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?