It was a long day, but an instuctive one. This weekend we are all down at Annapolisdor USA Sailing's "Safety at Sea" course, presented by the Marine Trades Associatin of Maryland. The first day has been a great experience. The information was great, and there was a lot of it, with even more tomorrow.
Bill and I headed dowwn after work to Annapolis to meet up with Bob and Matt who had arrived earlier in the day. We made it to the hotel just prior to 10:20. Bob had checked in for us, so we did not have to deal with any of that. We were able to go directly to our room, and hve a quick touch point with Matt and Bob, along with a quick scotch (we are the Wafflers after all).
We were up at six so that we we could get to the Naval Academy in a timely fashion, get checked in, and get our seats. Ken Reade, the keynote speaker, was amazing, and had a lot of good stories to tell that he used to communicate good information. He was one of many speakers in the morning where we got information on interacting with the coast guard, man overboard maneuvering, damage control, and more.
After the morning lecture, we adjourned to the water for a demonstration by the Midshipmen (and women) of the Naval Academy of man overboard recovery techniques. They were awesome, and incredibly well trained. They put on a great show, and demonstrated what a well trained crew can do (video available on the Seafaring Wafflers Facebook Page). We Wafflers aspire to be as good.
The afternoon had more lectures. We got good information on using maintaining safety equipment, and a very interesting medical lecture that spoke about the dreaded sea sickness and hypothermia. These are two major items for blue water sailors.
Tomorrow we will have some damage control excercises, and an excersise in the pool in which we go in the pool in full foul weather gear and have to make it into the life raft. This should be an interesting exercise and is sur to generate some waffler sea stories.
