While sailing is the main focus of Summer Sailstice, doing something 'sailing related' counts, too. For example, last year, Tom Perry was planning to go sailing on his home waters of San Francisco Bay aboard his Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 52.2 with his girlfriend, Barbara. Then again, being a sailing school instructor, he sailed a lot already. So he was open to other ideas.
An announcement on the website here provided the perfect “something different” - "Dinner and a Movie,” an early-evening festival in Sausalito's Dunphy Park to welcome the summer sailing season, complete with live music, food and drink, a raffle . . . and an outdoor movie. Maidentrip is a documentary about Laura Dekker, the young Dutch girl who a few years ago became the youngest person ever to circumnavigate singlehanded. (She set off in 2010 aboard the 38-ft ketch Guppy – at age 14 – and returned two years later, age 16. For more on Laura, see www.maidentrip.com)
“I'd been following her adventures with great interest in the sailing blogs,” says Perry, who also holds a 100-ton Coast Guard license. “And I especially wanted Barbara to see it, and to see what women could achieve in sailing endeavors.”
Like the 100 or so other people who attended, Tom and Barbara spread a blanket on the grass for the 8:30 p.m. show time. The movie was shown on an “inflatable” screen. “I'd never watched a movie outdoors,” Perry says. “It was a really fun event.”
Picnic, a movie and sailing all fit together for Barbara and Thomas.
We're happy to announce that 'Dinner and a Movie' is again on the docket for Summer Sailstice 2015. The movie is yet-to-be-announced, but the format is the same: dinner, drinks, music beginning at 6 p.m., with the movie starting at 8:30.
t's worth mentioning that this is a win-win event - not only for the public, but for the community and sailing in general. All money raised goes to the Sausalito Community Boating Center at Cass Gidley Marina, whose mission statement says it all: “a gathering place on Sausalito’s unique waterfront to engage and educate the public about our rich maritime history and small craft heritage through affordable, direct experience.”
The name Cass Gidley is an integral part of the long and storied history of the Sausalito waterfront. Starting in the late '50s, Gidley, a transplanted Canadian, ran one of the busiest fish docks in the Bay Area. (At the height of salmon season, some 300 boats at a time would tie up, five-deep, along the dock to unload). He is also thought to be the first entrepreneur in the Bay Area to offer a sailboat for rent – a pink 27 footer – in 1961. In the late '60s, the business transitioned from a fish dock into a busy charter company and sailing school. After more than half a century, the original Cass' Marina finally closed its doors in 2010. But Cass' name and legacy of getting people out sailing lives on in the Community Boating Center. For more information, see cassgidley.org.
More scenes from 2014 here. Plan to sail in for another movie in 2015!
