Finally summer is here!  At least that’s what my calendar said last week. Someone told me that we had three days that were in the 70s between Sept. 15 and June 15.  And that actually included Sept. 15.  With some of the weather problems the rest of the country has been having this year, I guess we don’t have much to complain about.

Down at the port, the season is in full swing. Every weekend another yacht club and many other independent boaters from all around the sound show up to enjoy our beautiful little town.  Some of our guests have come up the Pacific Coast and quite often we have Canadian travellers visiting.  I would encourage anyone to take a walk down the guest dock on a sunny Saturday afternoon and visit with some of the transient boaters.  Most will tell you that Kingston is a stop they make every boating season. Our little electric car gets used so much by the visiting boaters that someone asked me the other day just how many of those cars we have. It’s just one.

The Fourth of July festival is only days away and the committees have been working hard to make it the best in the country once again. Please support this important event in our town.  The Farmers Market will be open for business on July 2 and the Fourth.  If enough money comes in, there will be an evening of great music to dance to while we are all waiting for the fireworks show.

The SoundRunner passenger ferry service has been up and running for a month now and is catching on with a lot of people.  Meisha Rouser, our general manager, and her team are exploring many ways to make sure that once our daily commuters are attended to that the boats will be available for the rest of our citizens to enjoy and use.  Did you know that the Spirit of Kingston was the boat used by our recent Kingston High graduates to get to their class party in Seattle?

There are Friday afternoon excursions that leave Kingston at 4:15 p.m. and will take you down to Seattle and back while you enjoy the ride and some good musical entertainment and light snacks and beverages. Coming next month we plan to initiate a “First Thursday” midday round trip to Seattle which would allow early morning riders to return to Kingston at around noon and those taking the midday trip to return on the late afternoon commuter boat.  Please support these events as this is what will make the program work.  If you are travelling out of SeaTac you may want to consider using SoundRunner and the Light Rail in Seattle and forget the worry of airport parking.  Some are doing this already.  Check out the website at www.portofkingston.org/passenger-ferry/soundrunner.html  to get all the latest information.

We’ve had a lot of steady and persistent wind this spring so I thought this month’s nautical term could relate. The term this month is “Trades.”  This word was employed widely by English East India officers, but rarely by those of the British Royal Navy. No one can explain why.  It was first found only in log books of the 16th and 17th centuries when the vessels were in the Trade Winds belts immediately north and south of the Equator and always seemed to describe a persistent wind over several days. Derived from the expression “blows trade” which is a wind that blows steadily (it has nothing to do with the business of trade).

A morning watch first log entry might have said: “Day number three in the Trades and moving smartly eastward.” Modern logbook entries usually contain the two-word term Trade Winds.

Well, my little word counter on Windows 7 is telling me that I am close to my quota for the month (oops! I just went over it).  But once again, thank you for taking the time to read this stuff.  I hope you found something interesting or entertaining.

Pete DeBoer is a Port of Kingston commissioner. Reach him at pete@petedeboer.com.