Mark Alan Lovewell
Inhaling water poses the greatest threat of death, far above hypothermia, for someone accidentally falling into cold water.
At a talk on cold-water immersion, a Vineyard doctor warned a gathering of 40 boat enthusiasts that the best way to stay alive is to keep your head above the water at all costs, especially in that first critical moment.
“You can be one of the best swimmers,” said Dr. Michael Jacobs, but unless you can keep your head above water in that first instant of immersion, you could drown.
Winter is the ideal season when wood shavings fly, drills and sanders sing and Vineyard boat builders assemble and repair boats.
At one of the Island’s smallest boat shops, Rick Brown of Far Cry Boats in Vineyard Haven is working on two. Space is a premium inside his 15 by 36-foot workshop with limited heat. His fragrant shop is at Maciel Marine, next door to John Thayer’s cabinet shop, and has one of the best views of Lagoon Pond. The air smells of fresh-cut oak.
Friends and relatives came Saturday to celebrate the 100th birthday of Thelma Luce Baird. The gathering at Windemere Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Oak Bluffs included colorful flowers and two birthday cakes, and was documented by a dozen flashing cameras.
Mrs. Baird’s centennial birthday party was a community event, a time for the exchange of greetings, memories and pictures of a changing Island.
Mrs. Baird said she was honored by all the attention and she said she liked seeing all her friends. She couldn’t thank them all enough.
THE UNNATURAL HISTORY OF THE SEA. By Callum Roberts. Island Press/Shearwater Books, Washington, D.C. 2007. 436 pages. Hardcover, $28.
Last spring when the herring started showing up in Island coastal ponds, I got a call from a fisherman asking, “Where are the mackerel?”
More than 15 years ago, Brian Braginton-Smith of West Yarmouth came forward with an idea to meld wind power and aquaculture in what he envisioned as an “ocean ranch.”
Mr. Braginton-Smith’s proposal was the seed for what became the controversial proposal by Cape Wind Associates to place 130 wind turbines on Horseshoe Shoal south of Cape Cod.
The visionary now has separated himself from Cape Wind, saying he is concerned about the impact such a project would have on what he sees as an environmentally fragile fishing ground.
For Rick Karney, director of the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group, 2008 is becoming the Year of the Blue Mussel.
In recent weeks, Mr. Karney’s group has received positive news about the prospects of raising blue mussels in local waters.
While the Island group already raises juvenile bay scallops, quahaugs and oysters for participating towns on a regular basis, the organization also is participating in a blue-mussel experiment that could expand aquaculture to the open water.