2019: Hampton VA SSCA MiniGAM

4/20/2019
No boat travel.

The Seven Seas Cruising Association MiniGAM held in Hampton, Virginia was generously supported by the City of Hampton, Virginia, Hampton Public Piers staff, and the Bull Island Brewing Co.

The program started early on Saturday morning and included a hot buffet breakfast. We enjoyed presentations on "Heading North" offered by Ed and Sue Kelly, "Destination Maine" provided by John and Helen Leddy, "AIS / EPIRB Tracking Systems" presented by Capt. Doug Simpson, USCG, and "OpenCPN Overview and Demonstration" presented by David Register.

Important Distress and EPIRB-related URLs 

The creator of OpenCPN presented the features of this navigation tool for PCs or Android devices.

The presentation portion of the weekend program concluded around 3:00. As we left the gathering, we noticed numerous tents and people just up the street and went up to explore.

Countries had booths where both children and adults could learn about the country's culture.

Flamenco Dancer Ev

Haiti Poster

Closest I ever plan to get to a camel

Big Hugs for Peppa Pig

and Skye from Paw Patrol

Having worked with someone from Armenia, I stopped by to get educated on their culture. I learned a lot about their foods including apricots and their geography.

Armenia

As we left the grounds, we passed by

International Dancers

and

International Costumes

We headed back to the docks for docktails. During the course of talking about this and that, it came out in conversation that Clark played guitar. He ran back to the boat to get his and when he got back, two other people had pulled out their guitars as well. Then folks joined in singing as best they knew the words which sometimes was la-la-la. What a fun evening they had with the impromptu jam session.

SSCA MiniGAM Organizer - Joan

Nikki prepared most of the food and drinks

The gatherer crowd

Even a dog came to partake of the fun

No sunset picture tonight, but here is a view of the Space Museum at the Hampton Public Piers at night.

4/21/2019
No Boat Travel.

A group of us met at the Grey Goose Restaurant and Bakery to have Easter Sunday Brunch together.

Studying the menu ...

All smiles!

After brunch Joan and Greg offered to drive me to CVS to pick up some items I needed. While I did that, Clark got together with Sue and Ed to play some more guitar. Once I returned from my errands, the four of us walked to the History Museum to see a special display on the Civil War.

Hampton History Museum

Ed and Sue Kelly - "Angel Louise"
Ev and Clark - "Sunset Delight"

The detail in the pictures hand-drawn by Private Sneden from 1861 to 1864 was unbelievable.

Later that night, Sue and Ed Kelly from the SSCA gathering came to our boat to teach us a new game - Marbles & Jokers. We played the girls against the boys. The boys won both times. It's a great game for couples to team up against other couples! We had a lot of fun playing and getting to know each other better.  Sue even brought popcorn!