Meeting Recap April 2
Posted
on Apr 06, 2015
Rotary Meeting April 2, 2015
Article by Dwight Wilson
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- Dianne led with the group singing of “This Land is Your Land.”
- Andrew Boyd-Goodrich started the meeting with the reflection by thanking his son who has special needs for the gift of his presence.
- Guests
- Irwin Cohen introduced his office assistant, Horalia who came with him today
- Eric Shapiro introduced Susan Shapiro
Rotary Meeting April 2, 2015
Article by Dwight Wilson
- Dianne led with the group singing of “This Land is Your Land.”
- Andrew Boyd-Goodrich started the meeting with the reflection by thanking his son who has special needs for the gift of his presence.
- Guests
- Irwin Cohen introduced his office assistant, Horalia who came with him today
- Eric Shapiro introduced Susan Shapiro
Happy/Crappy News
John Evans talked about the Bay Area Trampoline competition that he judged. He introduced Fie, our exchange student who talked about her recent trip to Hawaii with the other exchange students and her experience at RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Awards) here in the Bay Area. What a great time she had at both!.jpg)
- Warren Barmore said the club sent 5 students to the RYLA even though our Club itself sponsored only 3 students.
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He complimented the work of the High School Interact Club.
Ginger Child-Minoletti stated she will not be here the next couple of weeks because
she “has” to travel .jpg)
to London and Budapest during this period. She also donated a $100 to the
HMB Rotary Foundation to celebrate picking the white marble last week.
Announcements
- Rotary is involved in the Annual Easter Egg hunt with the Boys and Girls Club on April 4th. Please sign up if interested and an email will be going out on this.
- Andrew announced we are involved in selling items at the April 26th Dream Machines event. Be looking out for an email on this in the near future.
- There is a sign up sheet for attending a joint meeting with the Pacifica and Millbrae Rotary Club the evening of Thursday, April 16th at the Senior Coastsider.
- Steve Anderson asked the group “What do you know about Rotocare?” Every Wednesday someone drives to Seton Coastside to pick up food for the volunteers and brings it back to the clinic. Steve has been volunteering to do this once a month and no longer can do it and he asked for a volunteer to take his place. Joe Brennan graciously volunteered. Steve also shared his wife emailed him for a ride to the airport so he gave his $50 to support the Dictionary project.
- Kevin O’Brien announced they still have tote bags to sell which will benefit the Half Moon Bay Foundation at $10 a piece.
- Robin Jeffs talked about the difference between the Rotary International Foundation and the Half Moon Bay Rotary Foundation.
Our Foundation was funded in the 1990’s so that we could make large contributions to efforts that are of local interest. .jpg)
Our foundation has $135,000 in the account.
He, Ralph Ely and the members of the Club Board are on its board. Warren Barmore helps him with the investment for our Endowment.
Robin reminded us that the birthday contributions of each member go into the local foundation.
Our donation to the Rotary Room at the Senior Coastsiders came from the local foundation.
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And look who was back!GEOFF ELDRIDGE - EXTREME DIVING - WORKING AND LIVING IN THE SUBSURFACE WORLD
Article by Stacy Trevenon
Looking very casual in jeans and flip-flops and a plaid shirt,
commercial diver Geoff Eldridge was introduced as the meeting speaker,
and gave a fascinating if sometimes hair-raising program filled with stories
and illustrated with photos of life under the sea.
He had been working in construction, and the work touched
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on underwater welding in the Gulf of Mexico, which led him to diving.
There are three areas of commercial diving work, he said: inland,
There are three areas of commercial diving work, he said: inland,
offshore and salvage. Inland commercial diving would relate to municipal work and maintenance such as with the Crystal Springs Reservoir project. Offshore work supports the oil and gas industries, and emergency response. Salvage work would deal with anything that needs to be raised.
“Anything that deals with subsurface, that's our job,” he said.
For 10 years he worked in underwater welding offshore, having begun with a seven-month course in Seattle. He showed photos of several different kinds of platforms and how they connected to fixed platforms, and told how they allowed access to projects around 900 feet deep. He discussed “man baskets” that transported workers, were suspended by cranes and would swing in the wind (“the only way to stop it is to give those guys a bath,” he said, only half-jokingly.)
For the first year of his career he took care of equipment but had the goal of being a diver. He started with smaller jobs on 150-foot boats and progressed to larger corporate jobs. He discussed “saturation diving,” or long-term jobs at the depths, and told his rapt audience about the painstaking process of decompression and getting out of the system the inert gases that came from extended times at the bottom. Now, he said, they use decompression chambers on boats, for periods of 20 minutes or six hours, depending on whether there is need to treat the diver for decompression sickness. Even in emergency situations, he said, decompression can take hours.
He'd worked in saturation diving for several years. It's an occupation that a vast majority of workers “wash out” of, often due to the demands of having to be away from family for long periods. “You gotta give everything to the life,” he said, citing hotel stays of several months during Hurricane Katrina.
He said that working on smaller, surface vessels is more fun, and showed how the diving outfits changed with the larger vessels until they looked like something out of science fiction.
He showed pictures of a typical diving helmet, and explained having to breathe recycled gases because of the high cost of helium. He pointed out the effects of helium on the human voice: “six manly men all sounding like Mickey Mouse.”
He talked about the saturation vessels used by workers on the job: Most are made in Norway, he said, and involve two cranes working simultaneously, and how they do not have anchors because they can hold their position even in 25-foot-high sea swells. But, he pointed out, divers at the bottom don't know what it's like on top.
He showed a diagram of a six-man system that measures about eight by 17 feet and is used for periods of 30 days minimum. He talked about getting food in Tupperware, and the process of opening and closing valves for going to the toilet, and how it has to be carefully monitored due to the potential loss of pressure. It's claustrophobic, “like being in space,” he said.
Several Rotarians crowded around him with questions well after the meeting ended.
“Anything that deals with subsurface, that's our job,” he said.
For 10 years he worked in underwater welding offshore, having begun with a seven-month course in Seattle. He showed photos of several different kinds of platforms and how they connected to fixed platforms, and told how they allowed access to projects around 900 feet deep. He discussed “man baskets” that transported workers, were suspended by cranes and would swing in the wind (“the only way to stop it is to give those guys a bath,” he said, only half-jokingly.)
For the first year of his career he took care of equipment but had the goal of being a diver. He started with smaller jobs on 150-foot boats and progressed to larger corporate jobs. He discussed “saturation diving,” or long-term jobs at the depths, and told his rapt audience about the painstaking process of decompression and getting out of the system the inert gases that came from extended times at the bottom. Now, he said, they use decompression chambers on boats, for periods of 20 minutes or six hours, depending on whether there is need to treat the diver for decompression sickness. Even in emergency situations, he said, decompression can take hours.
He'd worked in saturation diving for several years. It's an occupation that a vast majority of workers “wash out” of, often due to the demands of having to be away from family for long periods. “You gotta give everything to the life,” he said, citing hotel stays of several months during Hurricane Katrina.
He said that working on smaller, surface vessels is more fun, and showed how the diving outfits changed with the larger vessels until they looked like something out of science fiction.
He showed pictures of a typical diving helmet, and explained having to breathe recycled gases because of the high cost of helium. He pointed out the effects of helium on the human voice: “six manly men all sounding like Mickey Mouse.”
He talked about the saturation vessels used by workers on the job: Most are made in Norway, he said, and involve two cranes working simultaneously, and how they do not have anchors because they can hold their position even in 25-foot-high sea swells. But, he pointed out, divers at the bottom don't know what it's like on top.
He showed a diagram of a six-man system that measures about eight by 17 feet and is used for periods of 30 days minimum. He talked about getting food in Tupperware, and the process of opening and closing valves for going to the toilet, and how it has to be carefully monitored due to the potential loss of pressure. It's claustrophobic, “like being in space,” he said.
Several Rotarians crowded around him with questions well after the meeting ended.
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