Water Daze participants get a workout hoisting the boat for the first time.

VIJC couldn’t have asked for a better day when it hosted 2011 Water Daze. This gentle introduction to crew saw kids ages 8th grade and up erg-ing (distance clocked on the rowing machine), hauling the boats to shore and doing boatloads of Q&A in their consideration of the sport. This is not for everyone, but if you love water, teamwork and sweating then this could be the ticket.

Unless you’ve been delinquent in keeping up the Beachcomber reading you know this has been a banner year for crew: two of its VIJC teams placed during the USRowing Youth National Championships. The men’s lightweight doubles came home with a third placing, and the women’s varsity quad placed second. Not too shabby in the big picture: 1,500 rowers in 18 racing categories (in 93-degree heat in Tennessee!). Congratulations to Coach Steve Full and all the hardworking athletes!

Minis at Mingelment. Twin "Mins."

Every year, usually on a sunny weekend, a caravan of Mini Coopers new and old hit the island for a Mini meet up at Minglement. June 4 they showed up again, the cars neatly angled out in front in myriad colors. It’s quite a sight. I checked the Mini user groups online and the meet-up doesn’t appear to have popped up. There was a fun inquiry on one of them I’ll hyperlink here (where the user asks about Vashon as a potential meet-up space and tries to verify previous meet-ups), but still the backstory intrigues me. This has to be Vashon-specific, right? At least Vashon instigated….