The Sharks Tooth Festival has
come and gone, and Flotilla 8-6 was well represented thanks to our
great volunteers. We got off to a shaky start when Jim Sleichert,
Patrick Wheeler and I met at 0800 Friday morning to erect the tent
and set up our displays. You can imagine our surprise when we
discovered that our tent, which we purchased only last year, had
been stolen. Not only did the thieves take the new tent, but they
also took our two old ones also.
After checking on the possibility of renting a tent and finding none
available, we decided to buy a new one. Sure, that will do it. We
shouldn’t have any trouble with that plan. Right? Wrong! After
checking Home Depot, Wal Mart, Sams, Target, etc. and finding no
tents available, we were just about ready to throw in the towel,
when Garland Russ came to our rescue. He located a great tent at BJs
in Sarasota, drove up to the store, joined the club, purchased the
tent, drove back and helped Jim, Patrick, and Judi set it up. What a
great new member he is!
I want to thank everyone who gave up parts of their weekend to staff
the booth and greet community members. Everyone worked at least a
two hour shift and some stayed for four or more hours. In addition
to those members who helped set up, I want to acknowledge the help
given by Art and Patty Sperling, who with John Meyer opened the
booth after sitting all morning in the Operations Workshop. They
were relieved after two hours by Jim Sleichert and Judi Bidwick, who
were later joined by Paul Corcoran and finished out the day around
1800.
Patrick Wheeler and John Dexter opened the booth at 1000 on Sunday
and remained until noon when they were relieved by Harry and Ruth
Bruno and Jerry Mitchell. Judi and Mike Marmion arrived around 1300
and remained until closing, when they helped Harry and Ruth
disassemble the booth.
Everything considered, the weekend was well spent. We met a lot of
people and distributed valuable literature, which should help people
become safer on the water. In addition, we recorded over 50 names of
people who showed an interest in taking one or more of our classes.
Following the weekend, I created a database of their email addresses
and sent them our schedule of classes for the coming year.
Al Bidwick
FSO-PA
May,
2005
Introduction
