What a week

I've moved house recently and am somewhat "settled". I won't be staying here as long as I can help it.

Saturday I went sailing with my father which is always a pleasant experience. Beautiful weather, beautiful setting and it is pretty much the only thing we have ever done together. We spent 5 hours sailing from Royal Perth Yacht Club to Freshwater Bay in Claremont and back again.

Monday morning my friend Laurence called me. Laurence is a chap I met through playing pool on Wednesday nights and he owns a 24' yacht named Maggie May which he keeps at Royal Perth Yacht Club (RPYC). We go sailing every Thursday night at RPYC for their Twilight Sail night. Basically about 30-40 boats head out in a "friendly race" followed by BBQ, Drinks and Dancing at the club til all hours. Laurence phoned to say he was heading to RPYC to do some work on his boat and take it for a sail after so I headed down to meet him and help out. We have decided to enter his boat in the upcoming Frostbite Series which is a series of 7 races on sundays during winter. We spent a few hours working and then spent an hour or two sailing followed by dinner and a game of pool at the Inglewood Hotel.

Wednesday morning I headed into the city to see a lawyer for a drink driving charge I had to answer the next day. I got charged back in October. Met Laurence for a liquid lunch as he works in the city then jumped on a bus to head to the Civic Hotel for two reasons:
1) I play in a little knock-out pool competition there on Wednesday nights.
2) A woman I am quite fond of works there during the day on Wednesday's and I always enjoy speaking with her on many subjects from Politics to Cooking.

This turned out to be a positive choice of destination as Cat told me that she is free Thursday night and would finally like to take me up on my invitation for her to join us on the Twilight Sail at RPYC. I don't think I stopped smiling until I got to court the next morning. I didn't do too well in pool and stayed the night at Laurence's.

Thursday morning I awoke with a hangover that made a violent death seem like a rather humane and peaceful solution. I arrived at court and I was feeling worse than when I woke up. After seeing the Duty Lawyer I had to wait until 1130 until my case was before the magistrate. After I explained the events of the night that led me to drive, the magistrate acknowledged the mitigating circumstances and handed down the minimum penalties. $550 in fines, $100 in costs and 3 month suspension of my driver's licence. I met Laurence for lunch yet again and we discussed our crew for the upcoming Frostbite Series (starting May 14). By the end of lunch we had the cerw down to Laurence, myself, Michelle and Lisa. Michelle I have known for years and she comes on Twilight's with us. Very keen sailor and wants to learn as much as possible. Lisa is a friend of Laurence's from work and she has had Dinghy racing experience when she was growing up. We still need a 5th for the crew and are trying to work out who out of the 3 options to choose.

After lunch I headed to RPYC to do some work on the boat and get her ready for the twilight. It's 1400 and my head is still pounding so I do the only thing there is left to do. I head to the bar at the club and order a pint. I was on the balcony having a cigarette and started chatting to another fellow there. His name is Alain and he is from Switzerland. Alain came to Australia 3 weeks ago to study English and has his own boat back in Geneva. He was looking for a crew to join for racing or just an oppurtunity to go cruising, so I invited him to join us for the twilight to which he was very grateful. We sat on the boat and got thoroughly intoxicated while prepping it for the sail and waiting for the others to arrive.

1745 and everyone is aboard. 11 of us in total. Much to my delight, Cat was one of them. By 1800 we are about to start the race. Fast Forward to 1945 and we decided after rounding the second last mark to just head back in so we sailed a straight line from the Swan Brewery to our Jetty at the club. While we were having our BBQ the Commodore was announcing the results for each division in the twilight. "Division C winner is Maggie May" everyone at our table had an "OMGWTF!?!" look on their face. The Commodore handed over a bottle of sparkling white while we tried to figure out how we possibly won since we didn't cross the finish line. We came to the conclusion that we were probably declard the winner since we had the highest number of people on the boat who were liekly to spend alot of money at the bar and the wine was just to get us started. *shrug* free bottle of plonk and bragging rights sounds like a win to me. Didn't get to chat with Cat much but we had a dance after the BBQ which was nice.

This morning (Friday) Laurence and I decided that Alain is to be the 5th member of our crew. He is a very competent sailor which myself, beth and lisa could learn alot from. I headed home, slept most of the day and now I'm watching football on TV.

wow that was long but it's the first proper journal entry i've done i think