The Fri­day Har­bor High School base­ball team knocked off the Mount Bak­er Moun­taineers 4–2 in Dem­ing on Fri­day afternoon.

The high school fast­pitch team was­n’t quite so suc­cess­ful, falling 22–0 against Mount Bak­er, also in Dem­ing on Friday.

The final indoor Farm­ers Mar­ket event takes place today at Brick­works from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Out­side mar­kets start back up on Sat­ur­day, April 2.

If you make it to the mar­ket, keep an eye out for Pier­o­gis For Peace, a pop-up shop by The Mar­ket Chef and Katri­na’s Secret Kitchen with peir­ogis, borscht, pam­pushky and oth­er Ukrain­ian spe­cial­ties to raise mon­ey for World Cen­tral Kitchen, an orga­ni­za­tion help­ing to feed refugees leav­ing Ukraine.

Did you know that Fri­day Har­bor Mar­ket Place has what’s believed to be the sec­ond-largest com­mer­cial rooftop solar instal­la­tion in the state of Washington?

Alche­my Art Cen­ter is co-orga­niz­ing a human orca mur­al today at 11 a.m. at the east end of Jack­son Beach. It’s a fam­i­ly-friend­ly event and it’s request­ed that atten­dees wear a mask and black clothing.

Sun­day is the Fri­day Har­bor Base­ball & Soft­ball Asso­ci­a­tion’s field prep day at the ele­men­tary school, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Alo­ha Fri­day Hawai­ian BBQ is offer­ing their Kama’aina punch card — buy eight plate lunch­es, get the ninth free. They’re also work­ing on open­ing for break­fast some time in the next few months.

Have some­thing to share with the Island? Whether the news is big or small, let us know!

The Ani­mal Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety shares an update about how a used ultra­sound machine donat­ed by Islands Vet­eri­nary Clin­ic will help APS bet­ter treat the ani­mals in their care.

The Ani­mal Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety-Fri­day Har­bor (APS-FH) extends a spe­cial thank you to Islands Vet­eri­nary Clin­ic for their gen­er­ous dona­tion of a lov­ing­ly used ultra­sound machine (now affec­tion­ate­ly named “E.T.”) for the APS-FH Clinic.

Ultra­sound is an imag­ing tech­nique based on the use of sound waves and offers a non-inva­sive, non-painful method for diag­no­sis and stag­ing of many dis­eases. It can also be very use­ful when a pet has ingest­ed some­thing it shouldn’t have, to locate and char­ac­ter­ize the for­eign object.

Megan Per­ry, APS-FH’s Clin­ic Man­ag­er & Shel­ter Vet Tech, has spe­cial appre­ci­a­tion for what the equip­ment will do for the APS-FH clin­ic. “This new equip­ment will save us time and cost by enabling us to diag­nose in-house and imme­di­ate­ly treat the home­less pets in our care as opposed to wait­ing for the avail­abil­i­ty of, and pay­ing the cost for, exter­nal vet­eri­nary and/or spe­cial­ty care”. Islands Vet­eri­nary Clinic’s gift has the entire APS-FH team (staff, board, and vol­un­teers) cheer­ing for the oppor­tu­ni­ties this equip­ment brings to our med­ical services.

Shel­ter Man­ag­er, Beth Ander­son, expressed thank­ful­ness for the dona­tion stat­ing that, “shel­ter work can be over­whelm­ing at times but a gift like this eas­es the bur­den. It is assur­ing to know that we have anoth­er valu­able tool to help make the lives of our shel­ter ani­mals better.”

Pho­to cred­it: Ani­mal Pro­tec­tion Soci­ety-Fri­day Harbor

The San Juan Coun­ty Depart­ment of Emer­gency Man­age­ment reports 12 con­firmed or prob­a­ble new COVID cas­es on San Juan Island since March 11 — a reduc­tion of almost half over last week. Orcas Island has two new cas­es and Lopez Island just one.

This week’s 15 new cas­es bring the total case count to 1,262.

As of March 12, Wash­ing­ton State has relaxed mask require­ments. Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Health, “Decreas­ing rates of infec­tion and hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, and high vac­ci­na­tion rates have allowed us to move into a new recov­ery phase of the pandemic.”

That said, the March 11 media release from San Juan Coun­ty reports 23 new con­firmed cas­es on San Juan Island. They go on to say, “we should remem­ber that the masks we wore dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced dis­ease spread by pro­tect­ing both our­selves and those around us.” Mask wear­ing has also kept us from get­ting com­mon colds and the flu — good rea­sons in my opin­ion to keep our masks handy.

Health­care facil­i­ties and trans­porta­tion sys­tems with fed­er­al require­ments includ­ing fer­ries and air trav­el will still require masks. Local busi­ness­es and orga­ni­za­tions may require or encour­age wear­ing masks. San Juan Island Food Co-op will have “Masked Morn­ings” where mask­ing will be required every day between 10 and 11 a.m. Mask poli­cies are now gen­er­al­ly up to indi­vid­ual busi­ness­es or organizations.

The Mullis Cen­ter remains cau­tious stat­ing, “Although the Wash­ing­ton State mask­ing require­ment was lift­ed on March 12, the Mullis Cen­ter will be main­tain­ing mask require­ments at the cen­ter through the end of March. We are tak­ing extra pre­cau­tions as we serve a vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion and in response to the steady infec­tion rate on San Juan Island.”

It is up to us as indi­vid­u­als to nav­i­gate where we feel both safe our­selves and social­ly respon­si­ble to our com­mu­ni­ty. Stay informed and if you are not sure what to do ask a health professional.

Incum­bent San Juan Coun­ty Sher­iff Ron Krebs sends along an announce­ment of his inten­tion to run for re-election.

Law enforce­ment has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in recent years but one thing that has not changed is my com­mit­ment to you, the cit­i­zens of San Juan Coun­ty. Today I am proud to announce my can­di­da­cy for re-elec­tion for a third term as your San Juan Coun­ty Sheriff.

One of my proud­est achieve­ments is the qual­i­ty of the men and women I have assem­bled to work in my office. This ded­i­cat­ed team of pro­fes­sion­als are some of the hard­est work­ing and most car­ing indi­vid­u­als I have been priv­i­leged to know. Day-in and day-out they serve the com­mu­ni­ty with unpar­al­leled pro­fes­sion­al­ism and sin­cere concern.

Great strides have been made in the tech­nol­o­gy and pro­ce­dures of my office. In 2017 I spear­head­ed the Codan radio project. This state-of-the-art com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem replaces an anti­quat­ed radio net­work and goes live next month. This radio sys­tem allows the first respon­ders of San Juan Coun­ty to have clear­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions which pro­vides bet­ter life sav­ing capa­bil­i­ties and increased safe­ty for all. Con­tin­ue Reading

The San Juan Preser­va­tion Trust and the San Juan Coun­ty Con­ser­va­tion Land Bank share an update about their efforts to con­serve crit­i­cal habi­tats in the Islands — and the chal­lenge of acquir­ing such prop­er­ties in our hyper-com­pet­i­tive real estate market.

The San Juan Coun­ty Con­ser­va­tion Land Bank and San Juan Preser­va­tion Trust announced last week that they joint­ly sub­mit­ted an offer to pur­chase the Glen­wood Inn prop­er­ty on Orcas Island. The prop­er­ty includes a third of a mile of shore­line, which the con­ser­va­tion part­ners would open for pub­lic access while pro­tect­ing near-shore nat­ur­al fea­tures to aid salmon-recov­ery efforts.

The 58-acre for­mer water­front resort, locat­ed near Point Doughty on the north­west tip of Orcas, was list­ed for sale on Feb­ru­ary 19. The Land Bank/SJPT part­ner­ship sub­mit­ted an offer on Thurs­day, March 10—the last day of the seller’s spec­i­fied bid­ding peri­od. Their offer was based on a mar­ket analy­sis by an inde­pen­dent appraisal firm. We under­stand, how­ev­er, that anoth­er par­ty bet­tered our offer.

“We weren’t entire­ly sur­prised that we were out­bid, giv­en the cur­rent hyper-com­pet­i­tive real estate mar­ket,” said Angela Ander­son, the Preser­va­tion Trust’s exec­u­tive direc­tor. “Of course we’re dis­ap­point­ed, but we remain ‘in the game’ and are hope­ful that a con­ser­va­tion out­come may yet come to pass.” Con­tin­ue Reading