This ad was recently run by our friends at Fish Safe BC. I liked it so much I’m sharing it with you.

On Saturday, I spent a wonderful day taking part of the 10th annual Variety Boat for Hope event in False Creek, Vancouver. Variety puts on a wonderful and fun event where over 300 children who have special needs (and their caregivers) get to dress up as pirates and sail on a boat in search for treasure!

The kids are all suited up in their Mustang foam vests for their adventure. They encounter many, many pirates, get super soaked with water guns and seek for treasure! The crew from Mustang was all dressed up ready to surrender their treasure to the children. We had a couple inflatable boats and took turns giving out the portable coolers supplied by our customer Steveston Marine. We did a pretty good job protecting our vessel and none of us dropped one in the water!

It’s so rewarding seeing the smiles on the children’s faces, as we hand over our goodies and let them soak us with their hoses and water guns. I have to admit that 5 hours of water fighting with kids, co-workers and the whole boating community can be exhausting, but incredibly fun! I can’t wait to do this again next year!! Ahoy Matey’s!!!!

More pictures are available on our Flickr page.

Ladies Lets Go Fishing offers training and real hands-on experience to learn how to fish, and a chance to go fishing on the water! One of the skills the ladies learn at the weekend seminars is boat handling. We are proud to support them by equipping their boat with our Inflatable PFD with HIT in hot pink! There are seminars coming up in Sarasota in August and another one in Islamorada in September.

They sent me some pictures today from past seminars in Ft. Lauderdale and Stuart and I have posted them up on Flickr. Take a look!

Recently CTV did a story on Canadian Researchers doing a study on the elusive Greenland shark in the Canadian Arctic. The team headed by Dr. Steven Campana fished through a five-foot diameter hole drilled through three feet of ice, and caught an average of two Greenland sharks each day.

On average, the sharks are between 2.5 and 3.5 metres in length, weighing in between 500 and 700 pounds. If the sharks were dead when they were hauled to the surface researchers would perform an autopsy. If they were still alive, they recorded their measurements, tagged them with satellite tracking devices and released them in order to learn more about their habits. CTV

Visit the Canadian Shark Research Laboratory website for more details.

Photo Credit: Dr Steven Campana, Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Canada

Lifejackets have come a long way! They are no longer the big bulky bring orange life preservers from the past. Now they are sleek, comfortable and dare I say a little stylish.

Today, May 15th is Red Cross National Lifejacket Day in Canada and Mustang Survival is proud to partner with the Red Cross in
spreading their important boating safety message.

You even have a chance to win a family pack of lifejackets! Enter the contest on the Canadian Red Cross website today!

We are sailing in great sunshine but expect it not to last as a low pressure system is developing between us and the coast. The positive side of this low pressure system is that we will be sailing downwind almost through to the end of the trip. We are expecting 35+ knots of wind tonight with some rain squalls and possible thunder and lightening. We have just under 500 miles to go and I have been monitoring the ice situation in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it seems there is plenty of ice left from the long winter and late Spring thaw. With a carbon hull on the boat it’s very fragile and susceptible to sharp objects in the water, I have decided to make a stop in Halifax for a week or so to give the ice a chance to clear.

BOATsmart! Canada, one of our biggest boating safety partners, is looking for candidates for Promotional Team Leaders and Team Reps summer job positions. This is a great opportunity to travel, spend time on the water, work in a small team, practice your marketing and promotional skills and get paid.

The Summer work term is from May 14 through September 15. There are still a number of positions to be filled, so be sure to apply today.

More details on the job and qualifications can be found in the careers section of their website.

It’s official. Spirit of Canada Qualified for Vendee Globe 2008

Canadian single-handed sailor Derek Hatfield is officially qualified to enter the Vendee Globe 2008 - a singlehanded non-stop race around the world.

Just before Christmas, Hatfield completed the Transat Ecover B2B, the single-handed transatlantic race from Brazil to France that is a qualifier for the Vendee Globe. It was also a great chance to shake down his racing machine, the Canadian-built Open 60, Spirit of Canada. Then just last week, all the documentation and official medical training was completed and filed with the Vendee Globe organizers and the official race number; #15 was issued by the organizers.

“I am very proud to finally finish the qualifications for the Vendee Globe 2008. It has been a lot of hard work getting this far but with the support that we receive from so many Canadians, we will be on the start line this November.” said Hatfield. On November 8, 2008, Hatfield, 56, will be the only Canadian in the race competing. He and the Spirit of Canada will be the first Canadian team to attempt the race.

Certainly there are always legends made during the Vendee Globe, started in 1989 by famed French sailor Philippe Jeantot. It is a single-handed yacht race held every four years and is non-stop around the world, starting in les Sables d’Olonne France, rounding Cape of Good Hope at the tip of Africa, entering the Indian Ocean, then the Southern Ocean, dancing around icebergs, rounding Cape Horn, finishing back in France.

The number of participants is capped at 30 and represents the world’s elite sailors. It is the pinnacle of a sailor’s career to enter and finish the Vendee. The sailors must show they are able to enter the Vendee by completing a single-handed race such as the Transat Ecover B2B. Sailors must also demonstrate that their boats are up to the task, by completing a test to determine if their boats can be righted after capsizing and the boats must also meet a series of design specifications.

Hatfield is currently sailing from France to Canada to allow for more training, fine-tuning and repairs following the grueling race that saw two other boats dismasted in their attempt to qualify for the Vendee.

Now Hatfield’s biggest challenge is to raise more money and awareness about his campaign in Canada. The former Mountie has so far managed to raise funds through corporate donations and his “Around Together”
campaign that offers to put a name on the boat along for a small donation. He’s raised $1,600,000 and put over 5200 crew names on the hull through the Around Together campaign but needs to double that in the next few months before he leaves as well as additional corporate sponsorship. His budget for the race is about $3.5 million and he has borrowed money as well to pursue the goal. For the Vendee, that’s a shoestring budget as his competitors will have at least twice that for their campaigns.

“The countdown to the Vendee Globe is now on and the next six months will go by very quickly,” said Hatfield. “We have a number of hurdles ahead of us; mostly of the financial kind; but as one skipper recently told me in Brazil, If the Vendee Globe was easy, then everyone would be doing it.’”

Hatfield though is confident such hurdles will be overtaken and he will not give up until Spirit of Canada reaches the finish in France in the spring of 2009.