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Editor's Note:
CYC Treasurer and J/24 sailor Remmert Wolters has been leading discussions with the BluWater cafe at Leschi, where the club is planning social gatherings after weeknight racing this year. Faced with a 30 percent rent increase, CYC last fall elected not to renew its Lake Washington clubhouse lease.
Wolters met early this month with Elizabeth Williams of BluWater to discuss this summer's arrangements. His report follows.
By Remmert Wolters
I met with Elizabeth Williams at BluWater March 5, and believe it proves that face-to-face meetings can give you a totally different impression than emails and phone conversations do. I am a lot more optimistic now and I think that many of us are going to prefer this to the yacht club venue downstairs.
Even though they will admit that we are all in un-chartered territory, the restaurant is looking forward to having the opportunity to serve us and agrees that we have a good opportunity to work the kinks out because they really do not start getting busy until late June.
By then, we will have figured out how many sailors will typically go to BluWater after racing, and the weather will give us more options with outside access. With extended daylight, racing will also be later so there might be less of a crowd in the restaurant by that time.
The BluWater cafe at Leschi is directly above CYC's former clubhouse space.
Members of the Lake Washington Fleet Council sampled BluWater's pizza during a meeting on Wednesday, March 25, and deemed it terrific. In the foreground is Harry Dursch. Others clockwise from Durch, are Remmert Wolters, Tom Colligan (chairman) Rusty Lhamon, John Mason and Dale Dunning.
I was able to sample some of the pizza choices, and I was very pleasantly surprised. The pizzas are hand tossed and would definitely qualify as restaurant quality, significantly better than anything that you can buy at typical pizza places.
We have a high-end pizza place near our house and these BluWater pizzas are considerably better. They are pretty good size and, even though I am a big eater, I could not possibly eat one by myself.
They are about 13 inches, and I would guess them to be a good solid meal for two people and a pretty good snack for four. At $6.60 to $7.50 each, I would consider this a great deal, and I would suspect that most sailors would opt for the pizzas that can be shared by the crew. If that is your choice of food, it will be a considerable improvement over what we had downstairs.
We looked at the restaurant. In it's current seating configuration, the southeast corner of the restaurant could accommodate about 50. For those who would primarily visit BluWater for drinks, there is the pool table area, in the bar, that could accommodate about 20 standing people. There is a shelf along the wall to put your drinks on. If necessary, they are open to considering a cover for the pool table as well.
We also talked about payment options. Credit cards would probably be easiest. They can take your card and scan it at the computer station in the southeast corner of the restaurant. It will automatically start a tab in your last name. When you are ready to go, you would just need to tell the waitress/waiter that you want to close your tab and they will run the ticket. Cash is always an option, of course.
At the March 25 meeting, some of us should plan on having dinner there and we can then sample some of the items that we would likely be ordering on racing nights. As far as beer is concerned, I see that they have Stella Artois on tap. Since that is my favorite, I am a happy camper.