I wanted to watch the arrival of ALULA, the chair-bound boat, last night but when it got a bit dark I gave up, thinking the live video wouldn’t amount to much. I forgot that it doesn’t get dark until very late in Ketchikan. Oh well, I watched the video this morning.<\/p>\n
It was nice to see Mark again, obvious on the boat as it came in because he never stops moving. I was surprised to see three on the boat because when I was at Pt Hudson I thought I saw 4 crew. So they started with three chair-bound guys, and lost one along the way, then added Mark. He sails an almost identical boat, and carries two crew, both of which are off-shore sailing athletes with dozens of extreme races under their belts.<\/p>\n
Of the two crew he was helping, one had never sailed before. Ever. His first trip was the 750-mile, 18-day trip in what could be described as an “extreme” sport on a stripped down racing trimaran. The welcoming party was large, and very celebratory. It was a grand party for a big achievement.<\/p>\n
But then I became concerned. Here was an inexperienced crew on a technical boat who applied for, and was accepted after vetting, to engage in an extreme activity that is dangerous and life-threatening.<\/p>\n
These guys were racing, and the chance of disaster for a crew of paraplegics was high, especially so because of the lack of experience. The race organizers need to look a bit closer at the risks before approving the racing teams. I think the race organizers took an unacceptable risk in this case. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wanted to watch the arrival of ALULA, the chair-bound boat, last night but when it got a bit dark I gave up, thinking the live video wouldn’t amount to much. I forgot that it doesn’t get dark until very late in Ketchikan. Oh well, I watched the video this morning. It was nice to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1663,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1662\/revisions\/1663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martincassidy.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}