“Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit.” —Brooks Atkinson.
May Day has come and gone, and hopefully with no loss of life or ship!
By now SBYC’s Opening Day festivities/mayhem will have passed too, and perhaps we’ll hear tales of close encounters there when we gather at Port Ludlow next week (more on that below). Vixen won’t
make it up to the ship canal for that party; this year her crew is deep – really deep – in an in-progress
land spectacle of remodeling with all three bedrooms and a bathroom emptied and scattered across the
rest of the house. We’re sneaking away for the Burger Burn and looking for a “soft stop” point in early
June – it’s time to go sailing! (Or try, given our pleasant but zephyrous summer winds.)
This being our last Rudderpost until September, we have much to cover:
1. Don’t miss the Burger Burn at Port Ludlow May 12-14. Reserved slips are still available, and
we’re encouraged to register via the Dockwa.gov app. Make sure to note you’re with SBYC, and
they will strive to group us all together. (As of today, ten boats are registered: Antares, Flora,
Jasper, Olele, Pau Hana, Reverie, Shadow, Turning Point, Victoria, and Vixen). Marina contacts
are: 1.877.344.6725, www.portludlowresport.com, and for anyone driving, the address is 1 Gull
Drive, Port Ludlow, WA 98365. Contact the marina on VHF 68 on your approach for slip
assignments. Sponsors Larry and Sharon Clark have a fun weekend cooked up, and we’ll all join
in at the burner/grill with our best individual attempts to win bragging rights for the most
Bodacious Burger. As far as I know there are no rules, except, I guess, it has to be a burger; but of
what? Beef? Pork? Salmon? Pheasant? California sea lion? (No endangered marine mammal
burgers, please.) Let your imagination go wild, but please come and celebrate May with us at
Port Ludlow. Bring your favorite lawn game(s) and a stick or two for the firepit on Saturday.
Happy Hour on the dock on Friday, BBQ area reserved from 14:00 until 22:00 on Saturday 13th.
See your Evite for more details.
2. June Dinner Dance, June 10. Now is the time to register your vessel at Port of Kingston for the
weekend of June 9-11. The sponsors this year (Jessie Lundin, Harold Baldwin, Julie & Roger
Newby, and Heidi & Dave Rynning) have planned a “Margaritaville” Mexican-themed dinner
catered by the Kingston Ale House. We’ll be moving and grooving to rock, R&B, blues, and
other good stuff by Sour Mash, regulars at The Point Casino near Kingston and at the Slippery
Pig Brewery’s Thursday Blues & Brews in Poulsbo. As usual, the per-person cost includes dinner,
hosted bar with a special themed cocktail, and the band – the best deal around! This is a fun
event and a great opportunity to bring friends who might be interested in SBYC. Watch for the
Evite and reserve your slip now. (As of this writing, you’ll be joining Antares, Mischief Maker,
Pau Hana, Reverie, Turning Point, Victoria, and Vixen on the dock)
3. Independence Day Raft-up in Liberty Bay and Blakely Harbor, July 1-3; Michael Hoffman is
sponsoring the Blakely Harbor portion and he’s coordinating with a private fire show on Tuesday July
4th . Poulsbo has canceled their popular Third of July public fireworks show, but the bay will be
busy anyway, with much more that makes this destination fun that weekend. A short
dinghy ride from our club’s usual raft anchorage to the Port of Poulsbo Marina puts you just
steps away from unique shopping, dining & beveraging, museums, galleries, and other
attractions: brave the long line at Sluy’s Bakery, savor the best view in town on the deck at The
Loft Restaurant, walk the Fish Park trail, or stop in at one of Poulsbo’s five breweries – three within walking distance from the marina. And be sure to check out Longship Marine, Poulsbo’s
only marine chandler, with new, used, and consigned goods. If it’s your first time visiting “Little
Norway,” it’s safe to predict you’ll be back.
4. Summer Rendezvous. We’d like to enlist you, our members, to tell us your ideas or preferences for
where you will be, or would like to meet, in the last part of July/Early August? One possibility is
keeping it in Central or North Sound this year, perhaps making it easier for divergent crews to
come together at some point somewhere. Please attend our final dinner meeting this month,
where the summer rendezvous and some other important 2023 items will be discussed.
5. Labor Day Weekend slips are reserved at Port Orchard (originally the Town of Sidney) so you
can register now to join in on summer’s last hurrah. This will be Vixen’s first call at Port Orchard.
There’s lots to do there and we’re looking forward to exploring the surroundings. And for those
interested, a passenger ferry running between Port Orchard and Bremerton gets you close to
the Puget Sound Navy Museum and other diversions near the Bremerton Marina. Sponsor, David
Horn, will supply details in the Evite that you’ll be receiving this summer.
6. Salmon Bake at Port of Poulsbo, September 23. Back to Little Norway for our last boat-in
gathering before fall. Kathy & Dennis Oelrich, and Patricia & Colin Shannon-Garvey are
sponsoring. Slips are reserved for us, so contact the Port to register your vessel at 360-779-3505
ext 1.
There’s no argument that summer is our favorite season, with favorable weather, long days, and easy
breezes. We hope to see many faces and boats at the above events. Be safe, and as small craft guru
Howard Rice says, “See you out there.”
We’ll end this post with two more quotes to sustain you over the summer:
“How inappropriate it is to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Sea” – Arthur C. Clarke.
And my favorite: “Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to
be Pirates” – Mark Twain.