Blessing of the Fleet 2026

Today was the Blessing of the Fleet at Great Salt Lake Marina. This event is a commonly held event at many marinas that involves a activities, a boat parade, and a splash of holy water. We went last year and had a ton of fun.

Nikki had her gallbladder removed on Thursday in an emergency surgery, so she wasn't really feeling up to going out. Mark is camping with his dad at Lagoon Amusement Park. So that just left Warren and I to handle things. We debated not going, but are really glad we made it out.

Since it was just the two of us we packed fairly light, I knew we wouldn't sail as it really takes two older people to get our sails up. We packed swim suits, and some sun stuff and didn't even need most of that.

The weather was a bit cool, about low 70s and we had some pretty steady wind. We went to the Harbor Masters meeting at 10:30 after getting the boat all set up to leave. We received some bad season weather news and found out the boats will all need to come out of the water in late June due to dropping lake levels. Some of the deeper draft boats only have three weeks to come out. It was a REALLY terrible year for the snow pack and we are expected to loose about a foot of water over the summer after an already low lake level.

After the meeting we headed out. Warren handled the lines, and I manned the help. We slipped out fairly quickly and were one of the first ones. out. We headed out to past the deep water bouy and killed the motor. Even through we have a nice breeze, it wasn't enough to kick up to many waves. With everyone killing their engines and floating, we tent to all float about the same, so we don't even anchor.

Warren decided against swimming and instead just hung out and played on his phone. I took pictures and just watched the other boats. Before long it was time to head in.

As we pulled back into the slip and tied up the boat next to us pulled in. I had thought I didn't know them, but it was actually someone who I have been Facebook friends with for years. We both have Catalina 22s, though that's not what he is currently sailing.

We talked for a while, and wondered up to the food truck to get something to eat. He asked if we wanted to come play with some of his RC boats that they sail down by K dock. Warren seemed interested, so we headed down there after locking down the boat.

We actually had WAY more fun then I expected and stayed a few hours. Warren was pretty good at it, and I think it helped him understand sailing at different points of wind way better. There were a few other people with boats there, including Clark who also let us use one of his boats.

We sailed a bunch of races and just got a feel for things. We both had a really good time and Warren was immediately asking if we could buy a boat. He told Nikki right away, and she seemed open to it really, despite them being kind of expensive.

All in all it was a really good day.

Oh, also I ran aground pretty good in the channel, luckily I was able to get us unstuck pretty quickly. But there were a lot of people watching. It's on video, I am not posting it.