Walk On Your Life

Archive for June 11th, 2010

The Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour, founded in 1938 and located just 15 minutes north of downtown Orlando, is one of these lovely side trips that combine beautiful scenery, a bit of local history, some close-up exposure to local wildlife and vegetation with a relaxing outing in a slow-moving 18-passenger pontoon boat, all complete with expert (and sometimes humorous) narration provided by the boat’s captain.

The tour takes you through 3 lakes: Lake Osceola, Lage Virginia and Lake Maitland. On this gorgeous day, with brilliantly blue skies, the boat whisked us past hundreds of beautiful water-front estates, many of which were originally built in the 1920s and originally sold for $20,000, while fetching between $500,000 and several million in today’s booming Central Florida real estate market. Even boathouses are worth between $30,000 and $40,000.

In Lake Virginia we came up close to the grounds of Rollins College, one of the top rated private liberal arts colleges in the South Eastern United States, founded in 1885 by New England Congregationalists. Rollins College is the oldest recognized college in the state of Florida with a small student body of 1,700 students, housed on a beautiful 70 acre Mediterraean Revival Campus. Our expert captain / tour guide mentioned that tuition at the college is $38,000 and the ratio of students to professors is 12:1.

The Dive Flag has become the symbol for the exciting sport of scuba diving in recent history.  This unique flag is recognized by many but is more then just a symbol for scuba diving.  In most areas, local laws and policies require one most use a dive flag while diving.  Here in the United States, the dive flag is a red flag with a white diagonal stripe running usually running from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.

Dive flags which are usually vinyl, are mounted in a variety of ways, whether it be on the boat your diving from or the standard fiberglass staff where the flag is stiffened with a wire so that it stands out from the staff at all times.  When diving without a boat the flag is usually held afloat by securely attached float.  There are a variety of other attachments that secure a dive flag to an inner tube and other buoyant items.

Whatever way you choose to mount your dive flag, you must be sure it clearly visible to other boaters. Laws requiring how far boats must keep from dive flags vary from state to state and internationally but distances usually range from 50 to 150 feet.  Divers are often required to surface within 25 feet of the flag, and not doing so could be fatal to the diver.  If your diving area is larger then the distance allowed by law, multiple dive flags should be used that are separated then no more then 100 feet apart to ensure boaters can see and obey the laws.  Internationally, the alpha flag, a swallow-tailed blue and white flag, is used when diving from a vessel.  The dive flag is not only one of your cheapest purchases in scuba diving but also one of your most important.