A few years ago I wrote a boat review article for a sailing magazine. It was
a labor of love for me, the boat was a San Francisco Pelican, my first boat (35
years ago!), and a sailor's first boat is like his first sweetheart, she stays
with him forever.

I tracked down a Pelican in Pensacola, Florida, and after contacting the owner,
Pat Pulaski, he invited me to come up and spend the weekend with his family at
his house on the water on Pensacola Bay. Pat is a successful furniture
repairman and master woodworker, a craftsman of the old school, who rescues and
rebuilds old, beat-up, sailboats for a hobby. His second home on the waterfront
is also a source of income for him, and he rents it out to vacationers in
season. Check it out, it is quite remarkable.

http://www.boathousevacationrental.com/

It was a magic time, the place is beautiful, and the setting is exquisite. We
spent the weekend taking pictures and sailing, and swapping sea stories.

After hearing the Gulf oil spill was heading his way, I gave him a call. We
talked on the phone for a time, and I got to hear how this will affect real
people, in their own words. The natural beauty of the Pensacola area is
threatened, not to mention the economy, if that oil comes ashore there. Pat's
business, perhaps even his livelihood will be a casualty for sure; he
reconditions heirloom furniture for high-end customers, and the economy of the
entire area is based on two industries, fishing and tourism.

His rental property will certainly be affected, although not directly on the
Gulf, a Southwest wind will push the oil directly up the Bay, one of the few
remaining rural sheltered waterfront coasts in the nation. Of course, his own
personal life will be impacted as well. I could see when I stayed there just
how intertwined his life and that of his neighbors is with the sea. We even
piled into his Pelican to go out for burgers and a few beers.

He was cleaning up from a hurricane when I was there, an exercise they have to
go through every few years, but this time it will be different. No one knows
just what to expect, or how long this new plague will linger. This coast knows
how to deal with storms, but this contagion from the bowels of the earth is new
and terrifying, a great unknown.

How bad it will be, how long it will stay, the area that will be affected, is
all up in the air. My contacts in Tampa report the authorities there are
mobilizing for the worst should the leak continue and the oil gets carried by
the Loop Current south along the coast. The entire Florida Gulf Coast, the Ten Thousand Islands Wilderness,the Everglades and the Florida Keys, the offshore coral reefs, all are potentially threatened.

Here in Fort Lauderdale, the Emergency Operations Center and the Coasties are already considering their options in the unlikely, but not
impossible, event that the plume makes it around the Straits of Florida and into
the Gulf Stream. It seems inconceivable it could be that big, but nobody really
knows, this has never happened before in a place like this. The Gulf Stream is
the World Ocean's aorta.