Holiday Time!

Winter has arrived!  The days are shorter, the light is dimmer, and the temperatures have certainly fallen, but hopefully you’ve got a crackling fire to warm you, along with a good adult beverage and your first mate/skipper/partner/loved one by your side!

Between Thanksgiving and the New Year is an interesting time.  In many ways our lives speed up and get more hectic, just so we can hopefully have a break, relax, and slow down.  Odd, eh?  If your work is more intense this time of year, my condolences, as the extra work of the Holidays is plenty of “extra,” all by itself.  If your work slows down this time of year, as it generally does in the boat sales business, hallelujah!  We can take a little more time in each conversation, think a bit more before uttering some impulsive comment or thought, and truly smell the coffee (ah, with a bit of additive in there to nudge things along.)

Many of us will be doing some traveling, especially between Christmas and New Year.  Julie and I are headed to eastern Washington to see family, then down to central Oregon to visit friends there, and a stop in Vancouver, WA on the way home to see our friends there.  Anyone flying south where it should be nice and warm?

While this is not generally a time in the year for doing a lot of boating, don’t forget there are some good boating opportunities available, such as chasing the Christmas Ship some evening!  You can find the schedule online and it’s always a fun outing with a few club members getting together to putt-putt around Shilshole Bay, trailing the Christmas Ship with all her many lights and live music, with a little get-together at the dock afterwards.

Another idea is to just spend a night or two on the boat – at the marina dock!  Why not?  It gets a person out of the house, that’s for sure.  You can check up on the boat, run the engine a bit, and spend a quiet evening away from the hubbub. Or, if “quiet” isn’t the main directive, invite some friends down to the boat for an evening drink or dinner aboard.  We put a lot of time, money, and effort into our boats, let’s use them!

On the SBYC front, be sure to note AJ’s important update on the location of January’s Dinner Meeting.  It will not be at Ivar’s, due to a scheduling issue with them.  Rather, we’ll be at Razzi’s Pizza in Greenwood on January 21, with everyone ordering exactly what dinner they want off the full menu – a little change of pace.  December’s Holiday Party, Thursday December 19th at Ivar’s, should be another fun one, with Jessie Lundin leading the Gift Exchange and my playing of  Christmas tunes on the keyboard.

Ben Lobaugh reported at the recent Board Meeting there were 24 boats registered and I believe 21 or 22 showed up to race in the first Snowbird Race.  Wow!  And Cruise Chair, Patricia Shannon-Garvey, has a full slate of events already in the making for 2020.  More Snowbird races coming up – get aboard the Committee Boat and enjoy a race that way!

Well, I guess it’s time to get back to that to-do list I’ve been avoiding as I share with you here some of my thoughts for the Holiday season.  Presents to buy, errands to run, a Christmas tree to acquire and decorate still. Whatever your schedule, I hope this Season allows you to maximize your enjoyment of family, friends, and life itself.  It is a time to be thankful for all that we have, and we certainly are blessed with our stations in life on this planet.  I hope Santa gifts you with whatever present you’ve been most wanting, but that he also shares his cherubic smile and warmth of heart this Holiday Season!

All the best!

Wishing you all a peaceful and restful holiday season.

WINTRY WENATCHEE LAND CRUISE

Once again, it’s time to prepare for the Wenatchee Wintry Weekend.  This year’s event will take place over the weekend of January 25 – 26, 2020.

Plan to join Shilshole Bay Yacht Club members skiing and socializing in January of 2020.  Skiing for a day, then gathering in the afternoon/evening, for a glass of wine with friends and a nice dinner would be all that is necessary for a pleasant weekend in the snow.

Please RSVP by the end of December (if you have not already.)  Reply to cruisechair@shilsholebayyachtclub.org or patricia@shannon-garvey.com

Wenatchee skiing is the best.  With light powder, amazing views, and terrain to fit every snow enthusiast, Mission Ridge Ski Resort is never short on light, dry powder. Only 12 miles from Wenatchee, the ski area is built into a 2,000-acre basin on the Eastern side of the Cascade Mountains.

In addition to skiing, there is the Pybus Public Market; a community gathering place with an excellent source of locally grown fruits and vegetables complimented by a quality selection of artisan and ethnic products.   Also, the Wenatchee Riverfront Park is a wonderful walking experience through a bird sanctuary, sculptures, following the Wenatchee River and meandering through small shops and coffee stops..

Reciprocal moorage is one of the substantial benefits of membership in SBYC.  With this program, our members are able to moor at 39 yacht clubs throughout the Salish Sea.  In exchange, members of those clubs are able to moor at the guest docks at Shilshole and have us reimburse them for one day’s moorage.  This is different from other clubs who have their own dock space and simply make that space available for reciprocal members on a no-charge basis.  That difference has created a significant cost issue for the club.

Over the last few years, we have seen a large surge of members of reciprocal clubs exercising their ability to stay at Shilshole and having SBYC foot the bill.  In just the last year, expense for reciprocal moorage has exceeded double the allocated budget.  Recognizing this problem, Jewels and I have been researching the details of the arrangement we have with Shilshole marina, its history, and potential alternatives for reducing the club’s liability for these expenses.  We presented initial findings to the board this month with the recommendations detailed below for removing some clubs from our reciprocal list, and expect to present additional recommendations next month for changes to the terms and conditions of reciprocal use.  This first set of recommendations is intended to be adopted in time to allow us to update the reciprocal information in the roster prior to its publication in January. The board asked us to provide the recommendations to the membership via this Rudderpost article with an invitation for open comments.  Please feel free to contact either of us via phone, email, or at the holiday dinner.

Our first finding is that we have six reciprocal clubs in Tacoma and that some of those are either redundant or have poor features.  Specifically:

• Day Island YC is in University Place, just south of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It has a clubhouse, is adjacent to a brewpub restaurant, and provides moorage at the entry point to South Sound.  We recommend we keep this one.
• Fircrest YC has no clubhouse but has moorage at both Breakwater Marina with access to Anthony’s and Foss Harbor Marina with access to the glass museums and downtown restaurants. We recommend we keep this one for its flexible moorage.
• Tacoma YC has a large clubhouse with bar and restaurant, access to Anthony’s, and is the premier club south of Seattle. However, it is built literally on the ASARCO slag heap, has a fairly long walk to the clubhouse (maybe 75 yards across the parking lot) and consistently incurs the second most reciprocal users at Shilshole (i.e., costs SBYC money.)  We provide a tepid recommendation to keep this one, given its premier status and onsite facilities.
• Corinthian YC of Tacoma has no clubhouse and its moorage at the Dock St. Marina is effectively redundant with Fircrest. We recommend dropping this one.
• Totem YC has a clubhouse five miles from the marina and its moorage at the Foss Harbor Marina is redundant with Fircrest. We recommend dropping this one.
• Viking YC is in NE Tacoma on the far side of Commencement Bay from downtown and has no clubhouse. We recommend dropping this one.

Our second finding is that we have two reciprocal clubs in the vicinity of Sydney BC.  Specifically:

• Capital City YC has a lovely clubhouse, is walking distance from a restaurant and has close access to the local busses, but is almost 2.5 miles to downtown Sydney. Also, this year, we had a large number of reciprocals from this club.  We somewhat reluctantly recommend keeping this one as the only one we have in that area.
• North Saanich YC also has a lovely clubhouse but is another half mile further away from downtown and has no retail of any kind in the immediate vicinity. We recommend dropping this one.

Our third and final finding is that we have three clubs in areas that are either remote or difficult to get to and we can’t imagine that anybody in the club would go there. We recommend dropping all three.  Specifically:

• International YC is in Blaine, kind of far from any local restaurants and not exactly a prime destination. ‘Nuff said.
• Crescent Beach YC is at the north end of Semiahmoo Bay inside the mouth of the Nicomeki River, just across the border into Canada. Travel there would require customs check-in in Crescent Beach on arrival and again in Pt. Roberts on departure. Also it requires passing through a railroad draw bridge to get there.
• Shelton YC is a tricky location to get to at end of a long, narrow, shallow passage. It sits adjacent to a log booming area between a fish farm and a lumber mill. The clubhouse has no showers.  Most of the “things to do” on the Shelton web site aren’t actually in Shelton – just sayin’.

top photo – https://www.portofastoria.com/

bottom photo – www.freefoto.com

Next Dinner Meeting: Thursday, December 19, 2019

IVAR’S Salmon House, 401 NE Northlake Way, Seattle

5:30pm – Meet and Greet, Bar’s open!
6:00pm – Caroling
6:40pm – Change of Watch and Thanks to 2019 Board
7:00pm – Dinner in the Banquet Room
7:45pm – Gift exchange to follow dinner

Topic: “Change of Watch, Singing, & Gift Exchange”

Join us at our next dinner meeting Thursday, December 19 for the Change of Watch ceremony, holiday singing and the ever popular gift exchange.

Starting at 6pm our very own Roger Newby will play for a carol sing along. Lyrics will be provided.

At 6:30pm we will have the Change of Watch ceremony. During the   ceremony each club officer will bring his or her officer’s flag to hand off to the new officer, and the outgoing Commodore will receive the Past Commodore flag. We will also have an opportunity to recognize the 2019 board and volunteers. Finally we’ll make the formal introduction of the 2020 board. Dinner will be served at 7pm.

Post dinner we hold our ever popular gift exchange. To participate bring a wrapped gift (valued between $15 and $20.) Please bring something nice that you would like to receive, not a re-gift or something you are trying to get rid of.

Here are the rules for the gift exchange:

• For each gift you bring, you will receive a number.
• When your number is called, Santa will select a gift for you. You can choose to take the gift Santa selected, or you can exchange it (unopened) for a gift that has already been unwrapped.
• If you decide to keep the gift, you must unwrap it immediately, HOLD it UP for EVERYONE to admire, and leave it visible on top of your table at all times (no taking it to your car or leaving early to protect your prize booty.)
• If you choose to exchange your unopened gift for a gift that has already been unwrapped, the person you “stole” the gift from can then either open your gift right there, or “steal” someone else’s opened gift.
• To avoid marathon exchanges, we will limit the stealing to twice per gift. Once a particular gift has been stolen twice, it is locked to the person who made the second steal and it can no longer be stolen.
• The first person to get a gift and start the gift exchange gets the chance for a final steal of any available (non-locked down) gift.

~Tonight’s Featured Menu~
~Starter~

Mixed Greens Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

~Entrée~

Alder Grilled Coho Salmon

Or
Blackened Salmon Caesar Salad

Or
Chicken Marsala

Or
Ivar’s World Famous Fish ‘n Chips

Or
Potato Gnocchi

Includes: Seasonal Vegetables with the Protein Entrees

Coffee, Decaf, Hot Tea

Special dietary needs can be accommodated; please let me know on your Evite RSVP.

Main course selections are due by 9:00 pm on Sunday, December 15. Look for your Evite invitation in your email, then hit reply and use the comments field to tell me how many in your party and their dinner selections. Cancellations must be made by 9:00 pm Sunday December 15.

Note that the deadline for reservations is also the deadline for cancelling a previous reservation; otherwise you will be charged for the meal.

Dinner is $35 per person. If you charge your meal (credit card), we will add $1 per meal. Please purchase your drinks from the staff in the banquet room. The receipts count towards our room rental minimums.

WHEN YOU RECEIVE THE EVITE INVITATION TO THE DINNER, PLEASE REPLY AND USE THE “COMMENTS” FIELD TO TELL US HOW MANY IN YOUR PARTY AND WHAT MEALS EACH OF YOU WOULD LIKE!

Note: The location change coming up for January’s Dinner meeting. The January meeting will be on the regular Tuesday (January 21st) but will be at Razzi’s pizza in Greenwood (on Greenwood Ave just north of 85th.)

Also Note: The January Board Meeting will take place on Wednesday, January 7. The February Board meeting will be on February 11.  Board meetings for 2020 will be held at the Mallory residence unless otherwise specified.