Sailing.

I said I could sail ~ & so I can though I haven't in years. I sailed as a kid, Manly Juniors. They are a little 8', snub nosed dinghy & as much fun as most little kids can handle. What I wanted was a moth & for a while I was the only moth sailor in the club. You know the T~shirts that read Does Not Play Well With Others, well that was me. Moths are for solo sailors though I spent most of my first season swimming round the course. Moths were a speedy little craft that needed more weight than I normally carried. A little bit of a breeze & over I went. I got pretty good at the whole capsize thing. She'd go over & as she went I climbed on to the centreboard; as she came up I sat on the gunwale. Wasn't even getting my shoes went in the end. That's my boat against the far wall. You can just make out the moth insignia.

In the centre there is a boat with a red ball on its mainsail. That, friends, is a fireball, 16' of pure speed. I used to crew on this for a friend because the fireball comes with a trapeze & there are few things in this world as much fun as being trapeze man on a fast boat in a bit of a blow. My brother & I sailed this in the Jibbon regatta one year. I think between us we might, just, have scaped together 16 stone. It was blowing 25 knots from the south & on the reachs we had that boat dead flat in the water on a perfect plane, both of us hanging off the stern & generating so much spray we had no visibility!!! We couldn't have put the spinnaker up to save our lives. We just didn't have the weight between us to hold her but we got brave sailing home as we came into the more sheltered waters of the Port Hacking River & put her up. I think we lasted all of 3 seconds but oh! what a glorious 3 seconds!