When we arrived in the ‘Emerald City’ - Seattle’s nickname because of the city’s lushness, the first thing I noticed was the expanse of water bordering it; a good thing if you’ve come to (try to) entertain people with a story about sailing.
As expected, the Seattle Yacht Club has no shortage of keen boaters: sailors and powerboaters (lucky me).
I was treated to a warm welcome (thank you ChristinaMarie and other members), a lovely dinner (and gifts), but as always, the most interesting part of my talk (at least for me) is the conversation afterwards. After spending hours behind a desk writing about people who spend a lot of time on the water, meeting the ones who are doing the ‘real thing’ is a welcoming change.
Hereby the random summary:
Seattle YC has ‘frostbite’ sailing, as sailing is all-year-round (and good enough to sell your house and live permanently on your boat);
they’ve created a perpetual trophy (very pretty) together with Suma Yacht club in Kobe, Japan, in the 1980’s;
one of their members was part of Bill Koch’s winning team in AC 1992;
talks about their own AC-‘One World’ challenge in 2003 and a ‘psychological’ analysis of what drives a successful AC-sailor (I can’t repeat what was said).
If you go and visit the Coffee Capitol of the World (it’s very easy to ignore Starbucks here), try to plan your visit around the SYC’s yearly Opening Day - it looks like quite an event! And don’t forget to visit Chihuly Garden and Glass, situated on the site of Seattle’s 1962 World Fair...