The 2017 Special People’s Holiday Cruise

On December 4 I was the “Santa Photographer” at the 2017 Special People’s Holiday Cruise, held at the Meydenbauer Yacht Club.  This is an annual event, and has been going on for many years.  As many of my clients know, my daughter Kerri has Down Syndrome.  I first got involved with the Special People’s Cruise when Kerri was 5 or 6 years old, which means that I have now been donating my services as the “Santa Photographer” for ~25 years.

The way the Cruise works is that the “special people”, who are mostly adults (with a varying number of kids) with developmental disabilities, are brought to a participating yacht club in the early afternoon.  There they are placed on boats owned and manned by volunteers, who then travel as a fleet onto Lake Washington where they meet up with other fleets from other yacht clubs.  The combined fleet then spends ~1 hour cruising the lake, while munching on snacks provided by the boat owners.  Along the way they meet up with a boat with Santa aboard, and can talk to him by radio.  When it is time to end the cruise, the boats return to their various starting points.  At MBYC we have then always brought all of the Special People up to the clubhouse for snacks, as well as the opportunity to sit with Santa and have their picture taken with him.  My role has been the photographer who takes those photos.

This event takes place under almost any conditions.  I can remember several years where it was snowing so hard the busses that delivered the Special People had trouble making it to the Club.  Other years it has poured rain.  But we usually seem to luck out with relatively good weather, and this was one of those years.  The day was mild with light cloud cover, so the participants were able to enjoy a nice cruise on the lake.

This event has grown and evolved since I first started participating.  Originally, MBYC was one of two or three Seattle area yacht clubs that were part of the event.  At times we had more than 200 Special People at our club.  But as more clubs joined in it has meant that the numbers coming to MBYC have dropped, though overall I believe they have gone up considerably.  Not all of the Special People stay to have their photo taken with Santa so I don’t have exact numbers, but this year I photographed ~120 participants, which is still a pretty good number.

Here are a few photos from the Santa session.