Who should we happen into...

It’s a splendid day off the West Australian coast and the annual whale cull is in full swing, or should I say ‘fling’.

Flinging Frisbee size silicon plugs of the blow holes of the migrating herd really has struck a chord with the locals and they’ve even designated a special zone out to sea beyond the tourist island Rottnest marked with Fish Aggregating Devices to swell the fish stocks so that the decomposing carcasses are gobbled up rather than drift ashore amongst the sentimentalists.

Many of the local ‘Have Yachts’ are out here and only yesterday the flotilla launched a cacophony of blasts and sirens as the announcement came over the World Service that the Japanese are calling it quits. Even though the tree hugging lefty greenie sexually indeterminate yachtless vegetarians had obstructed their catch to a fraction of the good ol’ days, it bodes well for our numbers as we can frisbee till our hearts content. There’s even a chap from the Royal at Freshwater arrived to join in yesterday saying he was ‘converting’ over from Marlin. Fancy boat too. And an interesting technique using the Marlin Poles for accurate placement. Reminds me of those chaps riding on the Landrover bonnet with a pole and lasso ready to pop over the head of giraffe. Made good sleeping bags  for the natives – three from a large male, but the meat bloody awful. Had to throw the rest away.

Mind you, a chap can have quite enough of anything in his diet. Frankly it’s the lips and earlobes of the whale now, and the rest is or the fish.

These Sandale chaps have way with it though. Balsamic, olive oil and a lime wedge served on a bed of cous cous – like an mermaid crying on your tongue. What a delight to find them out here again this season.

Jolly good then,

Sir Walter Bard-arse III

Editor, Royal Mega Club and Sailing

The Fort, Cowes, England.

all at sea

Position lat 32 0404 long 115 38 335 or for the more landlubberly inclined, at the saloon table with a beer.

Light winds and warm twilight as we head out south passage on a voyage to test a few things. Man overboard drills, night watchkeeping, the perfect muffins at sea and of course, this blog. We have an extension aerial for the phone and laptop and we will sail  west until we lose signal, hopefully we will achieve a range of about 50 miles. Other thing to test is typing on the laptop keyboard, hard for big fingered at the best of times, not too rough now but will be interesting to see how we go in windier comditions.  Have to go now, the captain wants to do a person over board drill. I wonder if  Captain Blight did those?

muffin man

We have just spent the last two days on a test voyage, here is a video of us sailing past another yacht in the fleet, on way to unrecognised line honours. The photo is of muffins Geoff cooked on the outward voyage, but he neglacted to use a muffin tray. Oh, well, it is all a practice to get these things down pat- an unfortunate word that as the muffins did look a bit, well, cow pat. The return journey effort was much better.

photos by phone

This series of action photographs were taken with my phone. I trust the quality is acceptable. I had been frustrated in downloading the photos until the kind lady in the telstra shop gave me a new cable so I trust that this one will last the bounce and stress of two weeks of shipboard life. Still have challenges getting photos to the blog for the second week as we leave Exmouth and head to sea, although I have been told there will soon be new and faster satellites that will giive us the speed we need via the Satellite phone. They may just be online in time. The boat is out of the water next week for a scrub and paint and we are going kayaking instead of sailing.