Discovery Channel tonight

[Guest]

With the time difference on the east coast, the ones on the west coast may catch the Coast Guard film on some of the rescues in New Orleans after the storms. I think its around ten on the west coast.

[Greg Luckett]

Thanks for the heads up. It is on here now, EST 10:36PM.

[Guest]

SOme of this stuff will give you chill bumps on the legs, being familiar with some of the obstacles that was encountered And few of the flight crews have never worked together before getting on the helicopters.

[Greg Luckett]

I found myself simply unable to watch much of it. I am feeling a sense of overload with disasters. The tsunami in Asia, Katrina and Rita on our Gulf coast, volcanoes and mud slides in Yucatan (?), and the also horrible earth quake in Pakistan and India. I feel so useless/helpless just sitting and watching the news about these disasters and all I can do is pray for those affected. Too much sadness for me right now I guess.

Time to go boating and to build another boat I think.

[Guest]

IF you go back in history, you will find that we also had major disasters of epic proportions, as the experts would say, but did not have 24/7 coverage, with cameras mounted on the heads of the rescuers. And yes we have more people die in most of the disasters, even if we use just one disaster as an example. So when all else fails or when you just need a break, turn the boob off and work in the shop or in my case, today, I will go for a sail this morning.

Again, thumbs up for these folks that went about their appointed mission of rescuing without prequalifying them first.

[Frank Hagan]

I had this one set to record on my DVR, and I was amazed at the stats given in the end ... the CG rescued 35,000 people? Did I hear that right?

I suspect that included a lot of evacuations that were less dramatic than the ones they showed, but you have to hand it to those guys.

[Dave Fleming]

Semper Paratus

Cape May, New Jersey Recruit Company P-42, 1958

[mrthethird]

THAT is a cool pic.

[Greg Luckett]

Can you imagine the difficulty in rough water to coordinate the rowing alone and yet get somewhere and make a rescue? It is amazing to me, and yet it was done all the time then.

There was a ship that foundered in the early 1940s (another November storm) in Lake Michigan not too far from here. It was in sight of land and the locals drove their cars to the beach and turned on the headlights to encourage the sailors on the ship. The Coast Guard (or equivilent at the time) would not put out because it was too rough. Finally some locals went out in a commercial fishing vessel and were able to rescue all but 2 of the crew. The ship was lost and is sunk on the bottom. I often wonder how many of the the CG folks went out on that fishing vessel too and bet there were some if not all. I have weathered North Atlantic gales, a couple of typhoons in the South China sea, gales in the Med, and a couple of Atlantic hurricans and yet this Lake out here scares the dickens out of me. It changes so incredibly fast and there is no real room to run while weathering the storms. In a few hours you will hit shallow water and break up.