Thrills and spills of the Closing Cruise!

The review party doing their best to look innocent! - Commodore Chris Sutton and Rosemary, along with President Dudley Turner and Laurna. Discovery Cat was provided for the occasion by Ian Lamont - who has helped us numerous times in this way.

Closing Cruise Tradition is for passing boats to bombard the review party with water bombs etc, interesting salutes etc. However this review party was armed like a bunch of Somali Pirates, with water filled balloons and the like, and pelted the passing boats mercilessly. And this includes the good ladies aboard I'm afraid to say! The long-range water-pistol on Quest managed to hold them off temporarily, but as we had no motor we were a bit of a sitting duck in the light wind!

A nice turnout of 17 boats on the water! - and brilliant weather! This pic is from Roy Mcbride showing Nandi (right) followed by Domicella. The review was followed by an open water cruise to Vulcan Rock and Kommetjie bay, with flat water and a fresh breeze.

automatic bilge pumps would be nice . . .

The cruise was followed by an amazing spectacle of the O9er race. This involved eight middle aged or senior sailors, including a  few quite large ones, sailing these minute little wash-basins from the harbour out to the Dunes mark and back. This is a suprisingly difficult thing to do, even without the obligatory refreshment stations on start and finish . . . . One bloke was a bit heavy for the 09er and sailed it mostly underwater on the way back, to the amusement of many onlookers on the North Mole, some with cameras unfortunately.

Another lost his rudder in the water and spent an amusing while circling about under sail before they were happily reunited. Rescue services, on standby, were fortunately not required.

The 09er race was followed by a really good braai on the club deck, with many faces one doesn't routinely see at the club. There was a brilliant music from Herman bakker and Mike Larcombe, both very accomplished on piano and guitar respectively, who jammed together for several hours for us. They seemed to be having more fun than anyone!

During the early evening we held a short prizegiving, firstly for the Summer Series, and then for "Best Salute" (Nandi with their funny hats), 09er race (Rian and Keith, cheats), and a variety of other oddities - including Pierre Albertyn's birthday. Keith Gemell and elicited a handsome donation of a case of Swartberg wine which was awarded for these notable achivements, and mostly consumed on the spot as far as I could tell. . . .

Turned out to be a quite a late night for some of us.

Not for the first time - huge thanks to Jeremy Nel for this all!!!!!!