July 4th, 2011, at MYC
What a great 4th of July at Massapoag Yacht Club this year. We had family picnics on Sunday, followed by a slightly muggy evening, but bug free and only partly cloudy. With fireworks that started a little later and lasted a bit longer than usual, we were really treated to a nice evening. On Monday. the Larry Lawrence Memorial Pancake Breakfast was delicious as usual and we thank our Commodore Denis Dubuc and fellow member Bruce Fitzpatrick for another great meal of pancakes and all the fixings, with some light music playing in the background for all the members who were lucky enough to join us for breakfast.
This was followed by boat decorating and getting ready for parading the boats out on the water. Ron and Barbara Alman and Chris Hughes joined the parade in a club motorboat and kept the boats out on the water for the fun races. Several families joined in the fun – Hein Smit Sibinga and his crew, Dennis and Angela Dubuc, the McNeffs, Greg Kampf and his crew, the Rousseau family, the Mouradians, Bob and Emily Gaffney, Dan Abram, the MacVicars , Dave Levy and perhaps some others we did not recognize.
There were 8 boats that went out for the fun races. The theme for this year’s game was not revealed to the participants. All they knew that they were to use whatever they could – fishnets, hats, buckets - to retrieve as many of the balls floating in the water as they could within the time limit. The balls had letters and numbers on them which did not mean much to the players. Speaking of buckets, there was a bit of water play using buckets, some pretty fancy water guns and water cannons, and any other method people could think of to get each other wet out on the water.
Leila and Jackie McNeff did the scoring back onshore, using a baseball theme and the game had 5 innings. The numbers – 1, 2 or 3 – represented a single, double and triple. H was a Home Run, G was a Grand Slam, AP was for apple pie and that gave the team an extra point and HD was hot dog which gave the team 2 extra points, with O standing for an out. The were many that were just blank that did not count in the initial scoring
Each team picked the name of a baseball team – no one was allowed to pick the Red Sox, so we had teams like the Orioles, the Dodgers, and the Nationals. Each team was asked to randomly pick balls out of their loot, one at a time, to score an inning. They kept picking until they chose 6 balls or until they picked an out. The score was then tallied for that inning. The balls were replaced back in their container to use for the next inning. Once the 5 innings were scored and tallied, each team counted all their balls and got 1 point for every 5 balls they had retrieved – the most by one family was 46. Those points were added to their previously tallied scores to see who won the ball game.
The Smit Sibingas and the Kampfs were tied with 20 points and the tie-breaker went to the Smit Sibingas. Third place went to the Mouradians who teamed up with the Dubucs. These teams each got special prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. All the other teams each got prizes for their participation so no one went away empty-handed. Some families stayed quite a while after the games to enjoy swimming, sailing, sitting on the beach and having barbecues and picnics with their families and friends. And another wonderful day was had at the Massapoag Yacht Club!