Dinner Meeting by Vice Commodore, Roger Newby.

As Summer comes to an end, we have the upcoming series of every-third-Tuesday SBYC Dinner Meetings to look forward to, starting with September 19.  As many of you know, we’ve been struggling with the cost involved in having our Fall/Winter monthly meetings at a sit-down restaurant setting.  Not only has the per-person cost increased, but not reaching the minimum event fee has occurred more than we’d like, often resulting in additional expense to the Club’s financial account.  We’ve been discussing for some time not only a change of venue for our get-togethers but perhaps varying the meeting content a bit as well.

With that background, I am very pleased to invite everyone to our first Fall dinner meeting on September 19, to be held in the “Cascade Hall” at the Elliott Bay Brewing Company in Lake City (www.elliottbaybrewing.com).  The address is 12537 Lake City Way NE, Seattle, WA 98125.  Parking is available behind the building in the lot opposite Bill Pierre Ford on 30th Avenue.  Cascade Hall is a private room located downstairs and can handle over 100 people.  Food will be served from their Platter Menu.  Each platter has 24 portions, so this is a buffet-style approach.  Platter items will include Caesar Salad, Fish & Chips, and a variety of specialty sandwiches (Cuban, Italian Club, Reuben), plus a Carnitas Taco Platter as an appetizer.  One entire wall of Cascade Hall is an elegant bar, with a bartender there to serve us on individual beverage orders.  Their craft beers are excellent! Cost per person is $27 for cash/check payments, $29 for credit card – each member will handle their own bar bill with the bartender.

For our Program section after dinner is completed, we’ll be voting on the best member photos, in what I hope to be our First Annual SBYC Summer Photo Contest.  Please see the separate article below for more details, but don’t miss out on this, as PRIZES WILL BE AWARDED.  And, we’re expecting to hear some great stories from members whose photos will be scrolling across the big screen throughout the meeting.  Start time is our usual 5:30 or so for Happy Hour and 7 pm for Dinner.  We should be done by 9, but there is no pressure from Elliott Bay Brewing to have everyone gone by a certain time.

We are hoping to use Elliott Bay Brewing again for at least the October Dinner Meeting on October 17 (3rd Tuesday of the month).  Your feedback will be very helpful in determining whether this approach works well for us, or how we might tweak it a bit more for an even better experience.  We are talking with Ivar’s about potentially having the Christmas dinner meeting back at the Salmon House, so please do let us know your thoughts on various aspects of our Dinner Meeting Program.

See you on the 19th!

For our upcoming Dinner Meeting at Elliott Bay Brewing Company’s facility in Lake City, we will have a Photo Contest, showcasing the best photos submitted from the summer by our members.  Prizes will be awarded (items from our new SBYC ‘swag’ selections put together by Quartermaster, Katie Breitling).  Categories for the contest are as follows:

 Please send up to 5 of your summer photos via email to me at “rogernewb@gmail.com“.  These must be received no later than Friday, September 15th in order to be included in the contest.  All participating photos will be shown on the large screen at the Dinner Meeting, scrolling through multiple times during our Happy Hour and Dinner.  Instead of an outside presenter after dinner is completed, we’ll have some fun getting audience input and awarding prizes to those voted as best in category.  If this is enjoyed by all, there’s the potential to do a Summer Photo Contest at our first Fall Dinner Meeting in future years.  We hope it will be a great way to hear about and enjoy our member’s exploits on the Sound during the Summer months.