

The Olympics and The Weather

OK, this is not exactly a boating post. That is, unless you decided to cruise up to Vancouver for the Olympics. On the other hand, however, I suspect that even boaters might have driven up to the Olympics. For the rest of us, we watch on the delayed (bad, bad NBC) broadcasts on TV.

But if you're waiting, and hoping, for weather that better fits what's needed and wanted for a Winter Olympics, you're probably going to be disappointed, very disappointed. Well, probably not as disappointed as our Vancouver neighbours and relatives, not to mention the local committee.

In a nut shell, it looks bad. As Cliff Mass, UW weather guru and my favorite weather authority (officially, professor of atmospheric science), describes in his latest blog posting, " the Olympics venue will be better for surfboarding than snowboarding. Heavy rain. Thick fog" for the next few days. Check out Cliff’s posting.

Ugh!

While even that most powerful International Olympic Committee can’t control Mother Nature, and slush happens, I can’t help but feel sorry for Vancouver, the athletes who won’t break world records, and my own Canadian roots - - Vancouver and North Van are probably my ancestral home.

But the Games will go on.

And we will watch and be thrilled and be amazed at the athletic skills of, oh, so many young men and women who have gathered to test their skills and delight their fans.

And thank you all for that!

And the Great Northwest will continue to be the Great Northwest, come rain or high water or slush.

Now They've Gone And Done It!

An AP bulletin today brought the grim news. "The plug is being pulled" was the lead sentence. In three weeks it will come to an end.

For years we heard that that this would happen, only to hear a bit later that there would be a reprieve. Now, no reprieve. They really mean it.

After over 25 years of popular use, the LORAN-C navigation system will end Monday, February 8th when most of the 24 transmission towers will be turned off, the remainder being shut down by October 1.

LORAN, the acronym for long-range-navigation, was developed for military ships and aircraft during World War II, and in 1957 a civilian version, LORAN-C was introduced. The basic system involved radio transmissions from two geographically separated towers, with the receiver measuring the time-of-arrival difference between the towers. It was extremely precise, pinpointed your exact position, your Latitude and Longitude.


I used my Ross LORAN-C for many years on the Lady Mick, eventually adding a GPS. While the GPS was far faster computing changes (LORAN-C always took a few seconds to 'catch up' if the change was severe), I always found my LORAN-C to be more accurate than the GPS when it came to getting me precisely to a waypoint or a particular spot out in the waters. I could rely on arriving sometimes within 10 yards of a target! Not bad.


While many, if not most recreational boaters headed for GPSs - - many didn't even know of LORAN-C, or else dismissed it as a technological relic, commercial fishermen seem to still use it as a trusted system. Well, not after February 8th, they won't.


The Department of Homeland Security, according to the AP, says that the elimination could save $36 million in 2010 and $190 million over five years. The US Coast Guard says it will result in eliminating 256 jobs.

LORAN-C

R.I.P.

Check Lists and All That

For years I've tried to impress on clients taking the CruiseMasters Boating instruction program, as well as other boaters recreational and professional, the use and value of check lists. In my own publication, "The Art of Basic Boathandling: A Training & Reference Manual" (which clients get free!) I must have at least a dozen sample checklists just waiting for the boat-owner to adapt for her or his particular vessel; for fueling, for preparing to dock, for leaving the dock, for anchoring, just to name a few. Not exactly exciting reading, but important, nevertheless.

Now comes some strong authentication: "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right", by Atui Gawande, published by Metropolitan Books. Dr. Gawande, an American-trained surgeon from India, describes his book as being about how to prevent highly trained, specialized workers from making dumb mistakes. In a recent interview by the Seattle Times Dr. Gawande describes the key things about a checklist. It has to be short, limited to critical steps only. Generally the checking is not done by the top person. In the cockpit, the checklist is read by the copilot; in the operating room it is done best by a nurse.


For us boaters, our cruising partner (assuming that we are at the helm) could, and should, be the reader.

In his interview with Time's reporter Bruce Ramsey, Dr. Gawande traces commercial pilot use of checklists back to a flight in 1935, when Boeing's B-17 was being tested by the Army Air Corps. On that first flight it took off, stalled, crashed and burned. The new plane was complicated, and the highly experienced pilot had forgotten a routine step.

Sometimes hierarchy can present a problem. Ever met a skipper who knows it all? The doctor wondered how the this might play out in an operating room after a nurse saw a surgeon touch a non-sterile surface.

Nurse: "You have to change your glove."

Surgeon: "It's fine."

Nurse: "No, it's not. Don't be stupid."

Back to Ramsey's interview, highly intelligent and trained people are, occasionally, stupid. And the more complicated tasks become, the easier it is to crash and burn with even a 1% error rate on each step.

Brings to mind a time we were anchored in Port Townsend Bay while attending the Wooden Boat Festival. As evening came so did the wind, and all that night, while we held fast, other boats were breaking loose and quickly blowing past us, some being chased by rescue boats, one ending up on the rocks near the ferry terminal. It was not a nice night. Our guests, berth in the forepeak, experienced nothing but pounding and bouncing all night long. (They still cruise with us, though.) A friend who knew the area well wisely hauled anchor and made for Mystery Bay; We stayed put, not really knowing the area and trusting a firm anchor.

The next day, though feeling very confident having made a good anchoring, since the wind was still strong we decided to make for the safety and quiet of the Boat Basin harbor. Pretty full, but we got a commercial slip, and a comfortable night following. The next day as we left for Seattle, as we pulled out I heard a whip-snap sound but couldn't relate a cause, so on we went. The wind was now quiet, the sea almost glassy. So we cleaned up lines and fenders, and there it was, the female end of the shore power cord, still fastened to the boat, but no cord! I had forgotten to disconnect the electric cord at the dockside. An embarrassed radio call to the harbor master to say that there was a still live electric cord afloat in his slip (great for electrolysis), and then a mental self-flagilation for not using the checklist, the 'Leaving the Dock' list, that is.

So much for earlier confidence.

So, make use of your checklists, and get things right.

And if you read this in time, catch Dr. Gawande's appearances in Seattle this Sunday 7:30 and 9:30 PM at Town Hall; Monday 8 PM at the Sorrento Hotel; and Tuesday Noon at the Washington Athletic Club. Tickets through brownpapertickets.com.