This weekend was the Tacoma Yacht Club's annual Daffodil Marine Festival. Their theme this year was Daffodil Paradise. It is a full weekend with boats packed into the marine basin, costumes, decorated boats, and a lot of fun!
We left Everett on Thursday morning and cruised to Des Moines where we met up a total of 9 boats. We enjoyed a good (but very slow) dinner at Red Robin. Even though the poor waiter was totally overwhelmed by serving 18 of us plus other tables all by himself (after one week on the job) we had a wonderful time visiting with everyone.
The next morning, we headed to the Tacoma Yacht Club planning our arrival for 11:00am. Mt. Rainier was beautiful, we passed by the Pt. Robinson lighthouse, and then were treated to a great show by a pod of orcas. The last picture shows the splash of an orca that jumped way up out of the water but I was too slow to grab the camera. It was amazing to see and I was so sorry to not get a picture. That's the problem with trying to photograph the whales. They pop up unexpectedly at different places so it is difficult to be ready when they give a performance. They were still so much fun to see, though. We normally have seen gray whales when we search them out but to see orcas when we are just traveling through was a real treat!
We pulled in to the Tacoma Yacht club basin and waited our turn to be escorted to our slip. They move most of the tenants out of their boat houses and slips so that other boats coming for the festival can get in. They docked 180 boats for this weekend. You can see how crowded it was coming in. We ended up with ten of us rafted side-by-side and then three others perpendicular to us. One would become our decorated boat and one was the fleet boat that would be in the parade on Sunday.
One of the first activities that TYC held was a hula show and competition. After the very nice hula demonstration, all the commodores were brought up front and had to perform a hula dance. Based on how well they did, that is the order that their yacht club members could enter the building the next day for the trivia contest. Al did a great job and placed us somewhere in the middle for entrance. The room was packed as all the yacht clubs cheered on their commodore.
I ordered 8 pizzas for everyone to enjoy after the decorating was done and then we headed up to the clubhouse for the Trivia Contest. Everyone lined up with their costumes on so our group had casino dealer vests and ties with caps that had two springs with large dice on them. The costumes were great and our fearless commodore, Al, had a special vest that said "Daffodil Pair-a-dice Casino". We did not do very well in the Trivia Contest but we did have a lot of fun. It is tradition that each club give "bribes" to the judges so we gave each judge a green plastic box decorated to look like a dice. We filled it with Tacoma chocolates. The last picture shows the judges in their costumes and being presented with EYC's bribe.
In the afternoon was the boat parade and although the rain came we had a wonderful time with the other bridge officers. We were the last boat (except for the Sea Scouts) to go through the parade so with the bad weather there were not a lot of people out to watch the parade. It was still fun and there were some people waving to us at restaurants, from their own boats, or along the street. One couple were sitting in lawn chairs with rain gear and umbrellas and I was impressed they had waited to the end of the parade. We were shouting out to them thanking them for being there and they laughed and said "The only reason we are still here is because our son is a Sea Scout on the boat behind you!" It was pretty funny and I can't say I blame them. The weather was pretty bad at times. The last two pictures are from the Tacoma Yacht Club Facebook page and show our decorated boat and the Flagship boat.
It was a great weekend and we cruised away with two awards for our club. The first was the Commodore's Award for our overall participation with the number of boats that joined in, level of enthusiasm and parade entries. The Flagship won first place for the bridge officers following protocol in the way we presented ourselves, saluted the judges, flew the signal flags, etc. in the parade. The best recognition of all was the comment by one of the dinghy operators who led us in to the marina. He said our club was the best boat handlers he had seen that weekend! That says a lot about the seamanship abilities of our club members.
Following the boat parade we headed back as far as Bell Harbor in Seattle and then left early in the morning to return to the Everett Marina on Monday morning.
