Remembrance Day 2011

Although now a few days after November 11th, this powerful piece by Steve Garnaas-Homes, a United Methodist pastor serving in Massachusetts, still deserves thoughtful reading. Used with permission.

       He was wounded for our transgressions.

                  —Isaiah 53.5

Today, on Veterans Day, we honor those who have served in our military. Today we will romanticize them. Tomorrow we will forget them. The next day we will deny them medical care, housing and mental health benefits. The day after that we will ignore them while they suffer the wounds of war, the ravaging effects of doing and witnessing brutal violence, the mixed feelings of having served their country by killing people. We will debate the finer legal points of torture, while they bear the deep psychic scars of having participated in inhuman, soul-destroying duty. (It appears that the psychic damage of torture is as great on the perpetrators as on the victims.) They will wrestle with the reality that 90% of our war dead are innocent civilians, and we will tell them they are not guilty, because it's the price of freedom. They will do their best to believe that. They will bear the scars, the wounds and disfigurement, the nightmares, disorientation and loneliness of having borne their nation's insanity into the world. They will suffer the highest suicide rates in the nation. Of course many combat veterans adapt well and find ways to make their peace with what they've been asked to do. But not without psychic cost. We will thank them, because we don't want that blood on our hands.

But it is. Combat veterans are the victims of our practice of child sacrifice. We offer up their bodies as a sacrifice for our sin, an offering in our religion of war, the illusion that violence is necessary, effective and redemptive, the evil lie that our lives are made better by someone else's suffering. They are the victims of our belief that violence changes anything. As a nation we project our fear of suffering and powerlessness into the evil of war, and they—and all whom they engage in violence—bear the wounds. They are the children whom we have sent to kill some other mother's children. We honor them, but we do not stop sacrificing them.

Today I pray for all who are touched by the violence and inhumanity of war. To all who have given their lives I offer my thanks for their bravery, and their devotion to their country. God grant them rest, and honor their memory. To all who have chosen to serve, and to all who have suffered without choosing, I pray that God will grant mercy, healing and blessing. And in their honor, in the name of the Prince of Peace, who gave his life in nonviolent love, I devote myself to the end of our blood sacrifices, and to the mending of the world.

Boatlifters: The Unknown Story of 9/11

Earlier this month, along with many, many other bloggers commenting on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I posted "A Different View: Reflections on 9/11" Following that post,  friend, author, recent widow of a wonderful fellow boating comrade, forwarded this a new story, at least to me and probably to many of you, from that fateful day.


This is a story of how New York's maritime community were also responders. Katharine Herrup, of Reuters, tells it this way.

Much has been written and said about September 11, 2001, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, but one story much less known is the one about the band of boats that came together to rescue nearly 500,000 New Yorkers from the World Trade Center site on the day the towers collapsed.

It was the largest boatlift ever to have happened – greater than the one at Dunkirk during World War II. Yet somehow a story of such large scale became lost in all the rubble. But a new 10-minute documentary called Boatlift by Eddie Rosenstein captures the boat evacuations that happened on 9/11. The film is part of four new short documentaries that were created for the 9/11 Tenth Anniversary Summit in Washington, D.C.

“Boats, usually an afterthought in most New Yorkers minds, were, for the first time in over a century, the only way in or out of lower Manhattan,” says Tom Hanks, the narrator of the film.

New Yorkers don’t really think of Manhattan as an island since everything from the basics to beyond your wildest imagination is so accessible — not typically a feature associated with island life. But on September 11, 2001, those trapped below the World Trade Center site who could not escape without swimming or being rescued by a boat were acutely reminded of that fact.

“We wanted to tell a story that reminds Americans that this is a country that bounces back from adversity,” the President of the Center for National Policy Stephen Flynn, who had been a U.S. Coast Guard officer, told me. “Our national DNA is resilience. The key for us is to move forward with some key lessons and one of the lessons missing is the strength of civil society and how it responded when 9/11 happened.”

“People were actually jumping into the river and swimming  out of Manhattan. Boats were very nearly running them over,” says NY Waterway Captain Rick Thornton in the film.

The captains and crew of the fleet of boats who rescued so many on 9/11 came together with no idea what they would be getting into and no idea whether Manhattan would be attacked again let alone their very own boats. All they knew were that desperate people were in need of help and they couldn’t turn their backs on them, even if that meant putting their own lives at risk.

“If it floated, and it could get there, it got there,” engineer of the Mary Gellatly Robin Jones recalls.

“I never want to say the word ‘I should have’,” says Vincent Ardolino, captain of the Amberjack V. “I tell my children the same thing, never go through life saying you should have. If you want to do something, you do it.”

The New York Waterway, the Coast Guard, ferries, tug boats, private boats, party boats, small professional diving boats, and more ferried hundreds of thousands of people to Staten Island, Brooklyn, upper Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens in less than nine hours. Their crews are typical (in every best sense of the word) New Yorkers and ordinary civilians who came together after a distress call came in from the U.S. Coast Guard in New York.

“I’ve never seen so many tug boats all at once,” captain of the Staten Island Ferry James Parese says. “I worked on the water for 28 years, I’ve never seen that many boats come together at one time that fast. One radio call and they just all came together,” Jones said.

Perhaps one of the most amazing aspects of this mass-scale operation was that were no evacuation plans for such a rescue. “You couldn’t have planned nothing to happen that fast that quick,” Jones said.

It was the ethic code of the seas that made the boat rescues such a success. If a boat needed refueling, another one would pull up alongside it and give it 10,000 gallons of fuel with no questions asked or no one asking for payment. If a woman in a wheelchair needed to be lifted over the fence on the water’s edge to get into one of the boats, there were more than enough hands to help lift her. If people were stranded on a ledge by the water, they would get picked up by a boat. No one was left behind.

One of the arresting images in the film was of a massive throng of people pressed up against and even hanging over the rails along the water waving their hands, hoping someone would come to their rescue. They were at land’s end in downtown Manhattan, no easy place to conduct any sort of boat rescue since there aren’t many docking places or spots to put a boat ramp.

It was a day that lots of local, ordinary people become heroes. It was a day that was supposed to tear America apart, but instead brought Americans together. It was a day that brought out the best in many people.

 .

And many thanks, Cheryl Harlick, for passing this on for us.

A Different View: Reflections on 9/11

We were returning from the Canadian Gulf Islands were we had been cruising for a couple of weeks. On the last day of vacation we were docked at LaConner, sitting out on the aft deck of the Lady Mick, enjoying a cup of coffee. The cell phone rang and there was my stepdaughter:

"Are you listening to the news?"

"No"

"You better. The world is falling apart!"

It was Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001. Everything was falling apart. And we joined with the whole world as the horror unfolded. As we cast off and eventually entered the Sound, in the near distance an  ominous grey shape appeared as a USN vessel steamed south, almost at flank speed, going where? The Locks were deserted but open; the lock crew wondering and waiting to hear if the locks would be closed. Everything, everywhere, had a pall of frightened uncertainty.

That evening, secured at Thunderbird Marina in Lake Union, watching TV I saw for the first time the horrible sight of someone jumping from one of the towers. I chokingly pointed this out to to my step-daughter, who replied "And some of them were holding hands." (USA Today reported as many as 200 jumped that day.) Horrific!

The next days and weeks were filled with unimaginable images, with uncontrollable feelings and emotions, with confusion, and at the same time, like a drowning man, the struggle to try to make sense out of this non-sense. I found that I simply could not go to church (a somewhat normal practice in times of stress or need) for the rest of that week. I found myself quite withdrawn as I sifted and sorted what I was trying to fathom. I caught glimpses of prayer services taking place around the country, including Seattle. I watched the service at National Cathedral in Washington.

I did get to St. Mark's Cathedral that Sunday. It was good to have been there. As I looked around I saw many familiar faces (comforting). I also saw many new faces, young faces, many not church folk. The mood was one of need, of hoping, of a desire to find some sort of meaning in the midst of non-meaning. We were simply a collection of refugees.

Following the service I discovered an old friend visiting Seattle. Bob is a retired priest. He is also a retired USAF officer having flown with the Strategic Air Command before going to seminary. Bob told me that he had somehow managed to get through to his congressman, asking him if he had the guts to vote against the pending legislation empowering the president to use all military force necessary in response to the terrorist attack. He had responded that he simply could not vote that way at this time. (Only one congresswoman, from Oakland, CA, so voted against that sweeping legislation.) Bob went on suggesting to his congressman that only real response we could make was - - to forgive.

Today, 2011, sifting and sorting through a plethora of editorials, blogs, where are we, really, a decade and a day later? Even Sunday's comics, from Baby Blues, Sally Forth, Blondie, to Doonesbury make their own comment. Where are we?

Jon Talon, in yesterday's Seattle Times, wrote, "In attacking the U.S. . . . one of Osama bin Laden's major goals was to provoke a hysterical American overreaction that would begin bleeding the nation into economic ruin. Mission accomplished?"

Tony Karon, NY Times, helps with some perspective, describing a murderous crime scene in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania becoming a spiritual staging ground for an international war against "a tiny network of transnational extremists, founded on the remnants of the Arab volunteers who'd fought in the U.S. backed Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union."

And the cost? Let alone the trillion dollars spent, more critically the immoral cost of lives, with almost 50% of returning troops eligible to receive disability payments, with more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans' medical facilities, with veteran suicides topping 18 per day in recent years, and family breakups, are simply too incalculable to understand. 

For many other Americans the decade has been one of growing prejudice as Muslims have been cruelly subjected to Islamophobia, reminiscent, if perhaps not surpassing, that experienced by the Japanese-Americans during WWII.

Jim Wallis writes in Sojourners, "For a moment the world's last remaining superpower was vulnerable, and we all felt it. . . . in our sudden sense of vulnerability we were now, and perhaps for the first time, like most of the world, where vulnerability is an accepted part of being human. And in those first days, following 9/11, America, not the terrorists, had the high ground. The world did not identify with those who cruelly and murderously decided to take innocent lives in response to their grievances - - both real and imagined. Instead the world identified with a suffering America - -  even the front of the French newspaper Le Monde ran the headline, 'We are all America'."

Is this still the case today?

Tonight, on our local ABC affiliate, a young woman interviewed said we need to move, we need to remember, we need to forgive. One can only hope. The toll on us, let alone this whole world, this last decade has been unprecedented. To heal is perhaps the new mission to be accomplished.

Eric Darton, author of Divided We Stand: A Biography on New York City's World Trade Center, was being interviewed by NPR's Robert Seigel on "All Things Considered" just three days after the attack. Towards the end of the interview, Darton recounted that the night after the towers were destroyed, his 9-year old daughter climbed up on the kitchen ladder to look out of their Manhattan apartment window at the scene of the destruction. Night was falling, and she said to her father: "I think I'm beginning to see the new view."

We need to recall 9/11/2001, not as just the horrific event it truly was, but now as a means, a hope, a deep sense of resolve to heal - - in all areas of our national and interrelated world's life. For we are, and we can perhaps again be, a people that can "see the new view."

End of Puget Sound News & Weather

Puget Sound News and Weather, the communications vehicle for the not-for-profit-but extremely-important  People for Puget Sound, made its final appearance with today's blog. As its editor Mike Sato expressed earlier this month, PPS is "a people’s campaign for the good of the Sound, a campaign conducted by people, with the hearts and minds of people at its core: To hold ourselves and others accountable to do everything possible to ensure the health of our land and waters.” 


The ending of  Puget Sound News and Weather apparently is due to budget considerations.


As one who has cruised around the edges, and sometimes in the world of public relations and the media, it is always sad when an organization which relies so heavily on public awareness and people mobilization, as does People for Puget Sound, eliminates its most crucial tool. For me, the genius of PPS, in addition to its interaction with government, has been informing, inspiring, coordinating and making know to all of us what is happening and what is needed on the Sound, and giving us ways to respond. After all, we're the stewards of these waters and we need to constantly know where and how to be good stewards. Puget Sound News and Weather has done that for us, big time!


To eliminate this can be folly.


Mike Sato has been their communications director for 20 years, a person with a strong passion for this mission. Mike plans to continue at least providing the news clippings ("as a community service and because I'm a news junky"). This service will be a private undertaking, bearing no relationship to People For Puget Sound. To continue receiving his postings go now to "Salish Sea News & Weather" and subscribe. I certainly plan to, and I love the new name for Mike's blog!


Thanks, Mike, for what you've done these past two decades, and here's to your new cruising on the Salish Sea. Best of luck and may there be good seas ahead.

Serenading Whales?

It was nine years ago that we ventured up to San Juan Island for a most unusual event, one that peaked the imagination. Of course, much of the San Juan's can do that, but this was somehow beyond the islands' normal uniquenesses.


Have you ever serenaded a whale,  an Orca?


Well, that's what folk do once every year, gathering on the rocks at Lime Kiln Park on the West side of the Island. It all started eleven years ago with the City Cantabile Choir, Fred West maestro. Special speakers are lowered into the waters around this famous scratching site, at least famous to the Orca who scratch there on the rocky bottom, then the singing begins. Some times instrumental, some times by the choir, some times by everybody.

As the sun set over Vancouver Island on that clear, warm evening we joined with the choir . Some folk simply sat and gazed a cross the strait, the Salish Sea, others sketched and painted, and our sound echoed through the waters.

As  the evening grew cool, our enthusiasm started to fade with the sun. It was dusk, and despite our best choral efforts, the Orca were nowhere in sight. We had just clambered down from our rocky perch to head down the road to our car. Then a shout, "Here they come! They're coming! They're coming down, heading south!" And, lo, there they were, some way off the shoreline to be sure, but there. The music started up, the whales stopped their swim. They seemed to be listening. One spy hopped (to see who this strange group of sound making creatures were?). Then, after a few minutes milling around, again on their way South, perhaps to Cattle Point.

It was truly a magical moment for us, and perhaps for the Orca, who knows. Species singing to species. Awing. So cool.


We drove back to our island motel almost in silence, savoring the moment.


The 11th annual Orca Sing concert will be held this Sunday, June 19th, starting at 7:00 PM. Bring a flashlight and a $5 donation. Parking will be tight, so consider grabbing a bus from the ferry.

This year's concert will be dedicated to the wildlife and people of the Gulf of Mexico who suffered the devastation of the BP oil disaster.Orca Sing is sponsored by People For Puget Sound, Friends of the San Juans, The Whale Museum, American Cetacean Society--Puget Sound Chapter, The Whale Trail, Orca Network and the City Cantabile Choir. 

Hey, why not make this a whole weekend of activity while you're on the Island? Check out the Whale Museum, the book stores, and don't overlook the ice cream joint by the ferry dock!

You will never regret experiencing this. And who knows, the Orca may come again, and this time, perhaps, join you in the chorus?

Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

An excellent article, espcially at this start of the season for boating, rafting, and swimming, by Mario Vittone.

The new captain jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the couple swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. "I think he thinks you're drowning," the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. "We're fine, what is he doing?" she asked, a little annoyed. "We're fine!" the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. "Move!" he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, "Daddy!"

How did this captain know – from fifty feet away – what the father couldn't recognize from just ten? Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that's all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew knows what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, "Daddy," she hadn't made a sound.

As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn't surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC). Drowning does not look like drowning – Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard's On Scene Magazine, described the instinctive drowning response like this:

1. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. The respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
2. Drowning people's mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people's mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water's surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people's bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

This doesn't mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn't in real trouble – they are experiencing aquatic distress. Not always present before the instinctive drowning response, aquatic distress doesn't last long – but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in their own rescue. They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.
Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are in the water:

• Head low in the water, mouth at water level
• Head tilted back with mouth open
• Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
• Eyes closed
• Hair over forehead or eyes
• Not using legs – Vertical
• Hyperventilating or gasping
• Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
• Trying to roll over on the back
• Appear to be climbing an invisible ladder.

So if a crew member falls overboard and everything looks OK – don't be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don't look like they're drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them, "Are you alright?" If they can answer at all – they probably are. If they return a blank stare, you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents – children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

Mario Vittone writes on maritime safety with articles appearing in Yachting, Salt Water Sportsman, On Scene, Lifelines, He has also written for Reader’s Digest magazine.

The Charismatic Orca Gets A Break

Well, this past Friday our charismatic south resident Orcas (aka orcinus orca, or killer whales) got a boost with their protection when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced a tightening of the prohibitive zone around the whales. Now all vessels, motor boats, sail boats, and, yes, even kayaks, must stay 200 yards  from  the whales, doubling the earlier 100 yard restriction and 400 yards away if you're crossing in their path. (Vessels actively fishing commercially, cargo vessels traveling in established shipping lanes, are exempted. Hopefully, the whales know the Rules of the Road as well as where the lanes are.)


Behind all this are the scientific findings on the effect of underwater noise on the whales highly sophisticated natural sonar used to navigate and find food.These new restrictions will take place in early May.


Part of the original whale recovery plan started in 2008 also proposed a half-mile no-go zone along the west side of San Juan Island during the period May 1 through September 30 every year. This has not yet been mandated due to the extensive public response and NOAA's continuing study.


The bottom line is that the orca are endangered, and have been officially since 2005. The Southern Resident population peaked at 97 animals in the 1990s, declined to 79 in 2001, and gradually increased to an estimated 86 today. Noise is not the only threat to the whales. Diminished salmon runs is another. Pollution is yet another. If you want to keep up on the pollution aspect, keep in touch with People for Puget Sound, a premier organization. And if you want to keep up with where the whales are, check out a wonderful site,  the Orca Network with up to date sightings and whale news.


Most boaters that I know and have watched are very respectful of giving these mighty animals their space. Sure there are some yahoos, probably the same ones who fly right by you going at full bore, setting you rocking and rolling, and leaving you thinking all sorts of things about their parentage. But in my experience they are, thankfully, few. These new restrictions might mean stronger binoculars and camera lenses, but that's a small cost to pay to protect species, besides you and me, to ply these waters; we do it for our fun, they do it for life.


Another whole group will probably have a lot of trouble with these regulations, at least when they cross the International Boundary and bring their tourist sightseers all clad in their orange survival suits at full speed from Victoria BC into the San Juan Island (Stuart Island's Turn Point and the west side of Spieden Island are favorites). The whale-watching folk there, like Victoria's Prince of Whales which we've seen repeatedly buzz the whales to take pictures, plus other outfits from Vancouver Island, simply harass the whales. Last summer Steveston Seabreeze Adventures, from Vancouver, B.C., received one of five citations from Washington's Department of Fish and Wildlife, reports the Vancouver Sun, for coming too close to the killer whales


According to the Vancouver Sun, while Fisheries and Oceans Canada has not made comment on NOAA's new marine mammal regulations, nor said if any similar initiatives are being considered in Canada, environmental groups in Canada are stepping up.


Peter Hamilton, founder and director of the Vancouver-based Lifeforce Foundation, expressed to the Sun recently, "[Canada] has a moral obligation to at least meet, if not make better laws to protect the endangered orcas, because it's a trans-boundary species."


Current Canadian regulations restrict vessels to 100 meters (approximately 110 yards) from whales.


It is nice to know that at some level that we are paying attention to our marine environment, and caring for those with whom we share this part of the Salish Sea.

An Action Alert

The Recreational Boating Association of Washington serves boaters' interests in a great many ways, including state legislative actions. Here is an important alert just received from them:


OLYMPIA, WA March 31, 2011 -- RBAW ACTION ALERT

Legislative Amendment needed to 2SSB 5622, "Discover Pass" legislation – to prevent boaters from being double-charged!

Please call and/or e-mail your Senator – and particularly Members of the Senate Ways & Means Committee – today regarding a needed amendment to 2SSB 5622, a "Discover pass" bill pending before the Senate Ways & Means Committee. The bill establishes an optional $30 annual license registration fee, and a $10 day-use pass, in order to help prevent the closure of State Parks and other state resource lands managed by the Department of Natural Resources and Department of Fish & Wildlife.

We at RBAW support this legislation as a needed way to prevent the closure of State Parks and resource lands, particularly those that provide facilities to boaters. However, we believe it is essential that the Senate Ways & Means Committee amend 2SSB 5622 so that boaters who purchase an annual "natural resource investment permit" for launch privileges are not "double-charged" through this legislation. Through the launch permit fees (either $70 or $50, depending on the site and the launch) they already pay, boaters contribute a little over $1 million per biennium to the "Parks Renewal & Stewardship Account" (PRSA) that goes to the upkeep and maintenance and operation of state parks.

There is a basic fairness issue here – boaters can and will pay their fair share to help keep cherished state parks and resource lands open. But they should not pay twice if they already are buying an annual $70 or $50 launch permit.

We URGE you to support an amendment that could come either from Sen. Mike Hewitt (R-Pasco) – or may be under consideration as a Committee Amendment – to prevent this "double-charge problem." If we treat boaters fairly, and prevent double-charges, we win credibility with the public and we probably sell MORE of the "Discover Passes."

Please contact your legislators Today!
E-Mail or CALL LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE: 1-800-562-6000 (It's quick & easy!)

Please help with this amendment – and thank you for your consideration.

Cruising, Canada, and Licenses

The latest issue of SEA magazine has a good article by Candy Temple, "Smooth Operator (Card)", in which she, with her husband, John, describe getting the Canadian required Pleasure Craft Operator Card.


Since September, 2009 all powerboat operators are required to have this proof of competency card to travel  in Canadian waters. This also applies to nonresidents (that's most of us) who cruise in Canada for 45 consecutive days, or more. However, if you hold a Washington State Boater Education card, you're covered in Canada.


Washington has a graduated age requirement: for 2011 anyone 35 and younger must have this card to operate anything 15 horsepower or bigger (including any personal watercraft). Each year the age level increases.


However, if you were born before January 1, 1955, you don't need this card - - you get a free pass. They seem to assume that we elders are safe and wise!


Now here's the hitch. Neither Canada nor Oregon honor this age exemption, or the graduated age phasing in. Every age needs a card if in Canada 45 days or more.


Perhaps they have a different take on "safe and wise elders" than Washington. So if in Canada for 45 consecutive days or more, we safe and wise elders, too, need a Washington State Boater Education card. (And please don't call it a license. . . proponents of the card were very careful not to imply that this was in anyway a license - - so go figure.)


A further hitch? Oregon doesn't have the 45-day "free ride" like Canada. You need to have a card even for one minute on Oregon waters. Check out their regulations.


Need to get this card? You first need to take an exam, the best one is online at BoatUS. While this course and test are free, there is a $10 cost to get the card.


Be safe, be legal,  and cruise wisely. And don't let the Mounties get you! 

More Than a Pittance of Time For the World

Photograph: Takashi Noguchi/AFP 

A soldier from the Japan Self-Defense Force praying before recovering a body.
"May the soul of the departed, rest in peace."