Magnetic Island race week: WE SAIL SEPT 4

Race race @ Magnetic Island

It’s going to be good… but it’s going to leave Onesie, Chels and Longbow bobbing around in Victoria.
Half the crew will be heading to the gravity shores of Magnetic Island at the start of spring to sail Seaduction, Longbow’s older sister.

Wild weather over yonder

On behalf of the crew, and any future guests of Longbow, we’d like to thank Brian (Grand Skipper) for the magnificent choice in marinas.

Vid Vid

Williamstown, physics and idiot

With the weather getting a little cooler it’s not enough to rely on peeking at each other’s midrif and getting drunk. We’ve got to expand our on-and-off boat stimulation as movement is restricted by the weather. As I learnt on Sunday – it’s all physics. Not knowing that would be so idiot. And we we’re now in Williamstown.

Romaticise it.

You can romanticise nearly anything. Even when your first love of your life farts in bed.

Each time Longbow is taken out there’s another wave of sighs and dreamy silences. Particularly if the night before has been tiring and we’ve had a second whiskey at Williamstown after crossing the bay. If the weather’s good tomorrow I’ll again be thinking about leaving it all behind and marrying the sea.

I’ve gathered some photos from around the place that capture some of the romantic nature of our Sunday past time.

Sturrrrrdy Clothing

As we’re not yet the full depths of winter and with global warming on our side particular sailing clothing has so far been unnecessary. Yet it’s something that, should we ever make it out of the (glorious and still challenging) Port Phillip bay, we will need to consider.

Lucky sideways in sailing costume.

The only gay on the boat

This week on the sea Team Longbow faced it’s greatest challenge: the task of choosing it’s gayest member. With his whippet-like cunning and penchant for stovepipe jeans and fruity scarves, Chelsea was the obvious first choice for gayest on board.

Hopper steering the boat with his ass.

But careful deliberation and copious beer consumption soon proved that noone was exempt from consideration. As the only team member to admit to having had sex with a man, Lucky was clearly quite gay. A shocking display of steering with no hands meant Hopper was by no means as straight as he seemed, and my own heterosexuality came into question when it was revealed (by Lucky) that I enjoy wearing my mother’s underwear.

So no one was innocent, but was anyone as gay as Chelsea? The sun set, the dolphins came out to play, the beer diminished and still the debate raged. We made it back to shore having raised more questions than we answered, but at least we got to see Hopper spew.

Fish and fog

Courtesy of David Boyle (flickr)

Yes, what a wonderful mystical day of sailing it was. As if the wonderment of impending doom wasn’t enough, we also had the foresight to purchase $35.oo of fishing gear knowing that we would be recompensed by our superior skills and experience.

The novelty of fishing, however, waned shortly after dropping the first line. The highlight being; a healthy debate between Chopper and Onesy on whether the biggest fish in the bay was on the other end or simply snagged on Neptune’s prize winning sea weed patch.
We fed the remainder of the bait (minus two prawns) to fatten the fishes, so next time we double our winnings.
Fish and chips anyone…..

The race we’re not in.

How were we going to get there? “Oh, we’ll just jump in and sail down”. Not happening according to Hopper’s dad and owner of the boat. There’s too many sand bars (see picture) and at the moment we don’t even own sailing charts.

Our scrambled plan - thanks to maps.google.com

I suppose it would make us slightly less competitive having few skills, little experience, no charts and a chance of making it there and back no more than a soggy cat. We’ll prove ourselves better than a soggy cat soon enough though.

The reason we were so keen to do it this sunday was a race. Brighton Yacht Club is heading down Saturday and racing back sunday. Apparently the weather’s up the spout too.

Sunday 31st May – FOGG

The 3 most important of our crew members went out on Longbow last Sunday. It was unbelievably foggy, we couldn’t see 20 meteres in front of us. We thought it would be best to hug the coastline so we could keep our bearings. However this nearly backfired when we nearly ran aground.