Take those "No Swimming" signs seriously...

Summer in Seattle.

Most years, that means we will have some nice weather immediately after the Fourth of July Weekend is over. We're halfway through Junuary, so warm weather is only a few weeks away.

It's a good time to refresh memories about the No Swimming By Order of the Commodore signs on the end of each dock at the main station. Those signs are up for a reason, and it isn't that some old fuddy duddy wants to keep people from having fun on a hot day.

It's a very poor idea to swim around any marina, most especially a marina in fresh water.

If even one boat, out of the 250 in our marina, isn't perfectly wired there is a chance that electrical current can find its way into the water through the grounding or bonding system aboard the craft. Even if every QCYC boat were perfectly wired, (and some are not), there are still the reciprocal boats to consider.

When a person gets into the water where there is stray electrical current, there's a high risk of a situation called "electric shock drowning". The person in the water becomes the "ground" for the current. An electrical charge of sufficient strength can render a person's muscles unresponsive- preventing the swimming motions required to stay afloat and breathe in the water. This situation is far more likely to occur in fresh water than in salt water. Of the many, many deaths each year attributable to electric shock drowning, virtually all occur in fresh water.

Each year, the Docks Committee checks for wiring problems that are measurable at the shorepower connections. We always seem to find at least a couple. When we do, the members in question virtually always respond by getting an electrician down to their boat right away...  but we don't check every month, new boats come in, people wire in new equipment, and there are other changes that mean we can never be 100% sure there isn't some electrical current in the water due to a miswired boat.