What better way to celebrate the hottest day of the year so far but with a new episode and even a new season of the podcast! We've been missing for a few months, but that doesn't mean we haven't been thinking of you all. We have been busy living life and doing all the things, which gives us lots to talk about! For our return to the air, we brought in our pal Bryan Fey for Episode 58: The Fireman and The Dance. We asked Bryan to join us and share about his experience being a volunteer firefighter in McMinnville for 21 years, some of his memories of that experience and attending the infamous Fireman's Dance. We've been working hard to bring back this fun event and we share a bit about why we are doing that and we hope to see you all there! We're ready to get back into the swing of things with the podcast and we hope you're still with us.

That's what we're all doing anyways right...trying? We loved this week's Episode 57: The Try Zone because not only did we learn about a sport we weren't super familiar with, rugby, but we also learned a lot of fun new sports terms. We had a great time talking and learning with John Mead and Christine Bader, two local youth rugby coaches. This is a fun and intriguing sport and our community and these two leaders are really offering our kids a great opportunity. From the unique rugby culture, to the skills and values the kids are learning through this sport, there's a lot to love here. Have fun with this one!

What do you expect from us when the sun comes out? We are distracted, outside, just being busy bees! So we think this light episode with two of our friends perfectly fits the season. On this week's Episode 56: Townie Talk - 2 we chat with our good friends, Tara Rich and Shannon Dunn. This is a very comfortable conversation with lots of memories and connecting about our home town. We hope you find something to enjoy in this episode and that we hit you with a bit of townie nostalgia.

That is ultimately the question, right? Do we want and value locally owned, high quality restaurants to enjoy, or do we get distracted and not realize that if we don't show up they may not always be there? We are lucky to talk to two of our friends on Episode 55: You Want It Or Not? Ricardo Antunez from Pura Vida Cocina and Patrick Bruce from Thistle about the struggles they have faced in the restaurant business the last few years. We know some of this story, but it is good to check in to make sure we are doing what we can to help these amazing local institutions stay alive and stable. What would our downtown, and town, be without restaurants and business owners like theirs? Change is inevitable, and these guys have been weathering a pandemic, rising costs, change in dining behaviors, wage increases and more without raising their prices as much as they need to. We hope this episode inspires you to spend your dollars eating out locally and remember that we need to be there for the businesses we want to have in our community.

It's always a good time when you get to spend an hour chatting with fellow locals. It's even more fun when you're chatting with townies, and sharing memories about growing up in Mac. On this week's Episode 54: Townie Talk, we had a chance to catch up with our friends Dan Davison and Todd Godfrey. We talk about our favorite memories, how we feel about change in town, things that we love and things that we don't. Essentially the same conversations you are probably having with your friends as well. Things aren't always easy in a small town, and our growing pains can be uncomfortable. But every time we sit down and connect on what's working and what we would like to see improved, we grow. And as long as we are growing together we will be fine.

Sit back friends and grab your favorite book, because this episode is going to inspire you to read books by local authors. On this week's Episode 53: A Delight of Emilys we talk with two local authors, Emily Strelow and Emily Grosvenor Diesberg about their experiences getting their books published and what got them into writing to begin with. It's always fun to hear how people found themselves in McMinnville and their unique experiences before they made this their home. We were inspired by these two creative women and hope that you all can appreciate the local talent we have in our community.

Tap tap tap ... are folks still out there? We've taken a long winter nap and are back on the microphone ready to talk! This week's Episode 52: Episode 52 is a bit of an update on what's going on with us and some of the headlines we've been reading about in the news. There's so much to talk about when you haven't done it in a while, but this was a good entry back into the podcast studio and we're looking forward to continuing the conversation with everyone. Cheers to a New Year and a great 2024!

We're ending the year in our favorite place, The Blue Moon. For Episode 51 - Holidays At The Moon - Part 2 we finish up our recent visit to McMinnville's favorite gathering place. We've been working hard this year to keep bringing you new content and sharing information about the town we love. We hope that our long time listeners feel like we put a nice bow on 2023 and our new listeners are inspired to start back at the beginning with us. This final episode of the year has more friends, more insight into what makes our town so special and more vodka sodas. Here's to another year of connecting and knowing that through it all, we are in this together. Cheers friends, and Happy New Year!

Horray! We've officially created and published 50 episodes of the Yacht Club! And for this milestone we brought in the people that know us the best, our spouses. So for this week's Episode 50: Podcast Spouses features Ossie's wife Lacy Bladine, and Chelsey's husband Brent Nichol. We have lots of laughs in this one because that's what you do with family...laugh at each other! All jokes aside, we are very thankful for these two's support as we continue on as captains of this ship. We hope you hear how important family is to us, and at the end of the day, even if we're not talking about McMinnville we are talking about the things that matter most to us.

We are carrying on the holiday tradition of promoting our dad Jeb's annual "Shop Local" message he prints in the newspaper each year. We've recorded another Just The Two Of Us and for this week's Episode 49: Shop Local we are highlighting a few things happening in town for the holidays and then spend some time on a message about changes coming with our family-owned community newspaper, the News-Register. Owning and operating a 4th generation local newspaper is not easy, but it's something our family has been proud to do for almost 100 years. But times change, and we all know that the position newspapers have in a community has changed dramatically over the last few decades. And that is why, once again, the newspaper is making changes so that it can continue to be a trusted source of local news for McMinnville for years to come. We hope this information, paired with the importance of highlighting shopping local for the holidays, is something that you take to heart. We're all in this together, and that extends to the newspaper too.

You probably haven't spent a lot of time thinking about the origin story of McMinnville. Who founded this town we love so much? What were the first businesses and buildings were built that anchored the growth of this community? Like many towns, ours has unique founders and interesting industries that lit the spark of what we became McMinnville. So on this week's Episode 48: How Mac Came to Be, we are talking with local historian Kory Knutz on some of the more interesting moments in our history that really shaped the town that we know now. Whether you have lived here your entire life or have moved here from your own hometown, this episode is full of interesting local history. And next time you hear the name Newby, Baker or Cozine, you will have a little more knowledge about the early days and how Mac came to be.

Is it too early to play Christmas music? Ok, maybe... we will hold off a few more weeks. But that's not going to stop us from getting exciting about the upcoming holiday season! One of our favorite things is downtown McMinnville during the holidays so we thought we would kick off the season with Episode 47: Downtown Girls. This week we chat with McMinnville Downtown Association presidents Dani Chisolm (current) and Heather Miller (past) about what makes downtown so magical this time of year and what we can do to support our local businesses. We realize not everyone may know about the work that goes into keeping our downtown a place that locals and visitors want to spend time in, and we are taking a moment to recognize the sometimes herculean efforts made by the MDA to keep such a vibrant living room for our community. We hope that you're as excited as Chelsey is about the holidays and that we will see you downtown soon!

What goes better with a great wine than great friends? You would be hard pressed to find a more perfect pairing than our guests on this week's Episode 46: A Perfect Pairing. Grant Coulter and Renee Saint-Amour of Hundred Suns Wine have made McMinnville their home after relocating from Monterey, California. They're raising their family and business here and have created roots that feel strong and will no doubt last as long as they call McMinnville home. This is the first time we have chatted with a husband and wife at the same time, and if you love a sweet story, these two will give you all the feels. We love hearing how they came together and started this dream of making wine as a team. Plus getting an inside scoop into the real life realities of running a small winery in the Willamette Valley. Settle in with your favorite pinot and enjoy this one. We hope you hear in their voices how much they love this place and in ours how we feel lucky they chose McMinnville as their home.

It's time for our annual check-up! So we made an appointment with two of our favorite medical professionals so we can see how we're holding up. On this week's informative Episode 45: McMedicine, we talk with Dr. Ashley Hyder with West Hills Healthcare Clinic and Amy Bizon from Willamette Valley Medical Center. Prepare to take notes, because we cover a lot of ground in this one and as always we learned something and left feeling like we are good hands with the health care providers we have in McMinnville. You will hear how thoughtful they are about their jobs and the health of their patients. And how McMinnville is working together to make sure we've got as many services as possible, and the care that a growing town needs. These two women carry a lot of responsibility in our community and we couldn't be more proud to call them friends.

It's Tuesday Night Footballlllllll! And we've got two star players on this week's Episode 44: Gridiron Guys. We had a great time talking with DJ Alexander, a former NFL Player for the Kansas City Chiefs and others, and local football star and now coach with Linfield Football, Brett Elliott. It was awesome getting to ask questions about their experiences in college and after, and what experiences they shared and where their paths differed. We won't spoil this one in the intro, you're going to want to tune right in and listen to these two stellar athletes share their stories. We're fortunate they've both made this community home and we think they both deserve some high fives if you see them in the stands sitting next to you at the next game.

We're great at multi-tasking around the yacht club and so we combined our daily workout sesh with a podcast recording. This week we laced up our tennies and hung out at MVP Performance Training on Episode 43: At The Gym. Over the last few months Chelsey has been working on her fitness at this gym and thought that it would be great to connect with others who are on their own fitness journey. So we talk with gym owner, Sean Burke, about his approach to fitness and how focusing on women's unique fitness needs is such a priority at MVP. We also invited Michele Melasecca, the owner of 5th Line Pilates about her own approach to fitness and how we can find similarities in both weight lifting and pilates instruction. We got a chance to chat with a few regulars at MVP about why the prioritize their health and fitness and what makes this gym unique. Every age can benefit from working out and we got to hear from folks at all stages of their health journey. We hope to provide a little inspiration with this one, and know though that its hard work to prioritize your health sometimes, but when you are ready there are dedicated professionals in McMinnville to help you make the commitment.

Nothing hurts more than growing pains. But when you live in a community like McMinnville you can be sure that there will be a lot of folks doing their best to try and preserve what makes “McMinnville” the McMinnville we are proud of. On this week’s Episode 42: Growing Pains we talk with our friends Mike Morris and Beth Caster, two local realtors. We discuss what they are experiencing in the real estate market, and what they can share with us about the broader growth picture in town. There’s a lot to unpack when we talk about growth, and it doesn’t just relate to housing availability. This topic can bring up a lot of angst, we know the feeling all too well. But when you have folks like Mike and Beth at the forefront of this effort, representing our community in a positive and thoughtful manner, you can’t help but feel like there’s a bright future ahead for our town. There’s room at the table to get involved and share your thoughts about how you want to see the future of McMinnville look, you just have to be willing to show up and speak out. We can do this together friends!

And we're back! And we decided it was a good time to start Season 2 of the podcast, so we're here with Episode 41: Changing Seasons to chat about the last few weeks of summer and what we're looking forward to this fall.

Kids are going back to school next week and we hope you've taken a trip to the store to get everything for their lunches! Or, you've probably stopped in to your favorite grocery store to pickup your dinners for the week, or went in to check out what seasonal fruits and veggies they've got to offer. There are so many options when you are deciding where to purchase your groceries, and we hope that with this week's Episode 40: Meet Your Grocer you are inspired to spend a bit more of your dollars with our two locally owned and operated grocery stores. This week we talk with long time owner of Harvest Fresh Grocery and Deli, Kristin Schofield and new-ish owner to the local Grocery Outlet, Mike McGinty. Both of these business owners have made contributing to the McMinnville community a priority and we are so lucky to have such giving and thoughtful business owners to support. You may not have thought you were interested in this topic, but we be you will finish and think that you can spread your grocery dollars a bit more local.