Grand Banks Rendezvous-Roche Harbor

With the summer boating season quickly approaching (despite the dismal weather in the greater Puget Sound area) Onboard Fitness is ramping up steam and getting ready to officially launch our new website. As we bring this business into the consciousness of the local boating community we are reaching out and educating interested boaters about the benefits of exercising on board their boats. We were invited to present our seminar at the annual Grand Banks Yachts Rendezvous in Roche Harbor in mid May.  Ken Bowles, the organizer of the event, had contacted us following our Boat Show presentations and asked us if we would be interested in coming up to Roche Harbor and speaking to the Grand Banks owners. We were ecstatic! What an opportunity for us to reach out and share our message.

In preparation we tweaked our presentation to be more appropriate for our anticipated audience and drove up to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. We would have loved to take our boat up, however that would have been at least a four day trip up and back and we did not have enough time in our schedule to fit that trip in. So we drove. Reflecting on the amount of time we waited for missed and late ferries, taking our boat up might have been an appropriate option.

Not to slander our transportation system, but our commute to and from the island was horrendous. The 5 o’clock ferry from Anacortes was full by 4:20 (our fault for not being there early enough I suppose). To add insult to injury however, we were labeled “stand by” and missed that ferry by ONE car! So we waited for the following ferry scheduled to depart a little over an hour from then. Well, that ferry was behind schedule and showed up about 45 minutes late.  Our plan was to be to Roche by 7 pm, however we didn’t end up checking in until well past 9!

We took a quick walk down the dock and ran directly into Ken. We sauntered down the “old dock” and admired all the beautiful Grand Banks. They really are gorgeous boats! Inspired and a bit nervous we bid goodnight to Ken and headed to bed.

We woke early Friday to an absolutely beautiful day! I couldn’t have been any nicer. Temperatures were predicted to reach the 80’s in the Harbor; almost unheard of on the Island in May! I jumped out of bed and went for a run. ( I will blog about my running experience later, fabulous!) We got ourselves ready and practiced our seminar briefly before presenting to around 30 people at 11am.

It went great! We had a fabulous response and people signed up for us to visit them on their boats later in the afternoon. We always invite boaters up at the conclusion of our seminar to demo the equipment and speak to us one on one about their fitness needs.

Going from boat to boat with our push cart full of Xertubes (exercise bands), foam rollers, Xerdiscs, and of course our new product the X-iser, we visited with fitness minded boaters. Most were interested in knowing what space to use on their boat to workout and how our membership worked. We sold some equipment and also signed up a few new members, but more importantly we met some wonderful people.

We stayed through the BBQ dinner, set up beautifully in a large tented area. I would estimate there were about 200 people or so and over 100 boats. The weather was hot all day and everyone was a little rosy and smiling! Thanking Ken, we departed around 7pm to make the 8pm Ferry.

Unfortunately the ferry was over an hour late so we didn’t arrive in Anacortes until well after 10pm. After such a long and exciting day we were exhausted and ready to fall into bed, so the two hour drive ahead of us was going to be a long one! Well, when we reached Everett they were marking the freeway and 4 of the 5 lanes were closed. It took us over an hour and a half to go five miles! We fell into bed around 2am cursing our rotten luck with ferries and freeway traffic.

The seminar was a grand success and hopefully we will be able to attend more events like this in the future!