YachtCon Prime was a blast for us. As far as we were concerned, it was better organized, more refined, and frankly more fun. We sincerely hope all of that came across to people in attendance and those who watched the livestream (you can still watch it above!).
One of the things we always hope to do is to create some special memories. We think we accomplished that, whether it was Brian Schmetzer showing up in a 2018 ECS shirt and telling us all sorts of stories; the Roldan Brothers waxing poetic about their Rainier Beach childhoods and then settling their differences with a arm-wrestling match; Garth Lagerwey gleefully cracking an egg on a fan’s head; or one of the other countless things you will likely never experience again.
As much credit as we’d like to take for that, though, we have a lot of people who we need to thank for their help. First and foremost, Emily Cummings did an almost unbelievable amount of behind-the-scenes work. Yes, you probably noticed her running the raffle, but she did so much organizational work that it’s almost embarrassing. We can’t fully do them justice, but we need to try to thank everyone else who helped out:
- You know Susie Rantz and Jacob Cristobol from Ride of the Valkyries and we were thrilled to basically turn over the Reign segments to them. They killed it.
- Adam Wygle, once again, ran our Livestream. He somehow convinced his team from Bootstrapper Studios to help give us a livestream that was far more professional than we deserved (seriously, watch the video above).
- Dave Clark was a huge help in essentially serving as the concierge for our VIPs and generally helping us promote the event.
- The merch table was largely run by Jeremy Hardwick, with an assist from Jeremiah’s wife Jeovana.
- Mike Russell took some amazing photos, while Joe Towner created by far our best photo booth to date.
- For no reason other than we were big fans of his and knew he was aware of the podcast, we contacted Lindell Serrin out of the blue to design the “Vayacht Con Dios” logo. What he designed far exceeded our expectations.
- We have truly enjoyed working with Seattle Children’s Hospital and were so happy that David Eaton and Lindsey Miller educated us on the Autism Center.
- Queen Anne Beerhall once again were wonderful hosts, allowing us to basically take over their restaurant for nearly six hours.
- The Sounders and Reign both stepped up big time in helping us not only put together our most impressive guest list yet, but also donating prizes. In particular, Katie Pendleton of the Sounders was a massive help. Brian Schmetzer, Alex and Cristian Roldan, and Garth Lagerwey all came by on one of the few Saturdays they’ll have off all year, while Bev Yanez, Yael Averbuch and Vlatko Andonovski came over literally straight from a training session.
- Nate Bowling and Beth Mantle were recruited at the event to host segments. Unorganized? Sure. But they were great.
- We were overjoyed with the overall quality of our raffle prizes, for whom we must thank Full Pull Wines, Keith Salas, James Woollard, Ryan McLaughlin, Glenn White, Washington State Legends of Soccer, Ryan Cowper, Carlos Villavicencio, Brett Hightower, and Jacob Landsberg.
There are probably people or organizations we’ve somehow managed to forget, but hopefully you get the idea that it took a lot of people donating time and resources to make this happen. We also wanted to thank you for attending, watching, and donating. We’ve raised about $4,000 so far, which is not bad but a bit less than we’d hoped. If you’d like to help us get a bit closer to our goal, there are still three ways you can do that:
No matter what, we fully intend to do this again. This is a ton of work but it’s also deeply rewarding. Thanks for helping make it worthwhile.