Sunday was an interesting day owing to an email I had received on Friday. A yacht club member had been tasked to show a visitor the Seattle Waterfront, and had sent out a general email to his distribution list. Fortunately I was on the list owing to a committee I had served on.
The plan was to board a 47 foot powerboat and take a cocktail cruise around Seattle's waterfront. Tough duty, but after much deliberation (about 3 seconds), I volunteered.
The visitor was from the "Clipper around the world race", so I forwarded the email to Andy and Jill as I knew they'd be interested (John, the club member with the boat, was trying to get as many people as he could given the short notice.
The clipper round the world race is chaired by one of my childhood heroes, Sir Robin Knox Johnson, winner of the first single handed round the world race in the 60's. The current race is funded by corporate sponsors as well as the participants themselves. There's a paid skipper, but the rest pay to be on specific legs of the race and spend between $5 and $10K per leg.
The participants undergo intense training as these racing boats are 75 foot sleds that can achieve speeds up to 30 knots
Michael was with the clipper organization and was scouting potential locations for the 2015 race. We showed him the waterfront from the water and went into Bell Harbor, which would nicely showcase the racing yachts.
It was a great day cruise and learning about the mechanics of the race was interesting. Michael was very much the British sailor having sailed 'the wrong way' around the world with Chay Blythe. He was also a part time magistrate in England focusing on domestic violence disputes. In particular same sex domestic violence cases. Interesting fellow.
The cruise drew to a close at sunset. I had walked the nearly 5 miles from shilshole (what a great walk!) and Any and Jill had sailed over from Port Madison, so the plan was for me to sail back with them to Shilshole.
We packed up our gear and thanked our host and then fired up Andy's boat and headed back.
Andy and Jill are relative newcomers to Seattle but have fallen in love with the Northwest. They are also raising their son 'Porter', now 8 months old, on their 39 foot sailboat. Which led to some fun shots.
Andy is an accomplished sailor, having instructed sailing in the Virgin Islands.
The twilight faded and we continued to sail in the pitch dark back to shilshole, easily picking up the west point buoy and the channel markers leading back to the Marina. That brought back pleasant childhood memories of racing with Dad under similar conditions.
A great day. And here's a 3 minute video of the event....
The above video is from you tube. Somewhat as an experiment the one below is imbedded in blogger from my pc (same video)
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