Merging into July 2018 Seattle

Merging into July 2018 Seattle

June through July is almost like one month, not sure what happened to all that time except having fun makes it go by fast. Seeing friends old and new, Sailing, boat projects, the Ballard Sefood Fest, Seattle Sounder games and keeping up with two very lively red headed grandkids made the months seem like weeks. 

Captain Jim of Apothaker and his crew John fly up to Seattle most summers to crew for Captain Duane on his Catalina 36 "Adagio" for awesome Puget Sound and beyond cruises. We sailed over to Eagle Harbor to meet up and have a fun day catching up on their latest Puget Sound Cruise.

Jim, John, and Duane see us off the Bainbridge Island city docks, farewell till next year.
See: https://youtu.be/sC8Ux3NUgjc

There is always a way to get your boat in the water.

Then Cathy and Stan come up from Austin to check in with their son and daughter in law, Nick and Stephanie. We all met at the E for a great dinner and catching up on what everyone's been doing the last couple of years.

Agate Pass was the first test on our ten day Puget Sound Shakedown Cruise.

Our new dock and future home at Shillshole.

Heading: Mt. Rainier

Boat projects are fun for me, and this one was very important as I installed an upgrade to the fueling system to avoid any diesel spills into this mighty fine. water.

So easy to do and so important!

A day sail up to the south end of Whidby, Gray whales can be spotted here but not this time of year. Mt. Baker was out though.

Not all ships stay in the shipping channel so in this busy commercial and recreational world you have to constantly pay attention.

Then all these little guys were thick like flys racing right at the North entrance to Shilshole. We just drifted a while until we saw a gap.

This is the only cruise ship where you can see four decks above the Port of Seattle's office building from this vantage point at the Seattle Sculpture garden Park.

"This week’s milestone brings the first of the new megaships to Seattle, the Norwegian Bliss with 4,000 passengers. She’s the largest cruise ship on the West Coast, is custom-built for Alaska cruising, and recently became the largest passenger vessel to transit the Panama Canal."

Economic Impact

• Every season, the cruise industry provides more than 4,000 local jobs 
• Every cruise season brings $501 million to the local economy 
• Every vessel call brings $2.7 million; in 2018, the port expects 216 vessel calls 
• The cruise industry generates $18.9 million annually in state and local tax revenues

I can remember when we were living in Corpus Christi, Tx there was conversation among the city leaders and the Port Authority there to try and lure a cruise ship to move its home base to Corpus Christi Bay. The Port of Corpus Christi is primarily a export/import terminal for petroleum products and chemicals. There are four huge oil refineries that border the ports shipping channel. I knew there was no way any cruise line would enter that port. There were some possibilities on the East side of Corpus Christi Bay and also out near Port Aransas. Then you would need all the auxiliary services required to support a cruise ship terminal. Was not going to happen and I cant imagine it ever will. Way to many industrial installations in those areas as well to be attractive to the cruise ship crowd.

Settle however has the right combination of everything to support more cruise ships than the locals actually want to put up with. Seattle is crammed with cruise ship tourist all season long and they fill up every available space especially when three cruise ships are docked and offloading and loading on the same day right in the heart of the city.

Nine different ships in 2018 are calling on the Port of Seattle

7 ships in port each week = about 23,000 boarding and 23,000 exiting ships each week. Many stay in Seattle or the local region for a few days before boarding or after their cruise. Seattle is the  largest cruise ship terminal on the West Coast. Seattle has it down like a fine watch providing all the support services to accommodate the ships and all the visitors coming & going. 

This season is expected to bring 216 vessel calls and 1,100,600 estimated revenue passengers to the Port of Seattle cruise terminals. 

This one is new to us but was drawing lots of 10-25 year olds.

This is one of those festivals where you need to attend all four days so you can sample all this food.

We went to two Sounders games and they won, we wondered if our presence contributed to the win so we are determined to attend as many home games as possible to help the sounders claw their way back into the playoffs.

A pair of Seahawks hanging around O Dock, hope that is a good sign!

Getting used to a Heat exchanger that reqires grounding and regular pencil zinc replacement, the Yanmar on Wand'rin Star did not need either.

The best way to get to CenturyLink Stadium is to march with the supporters!
I took a video but this one from 2010 is a better one and you can get the feeling of what it is like to march in this huge crowd of supporters: https://youtu.be/6UnB6EFlBbk

But I think this guy will ride in her wagon.

Another perfect day for a match.

Sounders regularly draw over 40,000 and on the big games can hit 67,000. either way an incredible US Soccer experience. There are now two or three other MLS teams that are experiencing the same type of attendance and experience at their venues, great news for US Soccer

Importing foreign talent is crucial for the development of the MLS and all of US Soccer. Any country competitive at the International level relies heavily on imported talent. Just consider the English Footballs Professional soccer history, It was not long ago, late 70's and early 80's that there were only a couple of imported players in the English League's, now about 70% of the players in the English Premier League are importes, many earning citizenship and playing for England's National team in the World Cup.

The English Football Leagues history and in particular the Premier League are sort of standards against which you can measure all other countries attempts at keeping a high percentage of their own national players. Here are a couple of articles that discus the beginnings of importing foreign players into the English Football Leagues:

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/remembering-british-footballs-first-foreign-footballers-it-could-spread-wildfire

and lots of articles like this one online: 

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mark-hendrick/world-cup-premier-league-foreign-players_b_5488480.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=nlitL0-yxT41L56Ys9JBcA

Another win for US

A Historical warm July means you jump in when you can.

Water + red headed boy.

July is free concert month at the Seattle Sculpture Park just one block The music on the schedule is about as diverse as you can imagine reflecting the Seattle music scene.