To the Sailing Club! …early in the evening on Sunday. We had a WivGigs sunset social row to see out the weekend.
We weren’t alone in making the most of the very limited high water. A couple of fishermen were out on the public jetty, casting their long rods in and out of the water.
This was always going to be a very tight turnaround when it came to the row. Tide and time were both against us. There was a limited high water and we had around an hour or so left in the day of sunlight.
I was placed on stroke. We launched successfully and then the cox instructed us that we were about to take some plop training. Oh, I wasn’t prepared for that. I thought I was done with all of this messy business, some 50 or so years ago.
Ah, I see. Plop training is about plopping your oar in the water in synchronicity with the rest of the crew.
I plopped away quite contentedly.
We made steady progress downstream. At one stage we had the sun setting in the east and the moon visible in the opposite direction. It may have been the other way around. Geography has never been my strong point.
We could see, a little further out in the estuary, the cadets with their flashing lights. Apparently they were being treated to a rare sunset sail themselves.
It was all very peaceful and tranquil until the dickhead jet ski riders rocked up. To be fair to them they did slow down ever so slightly as they sped past us. This didn’t stop them breaking the speed limit for the estuary as they powered their way upstream towards the town.
Our cox informed us we were making fairly speedy progress ourselves. It was rumoured that it was all to do with the recent re-waxing of the boat.
I confess that having smelt the wax and thinking at first that it was someone’s bad breath. But nope, apparently it was the bees' wax. Maybe the bees had bad breath.
We were back at the Sailing Club hard with just enough light to recover.
