At last - back on the water!

It's been ages since we went sailing. Actually we did go out to the ASCC race in early September but that's ages ago.

On Sunday we sailed with BSC. The weather was lovely if cool and the wind interesting. We had some good gusts but the rest was between 8 and 14 knots - nice.

Maggie, a friend who does the starts for the twilights, sent this picture taken from her balcony.

And we enjoyed the sausage sizzle afterwards along with some hungry four legged friends.

Terina, Julie, Jenni and Alice. Also on board was new sailor Sam who did a great job for a beginner.

And we came 8th out of 16 or so boats. Much better than our usual last.

Skandia

Half way through Broken Bay week, John, Jason and I drove back to Sydney to go for a sunset sail on Skandia, the 98 foot maxi. Happy boys. We all got to steer and that explains the big smiles.
Lots of room in the cockpit

Big sails

We drove back to Cottage Point in the rain but we didn't care. We didn't even mind missing Laine's celebrated paella. We had a great time.

Broken Bay

Another great week has passed. Here are a few pictures until I get time to post properly.
We set off in glorious sunshine after taking hours to load the boat, get the dinghy on board and make sure we had enough alcohol.

This is what we woke up to the first morning.

John gets a push from Jason

The theme for the cocktail party was "f". We were the fuckarewes

Terina brought Firefly 2 along

The trip home was smooth sailing.

ASCC Regatta

Julie and I raced with Gavin in the 2009 ASCC Mardi Gras Regatta. And we won!!!

Here we are just ahead at the bottom mark

We won the first two races, then Gavin said " to win this regatta we just need to win three races". Then we came second - twice!

Heading for the windward mark we were determined not to be distracted by Quest (Sydney Hobart winner) trying to fly a spinnaker!

So going in to the final race it was a dead heat and we were battling against Gavin's nemesis and former crew member Dale who is also from Melbourne.

It was a hard fought race but we eventually passed Dale who got the better start and we held on to win.

The relaxed smile is only because this is crossing the line at the end of the last race

New Year's Eve

We had a great spot, fabulous view.

And had a lovely night.