Sailing the Seven Seas

Twenty-four weeks down - Twenty-Eight to Make a Difference

This past weekend, we attended two more lovely Official Visits and had our first Grand Family/Member Fun Event - a two hour cruise of San Francisco Bay.

We put on our calendar to hold Grand Family/Member Fun Events, one in the North and one in the South, because we wanted to have a purely social event where the Grand Family and the members could come together to enjoy each others' company and have fun with no obligation on anyone's part to do any sort of formal program or remarks, just a fun time together.  We are asking the Chapters to do this, to have social events that are not business meetings so since we try not to ask of others what we ourselves are not willing to do, we wanted to set a good example.

So this past weekend, after a Social Official Visit in Lodi, we drove to San Francisco, to board a chartered Red and White fleet boat for a Sunset Cruise.  We had about ninety members join us and lots of good food.  It was windy but the clouds were high, so the views were unimpaired as we sailed.  There were great views from the bow, but if you didn't like the cold, you could see a lot from the enclosed interior through the big windows set in the walls.  And of course all the food was on the inside too, so you had to go in for that.  We chartered the Harbor Queen, which they say is a 150 person boat, but I figured out that boats, like tents and airplanes, are rated for people based on tiny people taking turns breathing, half in and half out, so having our ninety people was just right.  Ten or twenty more would not have crowded us unduly, but the full 150 would have meant that you had to be careful where you walked.  And of course, we had two sides of the buffet table, so that worked nicely too.

We left the dock and sailed out under the Golden Gate Bridge as the sun was setting.  As we went under the bridge, it didn't look all that big, so we had to remind ourselves that it was very, very, very far above us and what looked like maybe two feet across was actually six lanes wide.  So it was really, really far up there!  Then we sailed back into the Bay and headed around Tiburon, with all the boats moored in the Marina.  By the time we headed down the east side of the Bay towards the Bay Bridge, the new LED lights on the Bay Bridge had come on and we were able to watch the show.  I had not had the chance to see these lights since they came on line because they can really only be seen well from the north looking south and I live on the south side of the bridge.  They have all sorts of pictures and patterns that form by the lights turning on and off that make it look like clouds or birds moving across the bridge and all sorts of other things.  They say that the variety programmed into the display is enough that it will not repeat during the whole night.

When we returned to the dock, my Worthy Grand Patron and I had a chance to say farewell and everyone said what a great time they had on the trip.  It is one of those things that you live near, but never seem to do.  Some of the members had gone on a day trip, to Alcatraz or something like that, but none of them had done the Sunset cruise.  It was also nice that with a chartered boat, it was just us members and not a bunch of public people too - just a very large group of friends having a great evening together!  I hope our Southern event at the end of the month is just as successful.

Next weekend we are very excited to be instituting a new Chapter in Turlock and the weekend after that we are attending joint Grand Lodge/Grand Chapter events in Disneyland and at an Anaheim Angels ballgame, followed by a breakfast in San Diego and an Official Visit in Yucaipa.