GAINS FROM TRADE. The North Sails loft that manufactures sails for Laser, Sunfish, Vanguard 15, and several other sailboats is located in Sri Lanka. The manager of North Sails in Sri Lanka reports on the tsunami's effect.

The Island was hit by a Tsunami on Sunday Dec 26th around 9:45 am. The coastal regions of the East, south and south west coasts were hardest hit and were destroyed. These areas are about a 1-6 hour drive from our factory. They have high concentration of population as well as many resort hotels. Unofficially I was told last night that over 30,000 people have died with over a million left homeless. The city of Colombo where 6 million of the country's 19 million live, was not affected much at all. The port was closed temporarily and is now open expecting to clear the backlog in a week or so. The airport remains open as normal. Our factories are located about 20 kilometers inland from Colombo and were not affected.

Our focus for the last few days has been on our employees. Last weekend was a long holiday weekend with many traveling to their coastal villages to visit family. Some visited beaches for the weekend. We opened for business Tuesday and were operating as normal although the atmosphere was very sombre. All of our Management, supervisors are accounted for, but we still are missing 5 factory employees, and have located another who has lost her house and is at a refugee camp. Today Ajantha,our Production Manager,is going to get the one girl we have located and bring her from the camp. Tomorrow we will send out two teams to search for the remaining 5 missing.

Business for North Sails Sri Lanka will continue as normal with perhaps some minor delays due to some shipping backlogs.

Many of you have asked us how you can help. The employees of North Sails Sri Lanka set up a fund and all pledged one day salary from this week to get it established. The fund is to be used to help our employees rebuild houses, buy clothing, water, food, and medicine to assist them getting their lives back to some sense of normalcy. If there is any remaining in the fund it will be used to help others in Sri Lanka.

The North Sails employee effort provides an opportunity to call your attention to World Relief Day, January 12. Captain's Quarters has already posted the Orders of the Day for that Wednesday.

At Captain's Quarters, we're declaring January 12th World Relief Day. I ask that CQ readers donate their take-home pay for January 12th to the tsunami relief effort at World Vision. Obviously, we cannot hope to match the funds raised by governments -- but we can show what a handful of determined private individuals can do to help. If you can't afford to donate all of your take-home pay for that day, please donate what you can.

Updates on this effort will be tracked here as well.