July eBook pages 1-91 (16.1 MB) - Latitude 38

TERRI WATSON
SIGHTINGS
ocean watch completes her circuit
massacre
After 13 months of voyaging, the 64-ft steel cutter Ocean Watch
returned to its Seattle homeport last month, thus becoming the fi rst
vessel ever to complete a lap around both North and South America.
That remarkable accomplishment was bittersweet, however, as the
specially equipped vessel’s route through the fabled Northwest Passage
was aided by the fact that Arctic ice is decreasing at a shocking
rate — last summer, every boat that attempted the transit was successful
for the fi rst time ever.
All along the 28,000-mile route of the Around the Americas expedition,
hard-wired instruments and visiting scientists collected a
wide range of data which is being shared with several national and
international research projects. But the principal aim of the ambitious
circuit — which crossed latitudes between 74˚N and 56˚S — was to
Page 78 • Latitude 38 • July, 2010
continued on outside column of next sightings page
Serge contacted the park folks and asked
if they would like the trees trimmed. They
agreed to pay him and Robin $25 per tree
to do the job.
The couple bought a small pickup, a
chainsaw and a ladder. Early one morning,
they started in. About 10 minutes
into trimming the fi rst tree, Serge was
overrun by large, green velvet ants that
bit the crap out of him. Turns out that
they live in almost every tree. It also turns
out that’s why nobody wanted to trim the
trees. However, by painful trial and error,
Serge and Robin fi gured out that it took