Fall is here and change is in the air (along with too much forest fire smoke). This is the time of the year we change gears from cruising to in-person dinner meetings, winter racing, and planning 2023 events and board members. We just wrapped up the 2022 cruise events with a well-attended Salmon Bake in Des Moines. It was great to get back to cruising this year throughout this managed phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you all for doing so safely to minimize health risks during these times.
Next month we begin the 2022-2023 Snowbird racing series. We have been hosting and running this winter race series for years (decades even?) well, for as long as I have been in the club. Wow, next year is my 20th anniversary in the club, and I still have the same boat! I guess that vaccine for “five-foot-itis” was effective. I originally joined the club to race, then found such a great group of people and fell in love with the cruises and social events. Jerry has offered Olele as committee boat for most every race in the time I have been here. I highly recommend joining the committee boat on a race day. It is a lot of fun and there is so much action to be seen at the starts and finishes, so bring a camera.
Speaking of cruises and races, we are planning for next year’s events and I’m so happy we have a full slate of candidates for club officers and board positions next year! Katie and the nominating committee have done a great job of reaching out to members to volunteer to run the club next year. Matt’s speech at the September dinner meeting seems to have helped convince some of you to volunteer. See Katie’s report below on the slate of candidates we will vote on at the November dinner meeting.
One small change next year is that we will be raising the Captain membership level (two people ages 30+) by $5 a year. This will increase the membership fee from $85 per year for two members to $90. The club has not raised this rate for many years, all the while we have seen increased costs to run the club for quite some time (such as annual insurance, memberships in yacht club affiliations, financial transaction fees, Zoom, etc.). The good thing is that we will continue to run the Snowbird series, which significantly helps finance our club, so the increase is minimal. The board reviewed the rise in expenses over time and we all agreed to this small increase. This still keeps us on par with the lowest yacht club membership fees in the region. We will be updating the web site and renewal process with this new rate in the coming weeks. An email and an Evite will be sent out soon for membership renewals for 2023.
One last thing is that as a non-profit social club, we need to be sure we are supporting the community and charities. This is not only important to the charities we give to, but also to our status as a non-profit club. Every year we collect race fees from our annual TransPuget Benefit race and donate all profits to a local charity. In recent years that has been Footloose Sailing. This year’s race was unfortunately a low turnout, so the donation amount was much smaller than usual. The board voted to add to that donation from the club treasury to round it up to $500 to be much more meaningful to Footloose. We will also have a basket out at the November dinner meeting if you’d like to add to the overall Footloose Sailing donation. Also, as cruise chair I picked UNICEF Ukraine as the donation option on the cruise event Evites this year. Thanks to those of you who also donated to that charity this year to help the children impacted by the war in Ukraine.
I’ll leave you another sailing quote with a few pictures of the club sailboats returning from the salmon bake to Shilshole Bay. It has been a lot of fun “racing” back to Shilshole from the cruise events this year. 🙂
“Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit.” — Brooks Atkinson
David Horn, Commodore
The October dinner meeting will be on the 18th at Ivar’s Salmon House.
Pre-Dinner drinks from 5:30pm with Dinner served at 6:45pm.
What a great finish to our 2022 cruise season! We had nearly 40 people attend the Salmon Bake at the Des Moines Marina by boat and by car. The weather was wonderful all weekend, kind of like an extended summer. Most of the boats arrived Friday and we had a happy hour in the pavilion that first night. Roger brought out his keyboard and gave a little concert on the docks from the cockpit of his boat, then hosted the after party down in that deep, spacious salon.
Saturday was a beautiful day with hikes up and down the Des Moines Creek Trail before the big event, the Salmon Bake. Larry and Sharon were the sponsors for this cruise and did a fantastic job planning, coordinating, and cooking. As a new destination for us, there was a lot of planning and paperwork for this one and we could not have done it without them. And thanks to all who pitched in to help out, including Jessie to track down the fees for salmon and the first night’s moorage. The pavilion was right on the dock and was the perfect size for our group with two big grills to handle the 13 salmon filets. The potluck appetizers, salads, sides, and desserts were varied and delicious. Our group does such a great job with bringing food!
It was great to have many guests and our new members, Ilesa and Garrett, attended as well. Lillian was so happy to have people her age there, too. We added our club’s burgee to the pavilion wall where other yacht clubs have started to zip tie their burgees. It was a nice facility and I think our club should return in the future.
I am working to plan the 2023 cruise calendar and I am so happy that Julie has stepped up to be elected as cruise chair next year. Here is the tentative schedule for next year’s cruises. I need to confirm some locations and dates before I finalize the 2023 schedule next month.
FEB 03-04 or 17-18 Winter Fest, Bell Harbor Marina
APR 08 Yellow Fest, Blake Island
MAY 13 Burger Burn, Destination TBD, possibly Port Ludlow
JUN 10 June Dinner Dance, Kingston
JUL 01-03 Independence Day Weekend Raft Up, Liberty Bay
JUL 30 – AUG 05 Summer Rendezvous, San Juan Islands or farther North?
SEP 02-03 Labor Day Weekend, Destination TBD, most likely Port Orchard
SEP 23 or OCT 07 Salmon Bake, Destination TBD, most likely Brownsville
Email me any suggestions you may have for cruise destinations and please let me know if you want to sponsor a cruise.
David Horn, Cruise Chair
The winter sailing season is quickly coming upon us! With that, our Snowbird series is kicking off on November 19. Snowbird runs once a month through February.
This series race dates are:
- Nov 19, 2022
- Dec 10, 2022
- Jan 14, 2023
- Feb 11, 2023
- Mar 18, 2023
With a growing family and more demands on my time, this is my last year as Race Chair. The position is being handed off to Anne Girvin. Snowbird is an interesting race because the series spans the change between years. Anne is going to start helping run things preemptively in November. Along with Anne stepping up, there is plenty of room on the committee boat to help run the race. If you have ever been interesting in the racing program, this is an easy, low pressure, way to get started. Let Anne know if you are interested in coming aboard for any of the races.
I am looking forward to Anne putting her special touch on the races in 2023!
Going South to Oly – South Sound Cruising to the SBYC Summer Rendezvous.
When the SBYC rendezvous for the 2022 season was set for Longbranch Marina in Filucy Bay, Katie, Radar and I jumped at the opportunity to spend a week in the South Sound with the Rendezvous anchoring the center of the week. We had visited once before in 2018, and we really enjoyed the quiet parks, lack of crowds and the sunny days while exploring this gem of an area just a day south of Shilshole Bay. Clearly, it had left us wanting more.
We headed south out of Shilshole to Gig Harbor on Saturday morning. Surprisingly, the conditions were perfect in Colvos Passage for a long, down-hill run all the way to Gig Harbor. You gotta’ love making good progress under sail and heading south against the current in Colvos. It was a first for us. We landed at a prominent and social spot on the dock at Arabella’s Landing in plenty of time to enjoy a little happy hour in the sunshine. The dock at Arabella’s was complete with the regular summer mix of weekend warriors and old salts, and many stories and laughs were shared with our new dock mates. We were surprised by how well the community in Gig Harbor has done with historical preservation and interpretation. We learned the story of the area’s strong Croatian heritage and heard a speaker of the local, pre-colonization language describe aspects of the park at the west end of the bay from an interactive display in the park. The net shed abutting the park on the waterfront in the center of town also was an interesting stop – with many relics of the recent past on display.
Sunday, we timed the tides for the Narrows, and headed south under calm conditions, under sunny skies. We dropped the hook in mud and sand on the east side of Penrose Point and immediately went for a swim! Temperatures in the 80’s and 90’s and water temps in the low to mid-seventies had us thinking we were in the tropics on this trip. We spent the day paddling, swimming, hiking, beaching, and reading – as you do, and in the morning, we were visited by a pod of Orca whales a few hundred feet away from our boat. They swam around in the reflection of Mount Rainier for about half an hour while we prepared to be off on the next leg of our journey.
Leaving Penrose in our wake, we set out for the West end of Case Inlet and Stretch Point State Marine Park for a night. The sailing was again excellent – featuring a beam reach to broad reach run all the way up the inlet to the park. All the park buoys were empty, so we picked the most protected one and again hopped in for a cooling swim. Water temp here read 75 degrees! Perfect for cooling off in the 94 degree heat of the day. The next morning, we left the buoy and hopped across the bay to Fair Harbor Marina for the night. A little shore power and shore shower was nice, as was the margarita-flavored icy beverage from the store on the dock. There is a great little marina there in Fair Harbor. It seemed to be the local gathering spot. We enjoyed meeting the proprietors and chatting up the locals who arrived boatload after boatload to pick up essentials such as beer, ice and ice cream bars.
Wednesday morning brought the first few (very welcome) clouds of the trip as well as a very spirited sail back west and around the point of the Key Peninsula – burgee whipping in the wind as we enjoyed yet another perfect day of sailing. Flora easily hit hull speed in the 12.5 knot winds that eventually ended up gusting to over 20 knots by the time we doused just before entering Filucy Bay to meet up with the SBYC for a rousing fun Summer Rendezvous. We were met with much help docking from Matt, Harold and a nice fellow from the J42 down the dock. It wasn’t the biggest turn-out for this meet-up, with just four boats eschewing the lure of the north to explore these southern shores. There was Katie, Radar and I on Flora, Matt on Abeona, Harold, Jessie and Rosie on Mischief Maker and Jack and Judy on Main Finale. It’s always so much fun to enter a bay and see friends already there. Our little fiesta on the dock drew in a few new friends from down the dock, and again, the sharing of stories and laughs ensued.
In the morning we said our farewells and headed south to Olympia, which would be the farthest SE point of our trip. Thankfully, the 20 knot winds had died down, and we motor-sailed our way down to Budd Inlet, riding a nice tidal push. Oly, by the way, is a fantastic spot to cruise into. The marinas are all right downtown, with great walking, dining and shopping options all around. We provisioned at the excellent seafood market and at the huge and diverse farmer’s market – which runs from Thursday through Sunday in the season. It’s right in the middle of the downtown neighborhood.
From Oly, it was time to start making our way north toward home. We did so by way of another magical evening at Penrose Point, where we dined on piles of oysters procured that morning, and then through one more night in Gig harbor before the journey back home to Shilshole Bay.
From here in the central sound, the area south of the Tacoma Narrows can seem like such a small and limited cruising ground, but with two trips into the area now, we feel like there is still so much to explore. There is a great mix of state marine parks, small, local marinas, and even fully urban spots like Olympia to check out. On top of that, we found nearly the entirety of the area to be quite uncrowded. All of this was in the shadow of the towering presence of Mount Rainier to the East and the Olympic range to the West. The South Sound proved to again be a wonderful cruising ground that exists in relative obscurity just a day south of Seattle. We’ll definitely be back.