Thursday, 9 August 2007

Thursday notes

Nice bright day with good sunny spells, and feeling reasonably warm outside. Temperatures of 18C at the moment, that's 64F.

Some rather sad background to the incident when a girl died after her boat overturned in Loch Carnan, South Uist last Friday. She was not found to be missing for 90 minutes after the boat, containing 14 army cadets, turned turtle in poor weather. That's very, very poor. In 1993, an incident with sea-canoes in Lyme Bay, Dorset, caused the death of four youngsters. Their boats were swamped the moment they entered the water, and were taken out to sea by the current. This prompted the review of school trips and particularly those involving outdoor pursuits. I am frankly appalled that an army-led expedition was allowed to go ahead in the force 7 conditions that prevailed 6 days ago, and that nobody realised one of their number was not there.

The two tropical cyclones in the Western Pacific are on their last legs, but a new one maybe forming far out, east of Guam. Tropical storm Flossie is moving west towards Hawaii, but won't reach there for a week.

1 comment:

  1. You're right, it's appalling how the military can be depended on to be so consistently unprepared, misguided, and in this girl's case, tragicaly incompetent.  I can't begin to imagine her family's ire.   CATHY

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