iseta (my roommate from the live aboard) lives near port douglas so she picked me up on wednesday afternoon to go sailing at the port douglas yacht club. we got there about 3pm for a drink and the club didn't open till 4, forcing us to do a little pub crawl to kill time. we also needed to have some drinks on board so we bought a bottle of vodka and a couple soda waters and mixed our sailing drinks. little too strong.
iseta is loved at the yacht club, and she's also been absent for several months for a boat delivery so everyone wanted her to come on their boat. we picked a sun odyssey 40. beautiful sailboat. every wednesday all of the yacht clubs in australia have an open sail for anyone who shows up, sign up and you can go with someone. we had a couple australians and a family from scotland. there wasn't much wind and kinda cloudy but a gorgeous evening otherwise. i got to steer the entire time, loved it.
we went past a cruise ship and the 6man team and it kinda felt like home.
after the sail was dinner at the club and get to know the members. which mostly consisted of me randomly sitting by people that looked like they had good stories, the old grizzled guys. my favorite was steve, who had just power washed off the top of his foot. he crossed the panama canal in an odd way. he was in line on his cat and a skiff of russians pulled alongside, he thought he was being boarded by pirates. turns out they had a freighter and wanted to hoist his boat on top and carry him through. they'd charge him $1000 less than his normal fee and in turn they'd pocket the rest of the money. they cooked for him and kept him drunk and did a mini dry dock on his boat. put on some antifouling paint that's illegal in most places and he hasn't had a single barnacle since.
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