BLISS 2002, August 2-4, 2002

Mystic Seaport Museum

Mystic,  CT.

34 boats and 100 people attended the BLISS 2002 Rendezvous in Mystic, CT.   Boats began to arrive on Thursday and most arrived by Friday noon.  This constitutes the largest BLISS Rendezvous yet.!

At 3PM on Friday afternoon a private tour of the Mystic Seaport Museum's collection was given by Sarah Shrewsbury.  Once the tour was complete, we had a cocktail party in between raindrops.  The doppler radar showed a significant batch of red crossing Connecticut at that point and most of it went North of Mystic and missed our gathering.  We did get about 5 minutes of rain but our Pizza, Cocktails and Pot-Luck event went off largely unscathed.  At 8:00PM, a private lesson in star gazing and navigation was given by Dick Treworgy at the Mystic Seaport Planetarium.   Understanding the Summer and Winter sky,  understanding how to use the sky to fix your position and navigate were all discussed. 

On Saturday morning,  two seminars were held.  One by Chuck Poindexter of Sound Rigging in Essex on in-Boom furling systems.   Chuck described the pros and cons of both in-mast and in-boom approaches,  described how to avoid the common problems of both, and described the actual costs of implementing an in-boom upgrade to your Island Packet.  The second seminar was held by Capt. Henry Marx of Landfall Navigation.  Henry described how to handle "Shorthanded Emergencies at Sea" as well as various forms of offshore safety equipment such as flares, ditch bags, inflatable life vests and EPIRBs.   Both talks were very well received and many held conversations with Chuck and Henry after the seminars were long over.

On Saturday afternoon, we held "Open Boat" and allowed fellow packeteers to see each others upgrades and style choices.  We also took the rendezvous pictures.  Glorious weather helped significantly, with a deep blue sky helping to counter some high heat and humidity.

At 6:30 people began showing up for our cocktail party.  We spent about an hour socializing before the lobster, clam chowder, chicken and steak showed up.  Every person appeared to have plenty of food, and we let things go for quite a while before we interrupted eating sailors to introduce Karsten Johnson of Island Packet Yachts.  Karsten described new events at Island Packet as well as twisted a few arms to order the new 485.    Rick and Bonnie then began the prize lottery.   Many prizes were given away, ranging from tee shirts to water filtration systems to digital cameras and personal digital assistants.   Each boat won something and hopefully went away happy.

All in all, the BLISS 2002 event was a resounding success!

BLISS 2002 Group Pictures

(more to come)

BLISS 2002 Boat Pictures

  (more to come) 

BLISS 2002 Seminar Pictures

(more to come)

BLISS 2002 Friday Dock Party Pictures

(more to come)

BLISS 2002 Rendezvous Dinner Pictures

(more to come)

 BLISS 2002 Scenery

   (More to come)

Mystic Seaport Musuem information can be found at www.mysticseaport.org

BLISS 2002 Publications

BLISS 2002 Attendees