We have missed this festival every year since we got our boat but managed to go this year. We had no idea what we were missing! What a fun weekend it was! We left the Everett Marina with Al & Sue in Sunshine and headed to Des Moines marina so we would have a short trip tomorrow over to the Tacoma Yacht Club. We met up with Colemans and Martins for the evening and enjoyed dinner out at Red Robin.
Friday morning we headed over to Tacoma Yacht Club and arrived as two other groups were approaching. It was a quite a dance for Basin Control to get everyone into the marina in an organized way. They not only had to fit 190 boats into their marina, it had to be done in a way that parade boats and bridge officers' boats were able to get out in order for the parade on Sunday.
I watched as one boat was backed into a boathouse. The stern fit fine but as they got closer to the bow they discovered it would not go in all the way. They left it wedged in as far as it would go and that is where it stayed all weekend.
The Tacoma Yacht Club is a beautiful facility. I caught one picture as we were departing and one while we were walking toward it for an event.
We found this photo quite funny! Many people came in their motorhomes and this one had secured its place. I don't think he would drift anywhere!
Sue, Cheryl and I decided we needed to send Moon a text telling her we missed them at this cruise. They live in Tulsa, OK so don't make it to very many of our cruises. They are our "cruising buddies" in the summer for our big trip every year. Here we are waving to her and Larry wanted to let her know that it is just another day of boating (with money running through his fingers)!
Friday evening we ate dinner in the yacht club and then following dinner was a lottery for the seating for the Trivia Contest. Following the drawing magician Jeff Evans performed.
Saturday morning we started decorating the boats. We worked on Ron and Denise's boat that the bridge officers would ride on. The club boat was Vagabond, a beautiful wooden boat owned by Don & Kitty Jensen. Their daughter has a home staging business and also does event planning. What talent she has! The boat looked beautiful!
Following lunch all the clubs lined up in costumes with their "token" (a designated spokesperson for the group). Our Commodore, Ron Coleman, was our token. We paraded in to our previously assigned seating (based on the lottery).
The Trivia Contest was a lot of fun. They were very organized with teams of 4 people sitting with their "token". The first and third rounds were a song that was played. Teams tried to identify the name of the song, the artist and the year, based on the order of the lottery. The second round was photos of different marinas and the team had to identify which marina each was. They earned points based on their answers. The judges were hilarious and were not above accepting bribes. Prizes were given out for the winner of the trivia contest and for the best bribe. They used to use the bribes to help determine the winner, regardless of the points, but that started causing some conflicts (as you might imagine) so they came up with this way of doing. Much better in my opinion.
Sunday morning came all too soon and we had to think about leaving. The morning started out nicely, though, with a wonderful Flag Ceremony at the yacht club. Guests include our military from several bases as well as the Daffodil princesses from the previous weekend.
After the ceremony we returned to our boat to prepare to pull out when the parade boats did. We had to get back home for work the next morning so did not get to stay long enough for the parade. Next year we will be more involved and will need to stay because Bob is talking on the role of Fleet Captain for the coming year. We will be riding on the bridge officers' boat so that will be a lot of fun. We did get to watch some of the decorated boats go by us as we waited for our turn to leave.
On our way out I got a couple pictures of Gavia, John and Nina's boat (my cousin). We had fun visiting with them a few times over the weekend. They were pretty busy because John is a bridge officer for Bremerton. These pictures show how packed in we all were. Most people had to step across other people's boats to get to their own. Gavia is against the boat house.
We had a beautiful trip back to Everett and made it to the marina about 6:30pm. We enjoyed the fly bridge again and got a beautiful shot of Mt. Rainier.
