Do as Vancouverites do: pack a locally-produced picnic (do not forget the lotuses and Dirty Laundry), negotiate space on a boat, and claim a prime viewing spot on the glassy waters of English Bay to ensure your Vancouver city summer - however languid - goes off with a bang.

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One Sunday morning in May, I arrived at the club's boat house, an old hangar-like space near the marina that was stacked floor to ceiling with traditional Venetian boats.

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"We're on a moving boat and we don't have too much space to manoeuvre, to let the helicopter land, so it can be quite dangerous, " Dr Acevedo-Whitehouse told the BBC World Service's Science In Action programme.

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Last September a team led by researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in La Jolla, California, looked at whether clouds could be whitened artificially (and thus caused to reflect more sunlight back into space) using particles emitted from a boat.

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Is eBay missing the boat by not throwing itself into the blossoming social networking space?

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It will also include waterfront restaurants with docking facilities, allowing boat users to tie up alongside, as well as space for art galleries and exhibition areas.

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But I had the luckiest place on earth, the Fifth Avenue of real estate on that boat, because my bunk was in a corner, with a foot and half of space between me and the wall.

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