Beam Reach

a little update

So I’m new at this blogging thing so bear with me. We’ve been here now for a week and I still like it! We’ve had gorgeous weather, only one cloudy day and no rain. This weekend was our first real chance to have some time to ourselves.

I spent a few hours Saturday wandering around downtown Friday Harbor. It’s a nice little town, similar to Bar Harbor in the types of shops just on a smaller scale. I was good and didn’t spend too much money. I did find a store that could prove dangerous, King’s Marine and Outdoors store, it has everything from crab traps to nautical charts, to nice patagonia long underwear. They had some nice kayaks for sale and all kinds of cool kayak gear. Not to mention all of the neat books about boats and navigating and local wildlife. I limited myself and bought only a crazy creek camp chair which I’ve been wanting for awhile and it was on sale so I figured what the heck it might be nice to have on the boat.

After returning from town I worked a bit on my proposal and then Colleen, Emily and I went out for dinner. We walked into town and ate at Dos Diablos, it wasn’t the best mexican food but it was fun. Sunday was spent working and procrastinating (which I am very good at). I finished a bit after 8pm just in time to join my classmates for a movie over at G cottage. We borrowed the class LCD projector and hooked that up to a computer and projected it onto a sheet on the wall. It worked great and was much better than all trying to crowd around a single computer screen.

Even in just this first week we have had some great speakers. We had Kari Koski who works with a group called Soundwatch. They go out on the water anytime the whales are around and monitor how well boats follow the “Be Whale Wise” guidelines. If they see a boat that is not they will go over and explain the guidelines to them and give them a brochure that outlines them, it is a really neat program and she offered a different perspective on some of the issues.

On Thursday night (I think) we went and heard John Stern speak about his work. He is the minke whale go to guy and since baleen whales are near and dear to my heart I enjoyed his talk. He’s a funny guy and he knows his stuff. The talk was at the house being rented by the Center for Whale Research for their earthwatch volunteers. It is pretty much at the top and maybe even part way down the other side of Dallas Mtn. It had an amazing view and the sunset was spectacular. The house looks out over Haro Straight and Vancouver Island. It was a fun, casual forum and I learned quite a bit about the rather skittish Minke.

We all handed in our rough drafts of our proposals this morning so that feels good. For me that is the hardest part, getting that initial stuff on paper. Well class starts again in about 5 min. so I suppose I better get ready. This afternoon we are having a guest speaker, Bob Francis who is going to talk about marine sustainability and then he will guide our journal club discussion tomorrow.

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