November in Seattle 2015.....Letting Go

Our son sent this pic of a tapestry our Granddaughter Ella did for her Art project in her Sophomore year at Anderson High School in Austin. She dyed each individual panel color plus sewing the it all together. Just never know what your kids are doing!

I really want to have a vessel here in the PNW. We are researching all possibilities to make that happen so we took several days out to go look at vessels both power and sail. Lots of decisions ahead.

Our Earshot Jazz volunteer work took us to the Good Shepherd Center, here is a shot looking at the back yard from a third story window.

A November evening from the same window.

We are pumped at this years Earshot Jazz Festival. We are much better prepared to participate as volunteers and take the perks of lots of free concerts.Due to our trip to Texas we missed the official opening at Benoroya hall with Wayne Shorter who we first saw in the late 70's at a concert in Austin when he played with Weather Report.
http://www.seattlesymphony.org/concerttickets/calendar/2015-2016/concerts/benaroyahall/earshotjazz

We missed the opening but we started with Charles Lloyd, Wild Men Dance
http://www.earshot.org/event/charles-lloyd-quartet/

Next was the Far Out Duo of Nate Wooley and Paul Lytton. these guys will have you so far out of this world you might think you have had an Out of Body Experience.
http://www.earshot.org/event/nate-wooley-paul-lytton/

The Chapel Performance Space was the venue for three of the concerts we volunteered at. This building was completed and first occupied in 1907. This building now known as the Good Shepherd Center was developed by 5 nuns who hired a local Seattle Architect to construct the building:
 "The Good Shepherd Center, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Home of the Good Shepherd ^[3] and is a city of Seattle designated landmark.^[4] The center was built in 1906 as a Catholic School for wayward girls and operated until 1973. The building is now run by Historic Seattle".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_of_the_Good_Shepherd

We saw three concerts in the Chapel. We were amazed how how awesome the acoustics are in this space. 

Lots of interesting History here.

Our third concert was Mimi Fox, you could here influences all the way from Chet Akins to Bob James and beyound.
http://www.earshot.org/event/mimi-fox/

Torsten Mueller and Phil Minton Won the Other Worldly Music Medal in my honest opinion. Here is another comment:

"Earshot Jazz festival gets really far out on November 7 with the European duo of vocalist Phil Minton and double bassist Torsten Mueller. Perhaps calling British septuagenarian Minton a “vocalist” is deceptive and inadequate: He is more like a conduit for the human id. The most eccentric and primal urges of the mind and body spew out of him as if from a spigot of dadaist argot. Aural surprise and rupturing decorum are his métier. The German Mueller bows his five-string bass with wild adventurousness in the key of frayed nerves. Together, the two are an absurdist, sublimely slapstick force of nature." DAVE SEGAL

Definitely our volunteer experiences with both the Seattle Symphony and Earshot Jazz has provided us with a huge variety of musical experiences that has truly broadened our music loving ears.Please listen to the video on the following link and you will understand what
I'm talking about:
http://www.earshot.org/event/torsten-mueller-phil-minton/

Fun Halloween at the Pacific Science Center with Big "D"

The weather was Great for our first Birding Tour at discovery Park.

Can't tell from the pic but it is so windy just trying to look at the numerous seabirds feeding is difficult in the wind at this point.

The West Point Light house still serving Mariners.

Finally we move into the lea of a hill and get out of the wind.

After a couple of hours we get back to the Visitors Center and review the almost 30 birds we spoted or "heard" that morning.

Just as we were leaving the beach I spotted a Sailboat emerging from Shillshole Marina. Later I see on Facebook that they had a "Rouge" Rum Race regatta with about 7 vessels participating. No one died.

Another volunteer opportunity and we see one of the more interesting one man shows ever.

We watched the Sounders on TV as they made it into the MLS Playoffs and since they won we immediately got on Ticketmaster and bought tickets to their next game in Seattle which turned out to be  vs  FC Dallas.

The last seconds of the Sounders 2-1 victory over FC Dallas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBlD05Bs9NU&feature=youtu.be

My sailing friend Brian who is a Meterologist invited me to the Corinthian Yacht club at Shillshole Marina for a presentation by his friend David Burch who has developed the most reliable digital Barometer ever. And it is affordable. I learned a lot from David and Matt, the head NOAA guy for Puget Sound. 

The guy in the pic here is the Regional NOAA Forecaster who is primarily responsible for keeping the Commercial shipping in Puget Sound informed.

The Best thing ever has happened. Kirstin and Elana, both employed at the Center for Wooden Boats have bought a sailboat that they plan to enter in the 2016 Race to Alaska Race. These two women are capable of not only finishing the race but winning it. I am so excited to be friends with actual race participants!!!

Here they are bringing their Santana through the locks to a nearby marina.

We still had a few tickets to Benaroya Hall so the Admiral got us tickets to see Jean-Yves Thibaudet the new 2015/16 resident pianist for the Seattle Symphony. The idea of perfection in classical music is a misnomer but what word do you use? We wondered how the difference between Thibaudet and Keith Jarrett would be described?
http://www.seattlesymphony.org/concerttickets/calendar/2015-2016/concerts/seattlesymphony/jean-yves-thibaudet

November in Seattle 2015

Volunteering with the Earshot 2015 JazzFest was a perfect distraction from the pending change and transition the Admiral and I were contemplating as we faced another evolution in our lives. Every time I looked out the window at the incredibly beautiful Puget Sound I really wanted to have a boat up here. As we began to consider options of moving Wand'rin Star back up here or sell her in Texas and buy another vessel here we spent many hours pouring over rational and irrational options. The goal is now to split our time between our families in Austin and Seattle and continue to have opportunities to spend time on the water, preferably Puget Sound and, who knows. parts of the Inside Passage.
I knew that the only way to define the vision was to spend some time looking at boats for sale in the Seattle Area before returning to Texas and get some idea of the next 10 years. We looked at both power and sail and knew that we wanted to downsize to a practical size considering the time boats require for your maintenance time. We looked mainly at power vessels since we know Sailboats pretty well. Trawler like vessels in the 36-40' range were the target. As a result we narrowed to 37-39' whether it be power or sail. We want a boat large enough to comfortably live aboard and avoid as much maintenance as can be.
That is as far as we got except it became clear that bringing Wand'rin Star back to the PNW would be a huge mistake. She is a Southern vessel and just does not fit in to the PNW culture. Her re-sale value would be much less and the reality is that vessels are pretty much region specific in purpose. Endeavours were built in Florida for the purpose of making the day hop over the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas and beyond in Southern waters. Perfect for all the things we have done with here on the Gulf of Mexico and our short stint on the Atlantic in the Florida Keys.
Time to Let Go and move forward.