Happy 2025 everyone! We just barely got things back together in time to get off the dock before 2024 ended and 2025 began. Our Taco Tuesday Yacht Club had its annual raft up over in Blakely Harbor and we scrambled to get the boat back together enough to get over there. Seems like the hardest part of knocking out so many projects is cleaning up and putting away all the tools and supplies away.
One of the two bits that didn’t get finished was the new alternator bracket- how this whole project cycle started! The CNC machine broke and though the new one is running the shop is behind. They did make time to re-weld our old bracket which will be good enough for a little while. The other bit that didn’t happen was installing the new primary winches but as forecast, there wasn’t any wind so it didn’t matter.
What did matter was getting the boat off the dock (always including both of the cats) and meeting up with a great bunch of boats. We had a 9 boat raft up this year including that pretty red boat named Mara and had shenanigans galore getting everyone tied up together. There was good times and food throughout, Red Hot shared a ton of crab and flew their drone to get some cool photos, thanks guys!
We played the cheesy but fun old ‘Sailboat Race” board game that was a wedding present from friends who lived on Bainbridge. The evening felt young still but it went fast because all of a sudden it was almost midnight! Everyone got to the bow with noise makers and champagne and we watched the drone show and fireworks at the Space Needle.
The first morning of 2025 most boats slept late but next to us Steve got his polar bear done since Flyer had to fly home early. Mom was coming to pick Griffin and I up to to do our polar bears at Kay’s house so we rowed ashore. She lives next door to the end of Lytle road where many people run into the sound at high noon. It’s a great time but no photos since I was swimming. Griffin was the first one in our group in with his cousins, maybe he wanted to be first in the hot tub? Kay had a huge pot of her black eyed peas for good luck in 2025, they are so delicious! Another family friend, Mags, made her amazing carrot cake to share with the crowd.
We got a ride back to the beach (my knee was bugging me) with perfect timing to catch a choir singing in the graffitied cement building at the base of the bay. Griffin and I hung out and listened with some seals who also seemed to appreciate the music.
When we turned to row back to the boats, the seals followed us. I stopped for a bit but they seemed to like swimming in the wake of the dinghy so I kept going, slowly. Griffin was freaking out and so was I- in all my years of boating around Puget Sound I’d never had seals play with a dinghy like this. At one point when we stopped we counted 9 seals at the surface just hanging out. A few played really closely following our wake and played in the puddles from the oars, crazy cool.
Griffin and I got back to the boats and shortly after the raft broke up and we motored across the glassy calm sound back to Shilshole. I hope we always get to boat with great friends to celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of the next.